Where to Find Awarded Government Contracts: SAM.gov, USAspending, FOIA

To find out who won a federal contract and how much it was worth, use two free government databases: SAM.gov for the procurement record (solicitation, award, contractor details) and USAspending.gov for the money side (obligations, outlays, recipient totals). Between them you can search by contractor name, agency, industry, product or service, location, and dollar amount. A few other resources fill specific gaps: the GSA eLibrary for schedule contracts, SAM.gov’s subaward tools for work that flows down from prime contractors, and FOIA requests when you need the actual contract document.

The Two Main Databases and What Each Covers

SAM.gov is the central hub for federal procurement. It holds contract opportunities, award records, subcontract reports, and entity registration data in one place. When an agency awards a contract, the winning contractor, dollar value, period of performance, and competition type get reported there. As of February 2026, SAM.gov also absorbed the search functions previously housed in the Federal Procurement Data System, so it is now the single portal for both pre-award and post-award contract data.¹²

USAspending.gov tracks the financial side. While SAM.gov follows the procurement trail from solicitation through award, USAspending.gov shows how money moves from the federal treasury to the recipient. You can search by recipient, agency, location, fiscal year, industry, or product code, and pull bulk data through CSV downloads or a public API.³

If you run into older guides pointing to FPDS.gov or its ezSearch tool, redirect to SAM.gov. FPDS reporting moved in October 2020 and ezSearch was decommissioned on February 24, 2026.²

Both platforms exist because the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act requires agencies to publicly report federal awards above $25,000, including recipient name, award amount, transaction type, and funding agency.⁴

What to Gather Before You Search

A few identifiers cut search time dramatically.

NAICS codes classify businesses by industry with a six-digit number. If you want every awarded contract in a particular sector, the NAICS code narrows results to that industry. Look up the right code on the Census Bureau’s NAICS page by entering a keyword.⁵

Product Service Codes (PSCs) describe what the government actually bought, whether that’s IT equipment, janitorial services, or aircraft parts. NAICS identifies the seller’s industry; PSC identifies what was purchased. The full list is in the PSC manual on Acquisition.gov.⁶

Unique Entity ID (UEI) is the 12-character alphanumeric identifier assigned to every entity registered in SAM.gov. Searching by UEI pulls up every contract associated with that entity. UEI replaced the older DUNS number in April 2022.⁷

Set-Aside Filters

Many federal contracts are reserved for specific categories of small businesses. If you’re researching how much work goes to a particular socioeconomic group, or scoping out competitors in your lane, filtering by set-aside type is essential. The main categories under the Federal Acquisition Regulation include:

Small Business Set-Aside — acquisitions above the micro-purchase threshold but at or below the simplified acquisition threshold are generally set aside for small businesses unless the contracting officer documents a reason otherwise.
8(a) Business Development — contracts awarded to firms in the SBA’s 8(a) program, competitively or as sole-source.
HUBZone — reserved for small businesses in Historically Underutilized Business Zones.
Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB).
Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB), including economically disadvantaged WOSB.

There is no order of precedence among these programs; the contracting officer decides which set-aside applies to a given acquisition. SAM.gov lets you filter award results by set-aside type.⁸

Searching Contract Awards on SAM.gov

Start at sam.gov/contracting. Select “Contracting” as the domain, then choose “Contract Awards” from the dropdown to filter out solicitations and other record types.¹

Enter your criteria: contractor name, NAICS code, PSC, awarding agency, or keywords tied to the scope of work. Results sort by award date or dollar value. Each record links to the detailed contract action, showing competition type, period of performance, and funding breakdown.

For larger projects, the SAM.gov Data Bank lets you download or report across broader datasets, and public APIs at open.gsa.gov support automated analysis or dashboards.¹

Watch the status field. Active records represent ongoing contracts; closed records have completed their administrative lifecycle. Closed records give you the complete picture of total spending on that contract.

Searching Contract Awards on USAspending.gov

USAspending.gov’s Award Search covers contracts, grants, loans, and other award types with filters for location, fiscal year, NAICS, and PSC.³

A few search paths worth knowing:

Spending by location — use the Place of Performance filter to find contracts awarded in a specific city, state, or congressional district.
Spending by industry — filter by NAICS code to see total contract dollars flowing to a sector.
Spending by product or service — PSC filters for specific items, from medical supplies to aircraft maintenance.
Recipient profiles — browse individual companies or organizations to see every federal award they’ve received.

For bulk analysis, USAspending provides downloadable CSVs and a public API with endpoints for award-level data, spending breakdowns, and transaction-level searches. The bulk download endpoint can generate a zip of all contract data matching a search.⁹

GSA Schedule Contracts

Not all government contracts go through traditional competitive bidding. The General Services Administration maintains Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contracts, which are long-term, pre-negotiated agreements that let agencies buy from approved vendors at set prices. To see who holds these schedule contracts and what they charge, use the GSA eLibrary.

