Congressional trading data as an API — comparing pay-per-use vs subscription

Under the STOCK Act, members of the US Congress have to publicly disclose their stock trades. That data is public — but it's locked in PDF filings, and most people never see it because nobody's turned it into something queryable. A few tools do serve this data as structured output. Here's an honest look at the main options and where a pay-per-use API fits versus a subscription. The subscription players Quiver Quantitative has offered congressional trading data since 2020 and is probably the most established name here. Their API access starts around $25–30/month on the Hobbyist tier (billed annually), with higher tiers ($75/month+) unlocking insider trading, lobbying, and other datasets. It's a broad platform — congress trades are one dataset among many (lobbying, government contracts, corporate donors, sentiment, etc.), plus a web dashboard. Unusual Whales covers congressional trading as part of a much larger options-flow and dark-pool platform. Their dashboard starts at $50/month, and standalone API access has historically started around $150/month for the basic tier. It's built for active options traders — congress trading is a small slice of a much bigger toolset (100+ endpoints). Both are solid if you want the full platform: dashboards, alerts, backtesting, a maintained brand you can point a client to. You're paying for breadth and polish, and you're paying it every month whether you pull data once or every day. Where a pay-per-use API fits If congressional trading is all you need — no dashboard, no options flow, no lobbying data — a subscription is a lot of unused surface area. That's the gap I built into: two Apify actors, one for House filings and one for Senate filings, priced per 1,000 results instead of per month. House Congress Trade Tracker — $2.00 / 1,000 results Senate Congress Trade Tracker — $3.00 / 1,000 results No monthly floor. Pull data once for a one-off analysis and pay a few dollars, or schedule it daily and pay for what you actually consume. It runs on Apify, so you get their standard tooling for free: REST API, scheduled runs, webhooks, and client SDKs in whatever language you're already using. Quick comparison Quiver Quantitative Unusual Whales Congress Trade Tracker Pricing model Subscription Subscription Pay-per-result Entry price ~$25–30/mo ~$50/mo (dashboard), ~$150/mo (API) $2–3 per 1k results Scope Congress trades + many other datasets Congress trades + options flow, dark pool, etc. Congress trades only (House + Senate) Dashboard/alerts Yes Yes No — API/data only Best for Ongoing research across multiple datasets Active options traders wanting one platform One-off pulls, small scripts, cost-sensitive automation The honest trade-off This isn't a "cheaper and better" pitch — it's a different shape. Quiver and Unusual Whales give you a dashboard, alerts, and a dozen adjacent datasets you might grow into. If you want a UI to browse in your browser, they're the right pick. If you're a developer who wants one thing — clean, structured House/Senate trading data — without paying for a platform you won't use, a pay-per-result actor is the cheaper path in practically every scenario short of pulling data continuously at high volume. Links: House: apify.com/seralifatih/congress-trading-pipeline-1 Senate: apify.com/seralifatih/congress-trading-pipeline Happy to answer questions on the data format (JSON, STOCK Act PTR fields) in the comments.