Federal Grant Awards API

Search, single-award detail, the full modification trail, and a recipient-keyed reverse lookup. Every call takes a single Authorization: Bearer header.

Search assistance transactions

Filter-based search. At least one substantive filter is required (see parameters below).

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://govconapi.com/api/v1/grants/search?uei=RFKGNHR7ZH37&limit=50"

Single grant award

Latest action plus a roll-up across every transaction under one award key. Look awards up by assistance_award_unique_key, not by FAIN.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://govconapi.com/api/v1/grants/ASST_NON_4683DRCAP00000001_070"

Modification trail

The full transaction history for one award, oldest action first. Not date-windowed: you get the complete history we carry.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://govconapi.com/api/v1/grants/ASST_NON_4683DRCAP00000001_070/modifications?limit=500"

Recipient grants (reverse lookup)

Every grant one recipient received, by UEI, with a summary and the recipient's top CFDA programs.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://govconapi.com/api/v1/companies/RFKGNHR7ZH37/grants?limit=50"

Applies to /api/v1/grants/search. At least one of uei, parent_uei, fain, agency, cfda, recipient_name, recipient_state, or funding_opportunity is required. recipient_type and assistance_type_code are refinements and do not satisfy the requirement on their own. Unknown parameters return 400.

A search response is a data array plus pagination, a filters_applied echo, a window block, and a _sources array. The row below is one live Florida DOT highway action; note the negative federal_action_obligation, this row is a de-obligation.

{
  "data": [
    {
      "assistance_award_unique_key": "ASST_NON_693JJ22230000Y001FLD620026_069",
      "award_id_fain":               "693JJ22230000Y001FLD620026",
      "action_date":                 "2026-05-29",
      "federal_action_obligation":   -69062.00,
      "total_obligated_amount":      4497482.00,
      "assistance_type_code":        "03",
      "assistance_type_description": "FORMULA GRANT (A)",
      "cfda_number":                 "20.205",
      "cfda_title":                  "HIGHWAY PLANNING AND CONSTRUCTION",
      "awarding_agency_name":        "Department of Transportation",
      "recipient_uei":               "RFKGNHR7ZH37",
      "recipient_name":              "STATE OF FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION",
      "recipient_state_code":        "FL"
    }
  ],
  "pagination": { "limit": 1, "offset": 0, "total": 15661, "total_is_estimate": false, "has_next": true },
  "filters_applied": { "uei": "RFKGNHR7ZH37", "date_from": "2024-10-01", "sort_by": "action_date", "sort_order": "desc" },
  "window": { "plan_window_days": 1825, "earliest_searchable": "2024-10-01", "clamped": true },
  "_sources": ["usaspending_fabs"]
}

Every row carries more than one dollar figure, and they answer different questions. Conflating them is the single most common grant-data mistake.

• federal_action_obligation is what this transaction obligated. Sum it to total a recipient, a program, or a window. De-obligations are negative; summing nets them out correctly, so do not filter negatives away.
• total_obligated_amount is the award's cumulative lifetime total, repeated verbatim on every transaction of that award. Never sum it across rows; that multiplies one number by the transaction count.
• generated_pragmatic_obligations (in the expanded projection) is USAspending's reconciled best figure for an award.

The single-award detail endpoint does this math for you: the latest transaction plus a transaction_rollup sibling that sums federal_action_obligation across the award and carries the award's lifetime figures separately. Below is a California FEMA disaster-recovery grant (CFDA 97.036).

{
  "grant": { /* latest transaction, lean fields */ },
  "transaction_rollup": {
    "transaction_count":            1409,
    "total_obligated":              312276899.65,
    "award_total_obligated_amount": 403698397.09,
    "award_total_outlayed":         264256562.26,
    "first_action_date":            "2024-10-04",
    "latest_action_date":           "2026-05-22",
    "distinct_programs":            1
  },
  "_sources": ["usaspending_fabs"]
}

Here total_obligated ($312.3M) is the sum across this award's 1,409 transactions inside our coverage window. award_total_obligated_amount ($403.7M) is the award's lifetime cumulative carried from USAspending, so the roughly $91M gap is obligation that predates FY2025. award_total_outlayed ($264.3M) is money actually disbursed. To answer "how much has this award obligated to date," read the award figure; to answer "how much landed in my window," read the rollup sum.