At gsaelibrary.gsa.gov, search by keyword, contract number, contractor name, schedule number, or NAICS. The Contractor Directory gives an alphabetical listing; the Category Guide organizes offerings by functional area such as Professional Services or Information Technology. Each listing links to the contractor’s terms, conditions, and pricelist, which typically includes approved labor rates and catalog pricing.¹⁰

For product-based contracts, GSA Advantage shows the specific items available for ordering. For services, the pricelist shows hourly rates by labor category. This level of pricing transparency is unusual in government contracting; most competitively awarded contracts don’t publish pricing in the same searchable form.

Subcontract and Subaward Records

Prime contracts only tell part of the story. Large contractors frequently subcontract portions of the work to smaller firms, and that spending is reported too. After FSRS.gov was retired in March 2025, all subaward and subcontract reporting migrated to SAM.gov.¹¹

On SAM.gov, subaward reports and subcontract reports are separate search domains on the contracting page. Prime recipients must report subawards of $30,000 or more, so there is a reporting floor below which subcontracting activity won’t show up.¹²

For large data needs, SAM.gov offers public subaward and subcontract APIs. These help when you’re tracking how work flows from major primes down to the small businesses performing it, a common question for firms scouting teaming partners.¹¹

State and Local Contracts

The federal databases above do not cover state or local awards. Each state typically centralizes contract awards through a procurement office or Department of General Services portal, and many municipalities publish vendor payment data on open data websites. There’s no single national database, so you have to visit the specific jurisdiction’s site.

Terminology also shifts. What the federal system calls a “contract award” may appear as a “Notice of Intent to Award” or a “purchase order” locally. Depth varies too: some states publish full contract documents, others only summaries. Look for the procurement or comptroller division of the government entity that issued the contract.

Getting the Full Contract Document Through FOIA

SAM.gov and USAspending.gov give you award summaries. If you need the actual contract with its terms, performance requirements, and pricing, you may need to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the awarding agency.

Submit a written description to the agency’s FOIA officer identifying the contract as specifically as possible; the contract number and award date are the most useful identifiers. Federal law requires agencies to respond within 20 business days, though complex requests often take longer.¹³

Fees depend on requester type and volume. Agencies charge for search time based on the hourly salary of the personnel searching, duplication at typically $0.15 per page for paper copies, and in some cases review time. Many agencies waive fees below $25. A short contract might cost nothing; a multi-volume procurement file can run into the hundreds of dollars.

What You Can and Cannot Get

FOIA does not guarantee a complete, unredacted contract. Exemption 4 protects “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential,” and agencies routinely invoke it to withhold or redact proprietary data.¹³

In practice, contractor proposals are often withheld entirely unless they were incorporated into the final contract document. Even when the contract itself is released, agencies frequently redact line-item pricing and other commercially sensitive information. Before releasing documents, the agency will typically ask the contractor to identify proprietary information, and if the contractor makes a credible case that disclosure would cause competitive harm, those sections get blacked out.¹⁴

Other exemptions can apply as well. The contract’s statement of work and basic terms usually survive redaction, but don’t count on getting a competitor’s detailed pricing strategy through FOIA. State-level public records acts provide similar mechanisms for state contracts, with initial response deadlines typically ranging from 5 to 10 business days.¹⁵

Checking Whether an Award Was Protested

When a losing bidder challenges a contract award, the protest and its outcome become public record. The Government Accountability Office maintains a searchable docket of bid protest decisions and active cases through its Bid Protests section.¹⁶

Protests must be filed within 10 days after the basis of the protest becomes known. For procurements where a debriefing is required and requested, the clock starts 10 days after the debriefing. Cases filed since May 2018 go through the GAO’s Electronic Protest Docketing System and appear in the same public docket.¹⁷

Protest decisions are worth reading even if you aren’t a party to the case. Sustained protests reveal where an agency made a procurement error, which can signal a re-compete or new solicitation on the horizon. Denied protests often include detailed analysis of the evaluation criteria, giving you a window into how agencies actually score proposals in that subject area.

1
SAM.gov. Contracting
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SAM.gov. Contract Award Data in SAM.gov
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USAspending.gov. USAspending.gov
4
Environmental Protection Agency. Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act
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United States Census Bureau. NAICS Codes and Understanding Industry Classification Systems
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Acquisition.GOV. Product and Service Code Manual
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eCFR. 2 CFR Part 25 – Unique Entity Identifier and System for Award Management
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Acquisition.GOV. FAR Part 19 – Small Business Programs
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USAspending.gov. API Endpoints – USAspending API
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GSA eLibrary. GSA eLibrary
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SAM.gov. Subaward Reporting in SAM
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Requirements for Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 552 – Public Information; Agency Rules, Opinions, Orders, Records, and Proceedings
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Information for Prospective Requesters Seeking Contract Documents
15
U.S. Geological Survey. Does the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Cover Contract-Related Requests
16
U.S. GAO. Bid Protests
17
eCFR. 4 CFR 21.2 – Time for Filing