# USAspending Contract Award Monitor (`titan_coder/usaspending-contract-award-monitor`) Actor

USAspending gives you a firehose and no way to see what is new. This one watches your agencies and reports only contract awards that appeared since your last check. Official free API, and an agency with nothing new costs you nothing.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/titan\_coder/usaspending-contract-award-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [Radu Furtuna](https://apify.com/titan_coder) (community)
- **Categories:** Business, Lead generation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$20.00 / 1,000 new award detecteds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## USAspending Contract Award Monitor

Durable monitor for new federal contract awards from a US government agency, via the official, free
USAspending.gov API. No API key needed.

### Why

Government contractors, competitive-intelligence teams, and journalists want to know the moment an agency
awards a new contract — who won it, for how much, when. Existing scrapers on Apify only do a one-off pull
or focus on open opportunities (not awards already made); none durably track what's already been seen and
pay only for genuinely new awards.

### How it works

1. Each `watch` is one federal agency you track by its exact official name (e.g. "Environmental Protection
   Agency" — full list at usaspending.gov/agency).
2. Every run searches that agency's contract awards from the last 30 days (a rolling window, since awards
   can be registered in the system a few days after signing) and diffs them against a durable checkpoint of
   award IDs already seen for that watch.
3. Genuinely new awards are pushed to the dataset and billed once each (`new-award-detected`); checking an
   agency with nothing new costs nothing beyond the fixed platform run cost.

### Input

```json
{
  "monitorId": "my-agencies",
  "watches": [
    { "watchId": "epa", "agencyName": "Environmental Protection Agency" }
  ],
  "notifyOn": "new_alerts",
  "webhookUrl": "https://example.com/webhook"
}
```

Add more watches later under the same `monitorId` — each watch keeps its own independent history.

### Billing

Pay-per-event: `new-award-detected` — charged only for an award genuinely new since the previous check of
that watch. The first check of a new watch establishes a baseline (no charge). Failed/blocked checks are
never charged.

### Delivery and charging guarantee: **at-most-once**

For a single detected award, the dataset write and the pay-per-event charge each happen **at most
once** — never twice. This is not "exactly-once", and we do not claim it is: the right to perform an
irreversible action (dataset write + charge) is granted by Apify's only atomic primitive,
`RequestQueue.addRequest(uniqueKey)`, in a separate named journal queue `<prefix>-<monitorId>-claims`.
Apify's Key-Value Store has no CAS, no conditional write and no ETag, so a KV-based state machine cannot
guarantee it and is kept for diagnostics only.

The trade-off is deliberate: if a run crashes *after* taking the claim, that event may be **lost** (it is
closed as `dataset_unknown` / `charge_unknown` and is never re-delivered) — but you are never charged for
it twice. "We never overcharge" is worth more than "we never miss a row".

Boundaries of the guarantee, stated honestly:

- it holds **as long as the named claims queue exists**. Anyone with account access can delete or recreate
  it from the Console/API, which starts the journal from scratch — an unavoidable boundary of any durable
  storage, not a defect of the protocol;
- it applies **from the build that introduced the claim gate onward**. Runs from older builds against the
  same `monitorId` are not covered, and old builds must not keep running on it;
- `seenIds` eviction (below) is a separate, independent source of possible re-billing.

### Honest limits

- Each check searches a rolling 30-day window (not "since last run") to absorb the system's own registration
  lag — an award that appears late is still caught by the rolling window.
- Only contract awards (types A/B/C/D) are covered in this version — grants, loans, and other assistance
  award types are out of scope.
- `seenIds` per watch is capped (FIFO by discovery order); an evicted, then re-surfaced award ID can be
  re-billed — only matters for extremely high-award-volume agencies.
- We don't invent data: if the API response shape changes, or a watch's `agencyName` doesn't match an exact
  official agency name, the run reports it honestly instead of silently returning zero results.

Author: OmniCoder (https://t.me/OmniCoder)

# Actor input Schema

## `monitorId` (type: `string`):

Name of this monitor's durable history (a-z, 0-9, dash; up to 40 chars).

## `watches` (type: `array`):

1-20 objects: {"watchId": "epa", "agencyName": "Environmental Protection Agency"}. agencyName is the exact official top-tier awarding agency name (see usaspending.gov/agency). New agencies can be added later under the same monitorId.

## `notifyOn` (type: `string`):

new\_alerts — post the webhook only when new paid awards were delivered; always — post it every run; never — do not call webhookUrl at all.

## `webhookUrl` (type: `string`):

Optional. Receives a digest of delivered (paid) new awards as JSON. HTTPS only.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "monitorId": "my-agencies",
  "watches": [
    {
      "watchId": "epa",
      "agencyName": "Environmental Protection Agency"
    }
  ],
  "notifyOn": "new_alerts"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Every row this run produced. Key fields: watchId, awardId, recipientName, awardAmount, startDate.

## `coverage` (type: `string`):

What this run actually covered and what it charged for: per-target status and reason, rows delivered and rows billed. Enough to reconcile every charge against every row.

## `digest` (type: `string`):

A short human-readable summary of what this run found, written every run.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "monitorId": "my-agencies",
    "watches": [
        {
            "watchId": "epa",
            "agencyName": "Environmental Protection Agency"
        }
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("titan_coder/usaspending-contract-award-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "monitorId": "my-agencies",
    "watches": [{
            "watchId": "epa",
            "agencyName": "Environmental Protection Agency",
        }],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("titan_coder/usaspending-contract-award-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "monitorId": "my-agencies",
  "watches": [
    {
      "watchId": "epa",
      "agencyName": "Environmental Protection Agency"
    }
  ]
}' |
apify call titan_coder/usaspending-contract-award-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,titan_coder/usaspending-contract-award-monitor"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/cYkA7z4s9Fctoe9GC/builds/kGWdxMfEHxRBY0LTM/openapi.json