USASpending.gov API — Federal Spending Data

Query the official U.S. federal spending database — agencies, awards, contracts, grants, subawards, funding records, and recipients — all from a single REST endpoint. No Treasury credentials, no pagination gymnastics.

11 endpoints
Official Treasury data
REST & MCP
No OAuth required

What Is USASpending.gov?

USASpending.gov is the official open data portal for U.S. federal spending, maintained by the Department of the Treasury. It tracks every dollar of federal spending — contracts, grants, loans, direct payments, and other financial assistance — that flows from government agencies to private recipients. The underlying API is the authoritative machine-readable window into that data, covering hundreds of thousands of federal awards annually. Anysite wraps that API into a clean, authenticated REST surface with consistent POST semantics: look up agencies by toptier code, search awards by keyword, trace funding account records by quarter, resolve recipients by UEI, and count award categories in a single call. All 11 endpoints are available via REST, CLI, MCP (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT), and n8n nodes — no Treasury credentials or USASpending developer account required.

All USASpending Endpoints

Eleven endpoints across four categories: agencies, awards, autocomplete, and recipients. Every endpoint accepts POST requests authenticated with your Anysite access-token header.

Endpoint What It Returns
POST /api/usaspending/agencies Agency overview by toptier code — name, abbreviation, mission, website, subtier count, DEF codes, and fiscal year budget summary
POST /api/usaspending/agencies/search List of toptier agencies with outlay, obligation, and budget authority totals; filterable by name or abbreviation
POST /api/usaspending/autocomplete Entity matches for a text prefix — agencies, recipients, NAICS codes, PSC codes, or CFDA programs
POST /api/usaspending/awards Full award record by generated unique award ID — type, description, obligations, outlays, awarding/funding agency, recipient, period and place of performance, CFDA info, executive officers
POST /api/usaspending/awards/funding Federal account funding records per fiscal quarter for an award — federal account, account title, transaction obligations, gross outlays, program activity, object class
POST /api/usaspending/awards/search Awards matching keywords and award type codes — recipient name, award amount, award type, awarding agency, start/end dates, description
POST /api/usaspending/awards/search/count Award counts by category (contracts, direct payments, grants, IDVs, loans, other) for a keyword filter — no full result set returned
POST /api/usaspending/awards/subawards Subawards under a prime award — subaward number, description, action date, amount, recipient name
POST /api/usaspending/awards/transactions Contract modifications (transactions) for an award — type, action date, action type, modification number, description, federal action obligation
POST /api/usaspending/recipients Recipient profile by recipient ID (UUID-P/C/R) — name, UEI, DUNS, recipient level, parent hierarchy, business types, location, total spending and transaction count
POST /api/usaspending/recipients/search Recipients ranked by total spending — name, UEI, DUNS, recipient level, amount; filterable by keyword and award type

What You Can Build

Federal Contract Intelligence

Search awards by keyword and award type codes to surface active government contracts in your industry. Pull full award records to extract recipient names, agency paths, place of performance, and period details. Layer in transaction histories to track contract modifications and obligation changes over time — without scraping USASpending's web UI.

Recipient Due Diligence

Resolve a company name or UEI to its full recipient profile: parent/child hierarchy, registered business types, location, and lifetime federal spending. Cross-reference with subaward data to understand downstream pass-through relationships. Useful for supply-chain audits, vendor onboarding, and competitive intelligence on who wins government business.

Agency Budget Monitoring

Pull toptier agency overviews by code to track mission statements, DEF codes, and budget summaries. Use agency search to compare outlay amounts, obligation totals, and budget authority percentages across all federal departments. Feed the results into dashboards that update automatically as fiscal-year data refreshes upstream.

Grant & Assistance Discovery

Filter awards by grant type codes to find federal financial assistance programs in a topic area. Use keyword search with start_date and end_date to scope to a funding cycle, then count results by category before pulling full records. Autocomplete resolves CFDA program names to codes so you can build precise filters without memorizing program numbers.

Quick Start

All USASpending endpoints accept POST requests to https://api.anysite.io with your access-token header. Replace YOUR_KEY with your Anysite API key.

