For a bulk congressional-bill dataset, start with GovInfo’s Congressional Bills collection; for request-based retrieval, evaluate the GovInfo API or Congress.gov API. None is documented as a drop-in replacement for GovTrack’s retired API, so plan to map fields and validate the records your application uses.
What happened to the GovTrack API?
GovTrack’s December 10, 2016 Site News notice said its open data and API would end the following summer, around Congress’s summer recess. It also said the public website would continue: “Our open data and API will terminate next summer, once Congress begins its summer recess.” The notice discussed possible alternatives at the time, but it does not establish whether those third-party options remain available now. Read the GovTrack notice.
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Which official source fits your use case?
| Source | Best fit | What it provides | Coverage or access notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| GovInfo Bulk Data Repository | Downloading and processing a broad corpus | Machine-readable XML, including congressional bills and related datasets | Its Congressional Bills page lists Congresses 113–119; listings can change, so check the repository before building an importer. |
| GovInfo bulk collections | Selecting specific data types and historical ranges | Bill text, bill status, and bill summaries as distinct datasets | Documented coverage begins with the 113th Congress for text and summaries, and the 108th Congress for status. |
| GovInfo API | Targeted retrieval and discovery of additions or updates | Collection and package operations, package summaries, content files, and metadata | Requires an api.data.gov key; packages may contain granules. |
| Congress.gov API | Bill-focused request/response access | Bill list, detail, actions, and amendments routes | Requires an api.data.gov key. The documentation does not establish equivalence to GovTrack’s historical coverage, schema, or update behavior. |
GovInfo’s live repository listings and timestamps may change. Its Congressional Bills page lists Congresses 113 through 119, with the 119th Congress covering 2025–2026; verify current listings before relying on them. Check the Congressional Bills collection.
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GovInfo separates bill text, status, and summaries rather than presenting them as one interchangeable dataset. Its developer documentation gives different historical starting points for each:
- Bill text: 113th Congress to present.
- Bill status: 108th Congress to present.
- Bill summaries: 113th Congress to present.
GovInfo documents XML and JSON directory forms for bulk collections, including Bill Status examples, and links to GPO GitHub user guides for selected XML datasets. Review the relevant guide and files before choosing a parser; do not assume the datasets share one schema or coverage range. See GovInfo’s developer documentation.
How should you migrate an application that used GovTrack?
- Inventory what the application actually reads. Separate bill text, status and action history, summaries, sponsor and cosponsor fields, and any GovTrack-specific derived values. Record which fields are required versus optional.
- Choose retrieval based on workload. For a local replica or broad historical corpus, begin with GovInfo bulk data. For targeted requests or update discovery, evaluate the GovInfo API; for bill-specific endpoints, evaluate the Congress.gov API.
- Build a translation layer. Treat the new data source as a different schema. Map identifiers, bill types and numbers, Congress numbering, actions, and text versions to the fields your application expects.
- Validate representative records. Compare bills across relevant Congresses and test edge cases in your own use case, including bills with the actions or text versions your application consumes. No field-by-field GovTrack migration map is established in the cited official documentation.
- Plan update discovery and reconciliation. GovInfo RSS notifications and sitemaps can help identify new or updated items. GovInfo cautions that RSS feeds can be suspended during large-scale reprocessing and recommends considering sitemaps in that situation. Periodically reconciling imported records is a prudent implementation choice, not a documented guarantee of complete update delivery.
How do I find all bills for a Congress and get vote data?
Use GovInfo’s Congressional Bills bulk collection to obtain bill records for the Congresses it lists, then use the separate status collection when your application needs status information. Congress.gov’s API includes bill list, detail, actions, and amendments routes. The cited documentation does not establish a complete vote-data migration path equivalent to GovTrack, so verify that your required vote records are available from an official source before treating the migration as complete.
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What to test before switching over
- Historical coverage for each data type your app consumes; bill text, status, and summaries have different documented start points.
- Whether the source exposes the exact identifiers, sponsor/cosponsor information, action history, text versions, or derived fields your app depends on.
- How your importer handles revised files, newly added packages, missing optional fields, and API limits or errors relevant to your implementation.
- Whether update notifications and periodic reconciliation detect changes your workflow needs to capture.
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