US Federal Register JSON API — a cheatsheet

The Federal Register — the daily journal of the US government — publishes every final rule, proposed rule, public notice and presidential document as clean JSON through a free, keyless API. No sign-up, no API key, no paid tier. The only limit is a polite rate cap.

Base URL: https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1

Endpoints

Endpoint	Purpose	Auth
GET /documents.json	List/search documents (paged). Supports per_page (≤1000), page, order=newest.	none
GET /documents.json?conditions[term]=<q>	Full-text search across documents.	none
GET /documents/{document_number}.json	One document in full (abstract, CFR refs, dockets, text links).	none
GET /agencies.json	All 472 agencies + their slugs (for the agencies filter).	none

Useful conditions[...] filters

Filter	Example
Type	conditions[type][]=RULE (also PRORULE, NOTICE, PRESDOCU)
Agency	conditions[agencies][]=environmental-protection-agency
Date range	conditions[publication_date][gte]=2026-01-01
Term	conditions[term]=artificial+intelligence

Examples

# Latest 5 documents
curl "https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json?per_page=5&order=newest"

# EPA final rules published this year
curl "https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json?conditions%5Btype%5D%5B%5D=RULE&conditions%5Bagencies%5D%5B%5D=environmental-protection-agency&conditions%5Bpublication_date%5D%5Bgte%5D=2026-01-01"

# One document in full
curl "https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents/2026-14454.json"

Each document result carries document_number, type, title, abstract, publication_date, agencies, and direct html_url / pdf_url / full_text_xml_url links to the official text.

Notes & gotchas

• Keyless, but be reasonable with volume — it's a public-good API.
• per_page max is 1000; page with page or stream with order=newest.
• For regulations already in force (consolidated code, not the daily journal), use the sibling eCFR API (ecfr.gov/api) — same style, also keyless.
• Query arrays use bracket syntax (conditions[agencies][]=...); URL-encode the brackets.

Related

• Full walkthrough article: dev.to/ronin13
• Prefer structured rows over paging? The Federal Register Scraper on Apify wraps these endpoints — filters in, clean rows out.