Search federal awards — contracts for "cybersecurity"
curl https://api.anysite.io/api/usaspending/awards/search \
  -H "access-token: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "keywords": ["cybersecurity"],
    "award_type_codes": ["A","B","C","D"],
    "count": 10,
    "start_date": "2024-01-01"
  }'
Get a federal agency overview — Department of Defense (097)
curl https://api.anysite.io/api/usaspending/agencies \
  -H "access-token: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"toptier_code": "097"}'
Count awards by category — scope before pulling full results
curl https://api.anysite.io/api/usaspending/awards/search/count \
  -H "access-token: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "keywords": ["renewable energy"],
    "start_date": "2023-10-01",
    "end_date": "2024-09-30"
  }'
Get recipient profile — look up a contractor by recipient ID
curl https://api.anysite.io/api/usaspending/recipients \
  -H "access-token: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"recipient_id": "b97d19b0-833c-8d8f-3a2c-157d04ea55ef-P"}'
List subawards under a prime award
curl https://api.anysite.io/api/usaspending/awards/subawards \
  -H "access-token: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "award": "CONT_AWD_N0001920C0009_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-",
    "count": 20
  }'

Plans

Every endpoint is included in all Anysite plans — there's no per-endpoint pricing to track. Use MCP Unlimited for flat-rate access through your AI tools, or a credit plan for REST & CLI at scale.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a USASpending.gov account or Treasury credentials to use these endpoints?
No. Anysite authenticates with USASpending's public API on your behalf. You only need your Anysite API key, passed as the access-token header. There is no Treasury registration, no USASpending developer account, and no OAuth flow required.
What is a "generated unique award ID" and how do I get one?
USASpending identifies each award with a generated unique award ID — a structured string like CONT_AWD_N0001920C0009_9700_-NONE-_-NONE- for contracts or ASST_NON_2405CA5MAP_075 for assistance awards. You obtain these IDs from the /api/usaspending/awards/search endpoint: search by keyword and award type codes, then use the id or internal_id fields from the results as your award identifier for the detail, funding, subaward, and transaction endpoints.
What are toptier agency codes and where do I find them?
Toptier codes are the three-digit identifiers that FPDS and USASpending use to identify cabinet-level agencies — for example, 097 for the Department of Defense, 012 for the Department of Agriculture, and 086 for HUD. You can look them up via the /api/usaspending/agencies/search endpoint (each result includes toptier_code), or you can use /api/usaspending/autocomplete with resolve_type: "agency" to resolve a name prefix to its code.
What award type codes do I use to search contracts vs grants?
For contracts and IDVs, use ["A","B","C","D"]. For grants and other financial assistance, use ["02","03","04","05"]. All codes within a single request must belong to the same group — mixing contract and grant codes in one call is not supported by the underlying API. To count across all award types without filtering, call /api/usaspending/awards/search/count without specifying award_type_codes.
What is the difference between /awards/search and /awards/search/count?
The /awards/search endpoint returns full award summaries — recipient names, amounts, agency paths, dates, descriptions — up to the count you specify. The /awards/search/count endpoint returns only integer totals broken down by category (contracts, grants, loans, IDVs, direct payments, other) for the same keyword filter. Use the count endpoint first to understand how many results exist in each category before deciding which type codes and count to pass to the full search.
What does the recipient_id format mean (UUID-P, UUID-C, UUID-R)?
USASpending tracks recipients at three levels: Parent (-P), Child (-C), and Recipient (-R). A parent is the top-level entity (e.g. a corporation), a child is a subsidiary or division that received awards directly, and the recipient level aggregates all spending for a UEI. The UUID portion is a hash derived from the entity's UEI or legacy DUNS. You obtain recipient IDs from the /api/usaspending/recipients/search endpoint, where each result includes its id with the level suffix.
How current is the USASpending data returned by these endpoints?
The data reflects USASpending.gov's own publication cadence. Federal agencies report obligations to FPDS and USASpending on a rolling basis, with most records appearing within 30 days of the transaction date. Anysite does not cache the upstream data — each call proxies to USASpending's live API, so you get the same freshness as querying USASpending directly. For fiscal-year budget summaries on the agency endpoints, data typically becomes available after each quarter closes.
Can I use these endpoints in Claude, Cursor, or ChatGPT via MCP?
Yes. All 11 USASpending endpoints are available through Anysite's MCP server, which connects to Claude (claude.ai Projects and Claude desktop), Cursor, and ChatGPT (via the plugin interface). On the MCP Unlimited plan you get fair-use access to all endpoints without tracking per-call credit consumption. Configure your MCP client with your Anysite API key and the Anysite MCP server URL — full setup instructions are in the Anysite docs.

Related Endpoints

Start Querying Federal Spending Data

Get your API key and run your first USASpending query in minutes. All 11 endpoints are available on every plan — REST, CLI, and MCP.