/api/v1/companies/{uei}/grants is the reverse lookup: every grant one recipient received, plus a summary block that totals obligations and ranks the recipient's CFDA programs by dollars. It answers "what does this organization get from the federal government, and through which programs" in one call.

{
  "uei": "RFKGNHR7ZH37",
  "summary": {
    "recipient_name":    "STATE OF FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION",
    "total_obligated":   3979077966.34,
    "distinct_awards":   6753,
    "distinct_programs": 29,
    "distinct_agencies": 1,
    "top_programs": [
      { "cfda_number": "20.205", "cfda_title": "HIGHWAY PLANNING AND CONSTRUCTION", "transaction_count": 14736, "total": 3189497390.00 },
      { "cfda_number": "20.279", "cfda_title": "NATIONAL HIGHWAY PERFORMANCE PROGRAM (NHPP)", "total": 204598978.00 }
      /* up to 10 programs, ranked by dollars */
    ],
    "first_action_date": "2024-10-15",
    "last_action_date":  "2026-05-29"
  },
  "data": [ /* paginated grant transactions */ ],
  "pagination": { "total": 15661 },
  "_sources": ["usaspending_fabs"]
}

The same UEI keys into prime contracts and the company profile, so a single recipient's grants and contracts line up without a client-side join.

• Transaction grain, not award grain. Each row is one assistance action. To roll transactions into an award, group by assistance_award_unique_key (also embedded in the USAspending permalink), not by award_id_fain, which can recur across recipients and years.
• Obligation amounts can be negative. De-obligations carry a negative federal_action_obligation. To get net obligated dollars, sum the field across transactions, which is exactly what the detail endpoint's transaction_rollup.total_obligated reports.
• Action date is not the period of performance. action_date is when the transaction posted and drives the search window. period_of_performance_start_date and period_of_performance_current_end_date describe when the funded work happens, which can run years past the action.
• Aggregate records have no recipient UEI. USAspending publishes some assistance as aggregate rows (record_type 1 or 3) with no individual recipient. Those rows carry a null recipient_uei, so recipient-keyed filters will not return them.
• Source values pass through unchanged. Occasionally an upstream record carries a corrupt date or an implausible amount. These are agency-level reporting errors. We surface them as recorded rather than silently fixing them, so you stay aligned with the system of record.
• Unknown query parameters return 400. A typo in a filter name returns a 400 with the list of valid parameters rather than silently dropping the filter. The same gate prevents accidental full-table dumps: search requires at least one substantive filter, and recipient_type or assistance_type_code alone is not enough.

• Source: USAspending financial-assistance reporting for prime award types 02, 03, 04, and 05.
• Coverage today: FY2025 + FY2026 (action dates from October 2024 onward).
• Scope: block grants, formula grants, project grants, and cooperative agreements. Direct payments, loans, and insurance are out of scope.
• Refresh: daily. Upstream lag is typically 2 to 3 weeks from action date to availability for the most recent actions.
• Plan window: 5 years. The earliest_searchable field in every response is the actual data floor, so window math is always honest. Older fiscal years are available on Enterprise and the open-tier window extends as coverage expands.

Grant award data is a free base layer (the same posture as contracts). Every plan, including the free trial, gets all filters and all four endpoints. Plans differ on page size and rate limit, not on access.

• Free trial (14 days): all filters, 50 results per request.
• Developer: all filters, 250 results per request, 1,000 requests per hour.
• Pro: Developer access plus the cross-product enrichment (vendor risk, subaward supply-chain, company intelligence) that composes grant, contract, and subaward activity for a single recipient.

See full pricing.