Microproduct data guidebeginner

NSF Awards API

National Science Foundation award records for building research-funding monitors and institution comparison tools.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Small · ≤0.5 GB
Formats
JSON, XML
Access
API
API key
Not required
Provider
U.S. National Science Foundation
Updates
Daily
Data terms
U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

The NSF Awards API searches Research.gov award records by keyword. Start with one term and a 25-record page. Award amounts can span multiple years, and NSF is not a complete picture of U.S. research funding.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the Awards API documentation and note the 25-result page limit.
  2. 2.Search one keyword with JSON output.
  3. 3.Keep award id, title, institution, and amount.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.nsf.gov/services/v1/awards.json",
    params={"keyword": "quantum", "rpp": 25},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
awards = pd.json_normalize(response.json()["response"]["award"])
awards["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(awards[["id", "title", "awardeeName", "estimatedTotalAmt"]].head())
4

Test a useful signal

List recent NSF quantum awards

Test whether a keyword search can power a bounded funding inbox.

  1. 01Keep award id, title, awardee, and estimated total amount from the first page.
  2. 02Sum amounts by institution and flag missing amounts.
  3. 03Explain that page size is capped and that NSF awards are not all U.S. research funding.

Dataset details

U.S. National Science Foundation is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-18. Temporal coverage: historical and active NSF awards.

Theme

Government & Policy

Domains

Research FundingPublic Spending

Data types

TabularDocuments

Tasks

Funding AnalysisInstitution ComparisonTopic Research

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONXML

Provider

U.S. National Science Foundation

Data terms

U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance