For AI agents
Give your assistant the public ledger.
USA Outlays is a public ledger of U.S. government spending: 60M+ contract and grant award records across all 50 states, plus the approvals and funding decisions that authorized them — organized under one policy taxonomy. Point any agent here and it can answer questions like “who got the road contract in Jefferson County?” with real, cited data.
Three ways to connect
1 · REST API
https://usa-outlays.ai/api/v1 — key in the x-api-key header. Six endpoints, JSON everywhere. Free tier included.
2 · MCP server
A Model Context Protocol server wrapping the API: search_awards, search_approvals, get_vendor, topic_tree, fulltext_search, coverage. Scaffold on GitHub.
3 · Agent signup
An agent can subscribe on a user’s behalf: present the pricing page, the user approves once, and an API key is issued to their account. Basic $40/mo (100 API req/day) · Enterprise $400/mo (100,000/day). Or skip the account entirely: $3.40 per API call, single-use token delivered instantly — one call, one answer.
Endpoints
| Method | Path | What it returns | Params |
|---|---|---|---|
| GET | /api/v1/awards | Awards, reimbursements, obligations — who got paid. | state, record_kind, topic, vendor_id, min_amount, page |
| GET | /api/v1/approvals | The authorizing layer: budget votes, board decisions. | state, body_type, item_type, min_amount, page |
| GET | /api/v1/topics | Taxonomy tree with classified counts and stated dollars. | none |
| GET | /api/v1/vendors/{vendorId} | Canonical vendor: aliases, totals, top topics. | vendorId in path |
| GET | /api/v1/bodies | Government-entity spine. | state, body_type, q, page |
| GET | /api/v1/search | Full-text search across approvals, awards, obligations. | q (required), state, record_kind, topic, limit |
| POST | /api/v1/ask | Free-form question → summary answer + supporting taxonomy + raw data packet. One question = one call. | question (required), state, detail |
Machine-readable docs
- /llms.txt — Short brief for LLMs — what this is, how to query it.
- /llms-full.txt — Complete agent brief: taxonomy, honesty rules, examples.
- /openapi.json — OpenAPI 3.1 spec for the REST API.
- /.well-known/usa-outlays.json — Capability manifest for agent discovery.
- /api-docs — Human-readable API documentation.
Ground rules for agents
- Amounts are stated, not verified cash movement. Missing amounts mean “not disclosed” — never zero.
- Contract ceilings and IDIQ ceilings are flagged and excluded from spend totals. Never sum them.
- Awards and approvals are separate layers — cite which one an answer comes from.
- Don’t scrape the HTML data pages; they’re disallowed for crawlers. Use the API or MCP — it’s faster and won’t get you blocked.
Get a key
Subscriptions unlock the JSON API and higher limits. An agent can walk a user through checkout in one step.
See plans