The US government publishes enormous amounts of data through public APIs -- SEC filings, vehicle recalls, consumer complaints, federal contracts, healthcare provider registries, drug safety reports, and more.
The problem: these APIs are scattered across dozens of agencies, each with its own authentication scheme, rate limits, pagination quirks, and data format. Finding the right endpoint, figuring out the request format, and parsing the response takes hours of documentation reading before you get a single useful result.
I built ready-to-use actors on Apify for 11 of the most valuable government data sources. Each one handles the API quirks, pagination, and data formatting so you get clean, structured JSON output you can export to CSV, connect to Google Sheets, or pipe into your app via API.
All of these use free public APIs. No API keys required.
1. SEC EDGAR -- Company Filings Search
Search SEC filings by company name, stock ticker, or CIK number. Filter by form type (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, Form 4) and date range.
Who uses this: investors doing due diligence, compliance teams tracking competitor filings, financial analysts monitoring insider transactions.
Example: Search "TSLA" to get all Tesla SEC filings with direct links to the actual documents.
2. USAspending -- Federal Contracts & Grants
Search $7+ trillion in federal spending data. Find government contracts, grants, and loans by keyword, agency, recipient, state, NAICS code, or date range.
Who uses this: government contractors tracking competitors, BD teams finding opportunities, journalists investigating federal spending, researchers studying procurement patterns.
Example: Search for "cybersecurity" contracts from the Department of Defense to see who's winning federal cyber work.
3. CFPB -- Consumer Financial Complaints
Search 2+ million consumer complaints against banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders, and debt collectors. Filter by company, product, issue, state, and date.
Who uses this: compliance teams monitoring complaint trends, fintech companies identifying pain points, investors assessing reputation risk, attorneys researching patterns of consumer harm.
Example: Search "WELLS FARGO" to see all complaints, filtered by product type and time period.
4. NHTSA -- Vehicle Safety Recalls
Look up vehicle recalls by make, model, and year. Get full recall details: affected component, safety consequence, remedy, and whether it's a "Park It" (do not drive) advisory.
Who uses this: used car buyers, auto dealers verifying inventory, fleet managers, insurance companies, automotive journalists.
Example: Search "Tesla Model 3 2024" to find all active recalls.
5. Federal Register -- Rules, Regulations & Executive Orders
Search the daily journal of the US government. Find proposed rules, final rules, notices, and presidential documents by keyword, agency, date, or CFR reference.
Who uses this: regulatory affairs teams tracking new rules, lobbyists monitoring proposed regulations, compliance officers, policy researchers.
Example: Search EPA proposed rules from the last 90 days to see what environmental regulations are coming.
6. NPPES NPI Registry -- Healthcare Provider Lookup
Search 8+ million healthcare providers in the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System. Find doctors, hospitals, and clinics by name, specialty, location, or NPI number.
Who uses this: health tech companies building provider directories, insurance companies verifying credentials, healthcare recruiters, patients looking up provider details.
Example: Search for cardiologists in California to get NPI numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and taxonomy codes.
7. openFDA -- Drug Safety Data
Search FDA drug adverse events, recalls, and drug labels. Three search modes cover different aspects of pharmaceutical safety data.
Who uses this: pharma companies monitoring adverse events, regulatory teams tracking recalls, researchers studying drug safety profiles, health journalists.
Example: Search adverse events for "Ozempic" to see reported side effects and outcomes.
State Business Entity Registrations
Business entity data is one of the most in-demand public records categories. KYC/compliance teams, sales prospecting, due diligence, and competitive intelligence all need it. I built actors for the four largest states:
8. California Secretary of State
Search CA business entities by name or entity number. Get formation date, status, agent for service of process, and entity type.
9. Texas Comptroller
Search TX business entities by name, taxpayer number, or SOS file number. Full details: officers, registered agent, EIN, addresses, franchise tax status.
10. New York Division of Corporations
Search NY business entities by name or DOS ID. Full details: service of process, CEO, registered agent, stock info, filing dates, jurisdiction.
11. Florida Division of Corporations
Access FL bulk filing data from the public Sunbiz SFTP server. Parse daily or quarterly data dumps with officers, registered agent, addresses, annual reports.
Why Apify?
Each of these actors runs in the cloud -- no infrastructure to manage, no dependencies to install, no rate limit headaches. You get:
- Structured output -- clean JSON with consistent field names
- Multiple export formats -- JSON, CSV, Excel, or direct API access
- Integrations -- connect to Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable, Zapier, Make, and more
- Scheduling -- run daily/weekly to keep your data fresh
- Pay per result -- no monthly subscriptions, just pay for the data you use
What's next
Since writing this, I've shipped 19 more actors -- CPSC product safety recalls, CMS Nursing Home Compare, USDA FoodData Central, FDIC BankFind (27,800+ bank institutions), U.S. Census ACS (demographics by any geography), IRS 990 nonprofit financials, Medicare Part D drug spending, FEC campaign finance, EPA toxic releases, ClinicalTrials.gov, BLS Economic Data (CPI, unemployment, wages), NIH RePORTER research grants, FEMA Disaster Declarations, USGS Earthquake Search, World Bank Indicators, and PubChem Compound Search. 30 actors total, all free to try. If there's a government data source you need access to, let me know in the comments.
All actors are available at apify.com/pink_comic.
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