GovTrack

GovTrack is a free, open-access platform for tracking the United States Congress, providing legislative data since 2004. It offers a REST API for accessing bill status, voting records, Congressional member information, committee data, and cosponsorship records — all without authentication or API keys. Operated by Civic Impulse, LLC, GovTrack serves millions of users annually including journalists, legislative professionals, educators, and the general public.

GovTrack is listed with 1 API on the APIs.io network: REST API. Tagged areas include Government, Legislative, Congress, Bills, and Voting Records.

GovTrack’s developer surface includes documentation, engineering blog, pricing, and 8 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

16.5/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 14/100 agent aware Front door AI 1/6 silent Heartbeat 59/100 alive saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFree

1 API

Government Legislative Congress Bills Voting RecordsPolitical DataOpen Government United States

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 16.5/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 5.1 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 0.4 / 17

Access Clarity 2.7 / 17

Operational Transparency 1.2 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 5.6 / 9

Regulatory Posture 0.9 / 15

Agent readiness — 14/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Government & Public Sector regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Show this score on your site.

It updates itself when the score changes. Paste this where you link to your API docs:

<a href="https://apis.io/providers/govtrack/"><img src="https://apis.io/badge/govtrack/card.svg" alt="GovTrack on APIs.io — Kin Score by API Evangelist"></a>

Other styles, a README pill and a shields.io endpoint are on the badge page.

Raise your score.

Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0

11 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Developer Ergonomics scores 2.4 — up to +19.5 composite points
Contract Quality scores 24.0 — up to +19.0 composite points
Access Clarity scores 15.8 — up to +16.8 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/govtrack/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/govtrack to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

GovTrack REST API

Read-only REST API providing access to U.S. Congressional data including bills and resolutions, roll call votes, member profiles, committee information, cosponsorship records, a...

GovTrack API pricing

Not yet checked against GovTrack's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free	Free
Ad-Free Account	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Govtrack Plans Pricing

2 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Govtrack Rate Limits

1 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Govtrack Finops

FINOPS

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Govtrack Domain Security

TLSv1.2 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrg

GitHubOrg

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

Pricing

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

LinkedIn

Blog

Blog

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Source (apis.yml)

aid: govtrack
name: GovTrack
description: GovTrack is a free, open-access platform for tracking the United States Congress, providing legislative data
  since 2004. It offers a REST API for accessing bill status, voting records, Congressional member information, committee
  data, and cosponsorship records — all without authentication or API keys. Operated by Civic Impulse, LLC, GovTrack serves
  millions of users annually including journalists, legislative professionals, educators, and the general public.
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Free
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/govtrack.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/govtrack/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
tags:
- Government
- Legislative
- Congress
- Bills
- Voting Records
- Political Data
- Open Government
- United States
apis:
- aid: govtrack:govtrack-api
  name: GovTrack REST API
  description: Read-only REST API providing access to U.S. Congressional data including bills and resolutions, roll call votes,
    member profiles, committee information, cosponsorship records, and congressional roles. No authentication or API key is
    required. Responses are available in JSON, JSONP, CSV, and XML formats.
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://www.govtrack.us/developers/api
  baseURL: https://www.govtrack.us/api/v2
  tags:
  - Bills
  - Legislation
  - Votes
  - Congress Members
  - Committees
  - Cosponsorship
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.govtrack.us/developers/api
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: https://www.govtrack.us/developers/api
  contact:
  - FN: GovTrack Support
    email: hello@govtrack.us
    url: https://www.govtrack.us/contact
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/govtrack-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.govtrack.us
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.govtrack.us/developers/api
- type: GitHubOrg
  url: https://github.com/govtrack
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/govtrack
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.govtrack.us/blog/
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.govtrack.us/about
- type: X
  url: https://x.com/govtrack
- type: Plans
  url: plans/govtrack-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/govtrack-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/govtrack-finops.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

GovTrack API — frequently asked questions

Does GovTrack have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 API from GovTrack, including GovTrack REST API.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the GovTrack API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 1 OpenAPI specification for GovTrack, each linked for download from this page.

How much does the GovTrack API cost?

APIs.io lists 2 pricing plans for GovTrack, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the GovTrack API ready for AI agents?

GovTrack has a Kin Score of 16.5 out of 100 (emerging) and an Agent Readiness score of 13.6 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

All 92 tools →

Call it yourself

curl for this page

This provider

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/govtrack"

All providers

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers?limit=25"

Every operation they expose

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/govtrack/operations?limit=25"

How their score was established

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/govtrack/evidence"

Calls without X-API-Key need no key. Calls with it need a paid plan — get a key.

Get an API key

Free tier, no form to fill in. Signing in shares your email address with us — we store it to create your key and to recognise you if you sign in with another provider. See our Privacy Policy and Terms.

GitHub Google LinkedIn

A second provider on the same verified email joins the account you already have.