[11] FiscalNote was founded in 2013 in Sunnyvale, California, by Timothy Hwang, Gerald Yao, and Jonathan Chen, all former schoolmates at Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland.

[12][13] Hwang, who had just finished his junior year at Princeton, brought Chen and Yao together to Silicon Valley to pitch the company to investors.

[17] In June 2017, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser unveiled a major job training program in partnership with FiscalNote.

[19][20][21] In July 2017, FiscalNote announced the availability of data sets for Argentina, Canada, Chile, India, and the United Kingdom.

[22] In 2018 FiscalNote acquired CQ Roll Call, which helped bring stable financial flow with a consistent subscriber base and a competent data set.

[23] By adding CQ Roll Call, FiscalNote gained an entryway into the media world and an opportunity to cover what certain bills may mean to subscribers instead of having to interpret the raw data.

[43] In January 2018, FiscalNote announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos that it had acquired a Brussels-based counterpart called Shungham, giving the company a foothold in the European Union as it seeks to expand globally.

[51] In 2022, FiscalNote acquired Aicel Technology, a South Korean alternative data company that specializes in emerging fintech markets.

[54] FiscalNote's board includes General Stanley A. McChrystal, Glenn Hubbard, Alec Ross (author), former Obama White House cabinet secretary and former Deputy Secretary of Labor Chris Lu, Congressman Mike Ferguson, Congressman Glenn Nye, and former publisher of the Washington Post Katharine Weymouth.

FiscalNote also added Jayson Kim, General Partner of Legendary Ventures, and Mitch Shue, the former Chief Technology Officer of Morningstar, to their advisory board in 2021.

[59][60][61][62] In late 2017, FiscalNote researchers discovered that millions of comments submitted to the FCC during the net neutrality debate were forged using bots.

[72] FiscalNote has also been criticised for putting undue weight on correlations that may not necessarily provide relevant insight as to why a certain bill passed or failed.

Additionally, John Wilkerson, a political science professor at the University of Washington, criticises FiscalNote for placing importance onto whether individual bills move forward, rather the policies behind them.