Ben Barazandeh

Posted on Nov 8

Querying the Grants.gov API in Python: Open Federal Grants by Keyword and Eligibility

#python #api #opendata #nonprofit

Disclosure: I'm Ben, and I built the Apify Actor mentioned later in this post. I charge per result for it. The tutorial part needs only Python and the free Grants.gov API.

Every federal grant opportunity (NOFO) is posted on Grants.gov, and Grants.gov has a public JSON API with no key. Hardly anyone uses it directly, partly because the useful parts (award ceiling, total funding, eligibility, agency contact) aren't in the search results. Here's how to get them, and the quirks I hit.

The two endpoints

POST https://api.grants.gov/v1/api/search2 returns matching opportunities: id, number, title, agency, status, open and close dates. Up to rows per page, with startRecordNum for paging.
POST https://api.grants.gov/v1/api/fetchOpportunity returns one opportunity's full detail: the synopsis with award ceiling and floor, estimated total funding, expected awards, cost sharing, eligible applicant types, Assistance Listings (CFDA) and the contact.

Step 1: Search, then fetch details

This ran as-is on 25 Oct 2026:

import requests
s = requests.post("https://api.grants.gov/v1/api/search2", json={
    "keyword": "artificial intelligence", "oppStatuses": "forecasted|posted", "rows": 3}, timeout=30).json()
print(s["data"]["hitCount"], "matches")
for hit in s["data"]["oppHits"]:
    d = requests.post("https://api.grants.gov/v1/api/fetchOpportunity",
                      json={"opportunityId": int(hit["id"])}, timeout=30).json()["data"]
    syn = d.get("synopsis") or {}
    print(hit["number"], hit["closeDate"] or "-", syn.get("awardCeiling"), syn.get("agencyContactEmail"))

Output (I've trimmed one individual's email):

167 matches
PD-19-127Y 02/10/2027 none grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov
W519TC-25-S-0001 - None None
G27AS00079 11/14/2026 150000 <agency contact>

Step 2: Filter by who can apply

This is the filter that matters most for nonprofits, universities and small businesses. Grants.gov tags each opportunity with eligible applicant codes, and search2 accepts them pipe-separated in eligibilities. A few: 12 = 501(c)(3) nonprofits, 13 = nonprofits without 501(c)(3), 20 = private institutions of higher education, 06 = public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, 23 = small businesses, 25 = others.

s = requests.post("https://api.grants.gov/v1/api/search2", json={
    "oppStatuses": "posted", "eligibilities": "12", "rows": 3}, timeout=30).json()["data"]
print(s["hitCount"])  # 440 on 25 Oct 2026

So on that day, 440 posted opportunities accepted 501(c)(3) applicants.

Step 3: The quirks

Inconsistent types. awardCeiling came back as the string "none" for the NSF program and as a number for the USGS one. A forecasted DoD notice had no synopsis at all (it lives in a different forecast block). Parse defensively and normalise to null.
US dates. closeDate is MM/DD/YYYY, and blank for forecasts and rolling programs. Convert before sorting by "closing soon", or 01/07/2028 sorts before 11/17/2026.
Counts move daily. My keyword search had 171 matches on 18 Oct and 167 on 25 Oct. Opportunities close, and new ones are posted. Store the opportunity id and diff, rather than trusting counts.
One detail call per result. Search is cheap, but anything useful needs fetchOpportunity. For 400+ results that's 400+ requests. Be gentle and cache.
Contacts are often individuals. The agency contact is sometimes a shared inbox, sometimes a named program officer. Use it to ask about the program, not as a mailing list.

Step 4: Or use the packaged version

I packaged this as an Apify Actor, Grants.gov Scraper – Federal & Nonprofit Grants Finder. It runs the search, fetches every detail, normalises the types and dates, and returns one clean row per opportunity. It also adds daysUntilClose, and "posted in the last N days" / "closing within N days" filters for alerts.

Run-ready link: open it in Apify Console with an example input already filled in ({"keyword": "artificial intelligence", "maxItems": 20}). Click Start, or change the input first.

The pre-filled input (keyword artificial intelligence, forecasted + posted, 20 results) ran on 18 Oct 2026 in about 6 seconds and saved 20 of 171 matches:

Number	Title	Agency	Deadline	Award ceiling	Total funding
26-512	Unlocking Dataset Value for AI-Enabled Scientific Discovery…	NSF	2026-11-04	–	$100M
25-531	Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI)	NSF	2027-01-20	$1.2M	$12M
G27AS00079	Cooperative Agreement for Affiliated Partner with the Great…	DOI-USGS1	2026-11-14	$150K	$150K

The nonprofit version:

{ "statuses": ["posted"], "eligibilities": ["12"], "sortBy": "closingSoon", "maxItems": 10 }

That ran on 19 Oct 2026 and saved 10 of 443 matching opportunities. One was HRSA-27-005, the FY2027 Health Center Service Area Competition, with an award ceiling of $10,116,100, a floor of $650,000, $267,773,700 total, 63 expected awards, and daysUntilClose: 0. Sorting by closing date surfaces exactly the ones you're about to miss.

Each row has: id, number, title, agency, status, open and close dates, days left, CFDA numbers, award ceiling and floor, estimated total funding, expected awards, cost sharing, funding instruments, categories, eligible applicants, description, contact and the grants.gov link.

As a grant alert

Schedule a weekly run with "posted in the last 7 days", your eligibility codes and keywords, and push the new rows to email, Slack or a sheet. That replaces scanning the Grants.gov site by hand.

Limits, honestly

Federal only. Grants.gov covers federal opportunities. Foundation, corporate and most state grants aren't there.
It returns what Grants.gov publishes. If an agency leaves the ceiling or funding blank, so does the row. Forecasts usually have no deadline yet.
Not a full NOFO. Eligibility rules, page limits and review criteria are in the attached documents, which you'll still need to read.
Partial results. If Grants.gov errors partway through a large run, the Actor keeps what it saved and stops instead of failing the whole run.
Not affiliated with Grants.gov.

What it costs

$0.003 per opportunity saved ($3 per 1,000), no start fee, and it stops at your maximum cost per run. The 20-result test was 6 cents. If you only need one search, the Python above is free and works fine.

If you look for grants regularly: what do you filter on, and what's missing from Grants.gov's own search? I'd like to know what to add next, so tell me in the comments.

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