Generate and retrieve a bulk CSV or TSV export of federal award data using the USAspending.gov v2 Bulk Download API instead of paginated search queries
domain: api.usaspending.gov · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Build a POST request to https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/bulk_download/awards/ with a JSON body containing a required filters object (agencies, prime_award_types, date_range and date_type, etc.) and optional columns and file_format (csv, tsv, or pstxt; default csv).
Submit the request and capture the response's file_name, file_url, and status_url — the file is generated asynchronously and is not immediately available at file_url.
Poll the returned status_url (https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/download/status?file_name=<name>) to track generation progress rather than repeatedly re-POSTing the bulk_download request.
Once status indicates the file is finished, download the zip from file_url, which contains one or more CSV/TSV files covering the awards matching your filters.
Distinguish prime-award-only downloads from transaction-level downloads by checking the file_name suffix (_awards vs _transactions) and by setting the sub_award_types/prime_and_sub_award_types filters appropriately if sub-award data is also needed.
For recurring extracts, prefer this bulk endpoint over paginating the standard search endpoints, since it is purpose-built for full CSV exports rather than incremental UI-style paging.
Known gotchas
The endpoint only starts a generation job — treating the initial POST response as the final data instead of polling status_url will produce errors or empty files, since large filter sets can take significant time to generate.
filters.agencies is a required array of Agency objects (name, tier: toptier/subtier, type: funding/awarding), not a free-text agency name string — malformed agency objects will cause the request to be rejected.
district_original and district_current inside a Location filter are mutually exclusive with each other and with county when specified, and both require state to also be set — mixing these incorrectly causes filter validation errors.
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