Congress.gov API
The official REST API for the United States Congress, provided by the Library of Congress. It offers public access to machine-readable legislative data including bills, amendments, laws, committee reports, the Congressional Record, nominations, treaties, CRS reports, house votes, hearings, and member information. The API is free to use and requires a key obtained via the Data.gov signup page. Responses are available in JSON or XML format, with version 3 (v3) as the current release.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles Congress.gov API the way a machine reads it — 171 machine-readable artifacts across 20 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Congress.gov API scores 51.7/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Congress.gov API
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Congress.gov API. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 20
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Congress.gov API amendments API
Returns amendment data from the API
Congress.gov API bill API
Returns bill data from the API
Congress.gov API bound-congressional-record API
Returns bound Congressional Record data from the API
Congress.gov API committee API
Returns committee data from the API
Congress.gov API committee-meeting API
Returns committee meeting data from the API
Congress.gov API committee-print API
Returns committee print data from the API
Congress.gov API committee-report API
Returns committee report data from the API
Congress.gov API congress API
Returns congress and congressional sessions data from the API
Congress.gov API congressional-record API
Returns Congressional Record data from the API
Congress.gov API crsreport API
Returns Congressional Research Service (CRS) report data from the API
Congress.gov API daily-congressional-record API
Returns daily Congressional Record data from the API
Congress.gov API hearing API
Returns hearing data from the API
Congress.gov API house-communication API
Returns House communication data from the API
Congress.gov API house-requirement API
Returns House requirement data from the API
Congress.gov API house-vote API
[BETA] Returns House of Representatives roll call vote data from the API
Congress.gov API member API
Returns member data from the API
Congress.gov API nomination API
Returns nomination data from the API
Congress.gov API senate-communication API
Returns Senate communication data from the API
Congress.gov API summaries API
Returns summaries data from the API
Congress.gov API treaty API
Returns treaty data from the API
Scroll within the panel for all 20 ·
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Congress Gov Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Congress Gov Finops
FINOPSSemantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Congress Gov Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 1
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
Congress.gov API API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 135
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
Actions
JSON SCHEMAActivity
JSON SCHEMAamendedBill
JSON SCHEMAAmendment
JSON SCHEMAAmendmentActions
JSON SCHEMAAmendmentAmendments
JSON SCHEMAAmendmentCosponsors
JSON SCHEMAAmendmentNumber
JSON SCHEMAAmendments
JSON SCHEMAAmendmentText
JSON SCHEMAarticle
JSON SCHEMAassociatedBill
JSON SCHEMAassociatedMeeting
JSON SCHEMAauthor
JSON SCHEMABill
JSON SCHEMABillDetail
JSON SCHEMABillSummaries
JSON SCHEMAbillSummariesArray
JSON SCHEMABoundCongressionalRecord
JSON SCHEMAcboCost
JSON SCHEMACommittee
JSON SCHEMAcommitteeBill
JSON SCHEMACommitteeBills
JSON SCHEMACommitteeCommunication
JSON SCHEMACommitteeDetail
JSON SCHEMAcommitteeHistory
JSON SCHEMACommitteeHouseCommunication
JSON SCHEMACommitteeMeeting
JSON SCHEMACommitteeMeetingDetail
JSON SCHEMAcommitteeMeetings
JSON SCHEMACommitteeNominations
JSON SCHEMACommitteePrint
JSON SCHEMAcommitteePrintCommittees
JSON SCHEMACommitteePrintDetail
JSON SCHEMACommitteePrintDetailText
JSON SCHEMAcommitteePrints
JSON SCHEMAcommitteePrintText
JSON SCHEMAcommitteeReport
JSON SCHEMACommitteeReports
JSON SCHEMAcommitteereportsformats
JSON SCHEMACommitteeReportsNumber
JSON SCHEMACommitteeReportsText
JSON SCHEMACommittees
JSON SCHEMACommitteeSenateCommunication
JSON SCHEMAcommunicationType
JSON SCHEMACongress
JSON SCHEMACongresses
JSON SCHEMACongressionalRecord
JSON SCHEMACoSponsor
JSON SCHEMACrsReport
JSON SCHEMACrsReportDetail
JSON SCHEMADailyCongressionalRecord
JSON SCHEMADailyCongressionalRecordArticles
JSON SCHEMADailyCongressionalRecordIssue
JSON SCHEMAformat
JSON SCHEMAformats
JSON SCHEMAfullIssue
JSON SCHEMAhearing
JSON SCHEMAHearingDetail
JSON SCHEMAHearings
JSON SCHEMAhouseCommunication
JSON SCHEMAHouseCommunications
JSON SCHEMAHouseCommunicationTypeNumber
JSON SCHEMAHouseRequirement
JSON SCHEMAHouseRequirements
JSON SCHEMAHouseVote
JSON SCHEMAHouseVoteMembers
JSON SCHEMAHouseVoteNumber
JSON SCHEMAHouseVoteNumberBase
JSON SCHEMAhouseVoteResults
JSON SCHEMAissues
JSON SCHEMAlatestAction
JSON SCHEMAlatestNominationAction
JSON SCHEMALaw
JSON SCHEMALawNumber
JSON SCHEMAlaws
JSON SCHEMAleadership
JSON SCHEMAlegislativeSubjects
JSON SCHEMAmatchCommunication
JSON SCHEMAMatchCommunications
JSON SCHEMAmeetingdocument
JSON SCHEMAMember
JSON SCHEMAmemberDetailTerms
JSON SCHEMAMembers
JSON SCHEMAMemberSponsoredLegislation
JSON SCHEMAmemberTerms
JSON SCHEMANomination
JSON SCHEMANominationActions
JSON SCHEMAnominationCommittee
JSON SCHEMANominationCommittees
JSON SCHEMANominationHearing
JSON SCHEMANominationNominee
JSON SCHEMANominations
JSON SCHEMAnominationType
JSON SCHEMAnominee
JSON SCHEMAnomineeAction
JSON SCHEMAparentcommittee
JSON SCHEMAparty
JSON SCHEMApartyHistory
JSON SCHEMApolicyArea
JSON SCHEMArecordedVote
JSON SCHEMARelatedBills
JSON SCHEMArelatedItem
JSON SCHEMArelatedMaterial
JSON SCHEMArelationshipDetails
JSON SCHEMAsectionArticle
JSON SCHEMAsenatecommittee
JSON SCHEMAsenateCommunication
JSON SCHEMASenateCommunications
JSON SCHEMASenateCommunicationTypeNumber
JSON SCHEMASessions
JSON SCHEMAsourceSystem
JSON SCHEMASponsor
JSON SCHEMAsponsoredLegislation
JSON SCHEMAsubcommittees
JSON SCHEMASubjects
JSON SCHEMASummaries
JSON SCHEMAsummariesArray
JSON SCHEMAsummaryBill
JSON SCHEMAText
JSON SCHEMAtextVersion
JSON SCHEMAtextVersions
JSON SCHEMATitles
JSON SCHEMAtitlesArray
JSON SCHEMAtopic
JSON SCHEMATreaty
JSON SCHEMAtreatyAction
JSON SCHEMATreatyActions
JSON SCHEMAtreatyCommittee
JSON SCHEMATreatyCommittees
JSON SCHEMATreatyDetail
JSON SCHEMAvideo
JSON SCHEMAvoteParty
JSON SCHEMAwitness
JSON SCHEMAwitnessDocument
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 135 ·
Examples 8
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Scroll within the panel for all 8 ·
Security Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Congress.gov API — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Build 2
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 2
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 2
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 3
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 2
The organization behind the API
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/congress-gov · machine-readable index on apis.io