GAO Bid Protest Docket Scraper

GAO Bid Protest Docket Scraper

Scrape the U.S. Government Accountability Office bid protest docket: every open and closed protest with its protester, contracting agency, solicitation number, GAO file number, filed date, decision due date, outcome and the published decision. No login, no API key, no browser. Built for daily updates: point it at yesterday's date and it returns only the new filings. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

GAO publishes its docket as a searchable list on gao.gov with no API, no RSS and no bulk download, and a protective edge that refuses plain HTTP clients. This Actor reads that same public docket, the list, each docket page and the decision pages, and returns one flat row per protest.

Who uses it	What they scrape the GAO docket for
Government-contracting law firms	New protests filed against their clients' awards, by agency or solicitation, before the agency notice arrives
Business-development teams at contractors	Which competitors are protesting which solicitations, and the 100-day decision deadline
Bid protest litigators	Sustain/deny/dismiss outcomes, the decision digest and the counsel of record on comparable cases
Procurement analysts and journalists	Protest volume by agency, outcome rates, and the attorneys handling each matter
Legal-data and alerting products	A daily feed of docket entries with stable file numbers for deduplication

What it does

This Actor lists the GAO bid protest docket (about 1,600 entries: roughly 230 open at any time and 1,360 closed) and returns one row per protest:

• 📁 The docket entry: GAO file number (B-number), protester, contracting agency and component, solicitation number, open/closed status and outcome (Denied, Sustained, Dismissed, Withdrawn…).
• 📅 Docket details (on by default): the date the protest was filed, GAO's due date for the decision, the decision date for closed cases, the case type and the GAO attorney assigned.
• ⚖️ Decision summary (optional, closed cases): decision date, the disposition sentence ("We sustain the protest."), the highlights, the DIGEST paragraphs, counsel of record for the protester, intervenor and agency, and the link to the decision PDF.
• 📄 Full decision text (optional): the complete published decision.

Filters run on gao.gov itself, so a search by agency, protester, solicitation number or file number costs a single page. For daily monitoring, set Filed after to yesterday: the Actor reads the newest entries first and stops as soon as it reaches older ones.

Every row contains: fileNumber, protester, agency, subAgency, solicitationNumber, status, outcome, docketUrl, postedOn, filedDate, dueDate, decisionDate, caseType, gaoAttorney, and with the decision: decisionUrl, decisionSummary, decisionHighlights, decisionDigest, counsel, decisionPdfUrl, decisionText, plus scrapedAt.

What you can do with GAO bid protest data

Get a daily alert of new protests against an agency.

A law firm schedules a run every morning with agency: "Department of Veterans Affairs" and filedAfter set to yesterday, and pushes the new rows into its matter-intake system.

Watch a solicitation.

A contractor that just won an award sets solicitation to its RFP number and learns the same day whether a competitor has protested, and when GAO must decide.

Build an outcome dataset.

A litigator pulls all closed cases with the decision summary and computes sustain rates by agency, by year and by counsel.

Research comparable decisions.

Search by protester name to see every protest a company has filed, with each decision's digest and PDF.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
The whole docket	Open and closed cases, with the same file numbers GAO uses, so rows deduplicate cleanly across daily runs
Dates that matter	Filed date and GAO's decision due date on every entry, decision date on closed ones
The decision itself	Disposition, digest, counsel and PDF link, not just a status
Server-side filters	Agency, protester, solicitation and file number are applied by gao.gov; you pay for rows, not for browsing
Daily-update mode	filedAfter stops the run at the first older entries
No browser, no residential proxy	Runs on Apify's datacenter proxy with a browser-grade TLS fingerprint

How it compares

Feature	ParseForge	Other government-contract scrapers
GAO bid protest docket (open and closed)	Yes	Not listed
Filed date and 100-day due date	Yes	Not listed
Decision summary, digest and counsel	Yes	Not listed
Filter by agency, protester, solicitation, file number	Yes	Not listed
Daily-update stop on older entries	Yes	Not listed

Configure the run

Pick a status, add filters if you want, and set the maximum number of entries. Docket details are on by default; the decision summary and full text are opt-in because they cost an extra request per closed case.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "status": "open",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Daily monitoring of one agency:

{
  "status": "open",
  "agency": "Department of the Army",
  "filedAfter": "2026-08-25",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Closed cases with the decision:

{
  "status": "closed",
  "includeDecision": true,
  "maxItems": 500
}

One protest:

{
  "status": "all",
  "fileNumber": "B-424507.3",
  "includeDecision": true
}

Limits

• The docket lists 20 entries per page; the full docket is about 80 pages. Requests are spaced 400 ms apart, so a complete pull with details takes roughly 20 minutes. Use the filters or filedAfter for routine runs.
• Dismissed and withdrawn protests usually have no published decision; those rows return the docket fields with decisionUrl: null.
• gao.gov's decision-date filter is not exposed because it empties the docket listing on the site itself; filter on decisionDate in the exported rows instead.
• GAO's edge occasionally refuses an exit IP. The Actor rotates its proxy session and, if the datacenter pool keeps being refused, switches to residential for the rest of the run.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 docket entries as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to pull the whole docket.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the GAO Bid Protest Docket Scraper.
3. Pick a status, set any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab, or schedule the run daily.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to the GAO docket through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/gao-bid-protest-docket-scraper"

Then ask: "Which bid protests were filed against the Department of the Army this week, and when is each decision due?"

FAQ

Is the data public? Yes. GAO publishes its bid protest docket and decisions on gao.gov for anyone to read; the Actor collects only those public pages.

How current is it? GAO posts new filings to the docket daily, usually the day after filing. A run with filedAfter set to yesterday catches them.

Why is decisionUrl empty on some closed cases? GAO publishes decisions for protests it decides on the merits; most dismissals and withdrawals have no decision document.