api.congress.gov
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LibraryOfCongress
The rate limit is set to 1,000 requests per hour leading to miss the content
For a bill I am looking sponsor, summary and Cosponsor which leads to 3 API calls in turn hitting The rate limit is set to 1,000 requests per hour, can get have a API which gives all information(summary,cosposor etc all section) in one API call
Thank you for your request. We’ll explore a metadata endpoint like you’re describing as a possible future enhancement. In the meantime, please note that based on feedback, we are exploring the feasibility of raising the rate limit for the Congress.gov API in the future, pending testing to ensure our servers can handle a larger volume of requests.
I am also challenged to keep up on the flood of records from Congress, using only 1000 calls per hour. My scrapers are running on bills, though someday I'll need to add amendments and other sources. Perhaps a bump to 3000 per hour could be a reasonable beginning, especially if a good caching model is in place on your machines.
(Note that I do not work on api.congress.gov...)
Sadly, the rate limit is set by api.data.gov and applies to any service using that platform. For example, api.regulations.gov has the same limit. I have tried to get that limit increased, but no such luck (and there is no paid option either). The best solution is for applications to create endpoints that better serve the needs of the clients.
I was looking for a friendlier way to download data that doesn't overload the API and I found some links to bulk data from the GPO: https://www.govinfo.gov/bulkdata/
https://github.com/usgpo/bulk-data
Hope this helps
comment from participant at Congress.gov Public Forum, September 13, 2023
"for pulling the Urls of content, or the actual content of the article itself, because sometimes the Senate, even the House can have even more than 500 articles in a day, which tends to break even Congress gov right now but I was wondering if the Api maybe could possibly reach out towards a thousand where it wouldn't run into some of those limits when Congress especially as we know? Has these really busy days answer that one real quick, sure."
@apreiter18 Any information as to how this was "completed"? I don't see a linked PR or comment on the resolution.
In March 2024, the rate limit for the Congress.gov API was increased from 1000 calls/hour to 5000 calls/hour, @jordangov
You can view this in the API's change log here in the "March 2024, Part 1" section.
We hope this development will allow users to make more calls to retrieve the bill data that they need.
