Federal Register API: search rules, comment deadlines and public inspection in code

The Federal Register is where US federal agencies publish rules, proposed rules and notices, along with presidential documents. FederalRegister.gov has a public API that needs no key, so you can search it from code by agency, document type, docket, CFR part or date.

This guide is independent and is not an official Federal Register resource.

Open comment periods in Python

This lists EPA proposed rules whose comment period is still open, newest first:

import json, urllib.parse, urllib.request
from datetime import date
q = urllib.parse.urlencode([
    ("conditions[type][]", "PRORULE"),
    ("conditions[agencies][]", "environmental-protection-agency"),
    ("conditions[comment_date][gte]", date.today().isoformat()),
    ("fields[]", "document_number"), ("fields[]", "title"),
    ("fields[]", "comments_close_on"), ("fields[]", "html_url"),
    ("order", "newest"), ("per_page", "5"),
])
url = "https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json?" + q
with urllib.request.urlopen(url, timeout=30) as r:
    data = json.load(r)
print(data["count"], "open EPA proposed rules")
for d in data["results"]:
    print(d["comments_close_on"], d["document_number"], d["title"][:70])

On 31 October 2026 it printed 21 open EPA proposed rules, with comment deadlines from late November to mid-December 2026.

Things that trip people up

• Agencies are slugs. The API wants environmental-protection-agency, not EPA. Look the slug up first: EPA gets an "invalid value" error.
• Searches stop at 10,000 results. FederalRegister.gov pages through at most 10,000 results of one search, so split long date ranges.
• Public inspection is a separate list. Documents filed for publication in the coming days are on public inspection before they appear in the Federal Register, and you read them from a different endpoint.
• It isn't the official legal edition. FederalRegister.gov is not the official legal edition of the Federal Register. The official edition is the PDF on govInfo.
• Coverage starts in 1994. Documents are searchable from 1994 onwards.

We built this

Disclosure: Your Evenings built and sells this. It's independent and isn't affiliated with or endorsed by the Office of the Federal Register, NARA or the Government Publishing Office. The Federal Register API Scraper & Regulation Monitor on Apify Store reads the same public API and returns clean JSON rows. You can enter agencies by name (EPA, FDA or the full name), filter to documents still open for comment or closing in the next N days, search by docket, RIN or CFR part, and switch to public inspection mode. Rows carry the govInfo PDF link and, where a comment period applies, the comment close date and the Regulations.gov comment link. In monitor mode, scheduled daily, it returns only documents you haven't seen before.

It costs $0.002 per document returned, plus $0.01 for a monitor run that returns at least one new document (base Apify prices; higher plans pay less). Rows for no matches or an unknown agency are free.

It is not an official Federal Register product.

FAQ

Does the Federal Register API need a key? No. The FederalRegister.gov API v1 is public and needs no API key.

How do I find rules that are still open for comment? Filter on the comment date being today or later. The Actor does this with commentsOpenOnly, or commentsClosingWithinDays for deadlines in the next N days.

What is public inspection? The documents agencies have filed for publication in the coming days, before they appear in the Federal Register.

Is FederalRegister.gov the official edition? No. The official legal edition is the PDF on govInfo, which the Actor links in every row as pdfUrl.

Product names and logos belong to their owners. Your Evenings is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Federal Register data from the public FederalRegister.gov API, which is not the official legal edition. Your Evenings is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Office of the Federal Register, NARA or the Government Publishing Office.