# NSF Awards, Grants & Research Funding Bulk Scraper (`logiover/nsf-awards-bulk-scraper`) Actor

Export thousands of National Science Foundation awards from official annual bulk archives. Includes grant amounts, abstracts, recipient organizations, principal investigators, programs, directorates, dates and locations. Filter multiple fiscal years without the 3,000-result search cap.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/logiover/nsf-awards-bulk-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [Logiover](https://apify.com/logiover) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.50 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## NSF Awards, Grants & Research Funding Bulk Scraper

Export National Science Foundation awards from official fiscal-year bulk archives. Unlike the interactive NSF award search, which limits immediate search exports to 3,000 results, this Actor streams complete annual archives and can combine multiple years into one normalized dataset.

Each award includes funding amounts, dates, recipient institution and performance location, principal investigators, program elements, directorate and division, program officer, public abstract, and official award link. Current annual archives contain thousands of records; multiple years provide tens or hundreds of thousands.

### What you can use it for

- Discover recently funded researchers, laboratories, universities, nonprofits, and technology companies.
- Build lead lists for scientific equipment, software, cloud, recruiting, publishing, consulting, and research services.
- Track research topics, emerging technologies, funded institutions, and geographic funding distribution.
- Find awards by keyword, directorate, state, recipient, amount, activity, or fiscal year.
- Analyze principal-investigator and institutional networks.
- Power grant intelligence, academic research, policy analysis, and market mapping.

### Data included

- NSF award ID, fiscal year, title, public abstract, agency, transaction type, award instrument, and CFDA number
- start and expiration dates, current award amount, total intended award amount, and ARRA amount
- awardee institution and legal name, address, telephone, UEI, parent UEI, and congressional district
- project performance location
- principal investigator names, roles, public award contact emails, and NSF identifiers
- NSF directorate, division, program elements, and program references
- program officer name, email, and telephone
- obligations by fiscal year where supplied
- direct official award and bulk-source links

Blank numeric fields remain `null`. Identifiers, postal codes, and congressional districts remain strings. Disable `includeAbstract` when you need a smaller high-volume dataset.

### Input

The default run automatically scans the current and previous fiscal-year archives and returns up to 1,000 awards. `maxResults` supports up to 500,000 across the selected years.

- `years`: one or more available NSF fiscal years
- `states`: recipient institution state codes
- `awardeeContains`: recipient institution or legal-name fragment
- `keyword`: title, abstract, or program-element keyword
- `directorates`: current code or name fragments such as CSE, ENG, BIO, or MPS
- `minimumAwardAmount`: minimum total intended award amount
- `activeOnly`: expiration date has not passed
- `includeAbstract`: include or omit full abstracts

Example: active AI-related awards in Computer and Information Science and Engineering (current bulk code `CSE`) and Engineering:

```json
{
  "maxResults": 10000,
  "years": [2026, 2025, 2024],
  "keyword": "artificial intelligence",
  "directorates": ["CSE", "ENG"],
  "activeOnly": true,
  "minimumAwardAmount": 100000
}
```

Example: California university awards without large abstracts:

```json
{
  "maxResults": 25000,
  "years": [2026, 2025, 2024],
  "states": ["CA"],
  "awardeeContains": "university",
  "includeAbstract": false
}
```

### Output example

```json
{
  "awardId": "2625972",
  "fiscalYear": 2026,
  "title": "Conference: Label-Free Single Molecule Sensing",
  "totalIntendedAwardAmount": 10000,
  "startDate": "2027-03-15",
  "expirationDate": "2027-08-31",
  "awardee": { "name": "Gordon Research Conferences", "state": "RI", "uei": "XL5ANMKWN557" },
  "principalInvestigatorNames": ["Georgios Alexandrakis"],
  "directorateCode": "ENG",
  "divisionCode": "CBET"
}
```

The default Apify dataset can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS and consumed through API clients, webhooks, Zapier, Make, Google Drive, and other integrations.

### Performance and reliability

On each run, the Actor requests the official NSF archive directory and receives fresh signed download links. It downloads selected fiscal years newest first, streams each ZIP entry, parses one JSON award at a time, applies filters, and writes batches. Annual ZIPs are never unpacked wholesale to local storage or held as one large object.

This design bypasses the interactive search's 3,000-record display/export ceiling without working around access controls: it uses the NSF's documented complete fiscal-year downloads. Missing years are logged and skipped; the run fails clearly if nothing matches.

### Data source, public domain, and responsible use

The source is the official NSF Award Search annual bulk data. NSF states that posted award data, including award abstract text, is public domain. Field availability varies by era, and older fiscal years can omit abstracts or modern identifiers.

Funding amounts and dates can change through amendments. Use the linked official award page for current grant facts. Public investigator contact information should be used lawfully and professionally; follow applicable privacy, anti-spam, and marketing rules. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by NSF.

### Pricing

Pay-per-event pricing charges a small start event and one result event per saved award. `maxResults` is the charge ceiling for results. Downloaded or scanned awards that fail filters are not charged as result events.

### Changelog

#### 2026-08-03 — 1.0.0

- Initial release.
- Verified the new post-January-2025 JSON annual archive format and current 2026 archive contents.
- Added multi-year bulk processing beyond the 3,000-result search cap, streaming JSON/ZIP parsing, grant and recipient filters, optional abstracts, retries, batch writes, and dataset overview.

# Actor input Schema

## `maxResults` (type: `integer`):

Maximum matching NSF awards to save. Annual archives bypass the public search API's 3,000-result display limit.

## `years` (type: `array`):

Optional NSF fiscal-year archives, newest first. Leave empty to select the current and previous year automatically.

## `states` (type: `array`):

Optional two-letter recipient institution state codes such as CA, NY or MA.

## `awardeeContains` (type: `string`):

Case-insensitive recipient institution or legal-name fragment.

## `keyword` (type: `string`):

Case-insensitive keyword searched across award title, abstract and program element names.

## `directorates` (type: `array`):

Optional current abbreviations or name fragments such as CSE, ENG, BIO or Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

## `minimumAwardAmount` (type: `number`):

Only awards whose total intended amount is at least this USD value.

## `activeOnly` (type: `boolean`):

Only keep awards whose expiration date has not passed.

## `includeAbstract` (type: `boolean`):

Include the full public NSF abstract. Disable to reduce dataset size for very large exports.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "maxResults": 1000,
  "states": [],
  "awardeeContains": "",
  "keyword": "",
  "directorates": [],
  "minimumAwardAmount": 0,
  "activeOnly": false,
  "includeAbstract": true
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("logiover/nsf-awards-bulk-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("logiover/nsf-awards-bulk-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call logiover/nsf-awards-bulk-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=logiover/nsf-awards-bulk-scraper",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/AGgLTsfmcr9rtKHvW/builds/RegZKiJX7azst0tZi/openapi.json