How to Research a Federal Contractor

A federal contractor is a company (or individual) that holds an active contract with a US federal agency. They're registered in SAM.gov, they have a 12-character UEI (Unique Entity Identifier), and they've won at least one solicitation posted through the federal acquisition process.

Three subtle distinctions matter:

• Registered vs active. SAM.gov has roughly 600,000 registered entities. Only a fraction of those actively win contracts in any given year. "Federal contractor" in practice means "has won recent work," not just "is registered."
• Prime vs sub. Prime contractors hold the direct contract with the government. Subcontractors work for the prime. SAM.gov award notices cover primes only. Subcontractor relationships are visible in USASpending's sub-award data, which comes from FSRS reporting with a time lag.
• The individual case. Sole proprietors and 1099 consultants can register as entities too. In the data they look identical to small companies.

Four authoritative public sources. Knowing which to use for what saves hours.

Rule of thumb. If the question is "what's happening right now?", use SAM.gov. If the question is "what happened historically?", use USASpending. If you need programmatic access at speed, use an API (ours or USASpending's).

This question has no direct answer in any public tool. "Competitor" requires joining two inferences: shared NAICS codes (similar type of work) and shared agencies (similar customers).

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  "https://govconapi.com/api/v1/companies/XX2WFHJEFB45/peers?limit=10"

{
  "uei": "XX2WFHJEFB45",
  "target": {"naics_count": 12, "agency_count": 7},
  "count": 10,
  "peers": [
    {
      "uei": "H11HD5VHGHN3",
      "name": "LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION",
      "total_awards": 16,
      "total_value": 26800000.0,
      "naics_overlap": 6,
      "agency_overlap": 1,
      "similarity_score": 19
    },
    ...
  ]
}

This is a workflow, not a single query. The trick is matching the new solicitation to a prior award by scope, agency, and contract vehicle.

1. Read the new solicitation. Note: contracting office, NAICS, PSC, solicitation number (sometimes echoes the prior number with a suffix like R6, R7), description keywords.
2. On USASpending, search awards from the same contracting office with the same NAICS in the expected prior-period (typically 4-5 years earlier, matching the original period of performance).
3. Narrow by description keywords. Sort by award amount if you expect a large award.
4. The top result is almost always the incumbent. Verify by checking their recent activity: a live contractor will still be winning similar work; a dormant one has likely exited the space.

With our API, steps 2-4 compress into filtered calls against /api/v1/awards/search, but the workflow is the same.

The answer requires cross-referencing four things:

1. Actual revenue. Total value of contracts they've won, verified against public records (not their pitch deck). USASpending or our awards endpoint gives this directly.
2. Pipeline health. Are they winning now, or did their wins dry up a year ago? Compare last-12-months awards to last-90-days awards. A 4x drop in quarterly rate is a red flag.
3. Customer concentration. If one agency is more than 70% of their revenue, they're fragile. That agency's contracting officer changing, or the program ending, tanks them.
4. Exclusions / debarments. Check sam.gov/exclusions or our /api/v1/exclusions/search. If the principals appear on any exclusion list, that's a deal-killer.

None of this requires paid tools. USASpending plus SAM.gov exclusions is enough for thorough DD; our API just collapses the cross-reference into one call.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  "https://govconapi.com/api/v1/companies/XX2WFHJEFB45"

{
  "uei": "XX2WFHJEFB45",
  "name": "KAMPI COMPONENTS CO INC",
  "primary_city": "BROOKLYN",
  "primary_state": "NY",
  "total_awards": 842,
  "total_value": 223500000.0,
  "avg_value": 265440.0,
  "first_award_date": "2024-11-04",
  "last_award_date": "2026-04-18",
  "awards_last_90d": 47,
  "awards_last_12mo": 312,
  "top_naics": [
    {"naics": "332710", "awards": 198, "value": 52400000.0},
    {"naics": "332999", "awards": 112, "value": 31100000.0},
    ...
  ],
  "top_agencies": [
    {"agency": "DEPT OF DEFENSE", "awards": 601, "value": 168200000.0},
    {"agency": "DEPT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS", "awards": 84, "value": 19400000.0},
    ...
  ]
}

SAM.gov has a "Follow" button for notices but not for entities. You can't subscribe to "every award Company X wins." You have to build it.

Simple cron pattern that works against any API:

import requests, json
from pathlib import Path

COMPETITORS = ["UEI_A", "UEI_B", "UEI_C"]
STATE_FILE = Path("state.json")
state = json.loads(STATE_FILE.read_text()) if STATE_FILE.exists() else {}

for uei in COMPETITORS:
    # Using our API; same pattern works with USASpending's spending_by_award
    r = requests.get(
        f"https://govconapi.com/api/v1/companies/{uei}/awards",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"},
        params={"limit": 20, "sort": "date"},
    )
    awards = r.json().get("data", [])
    since = state.get(uei, "2000-01-01")
    new_wins = [a for a in awards if a["award_date"] and a["award_date"] > since]
    if new_wins:
        notify(uei, new_wins)
        state[uei] = max(a["award_date"] for a in new_wins)

STATE_FILE.write_text(json.dumps(state))

Run daily on any free server. Swap the URL for USASpending if you prefer the free path; the logic is identical.

USASpending is the authoritative free source for historical federal contract data. Non-obvious things to know before you burn a day on it:

• POST-based. Every search is a POST with a JSON filter body. No GET shortcuts.
• Field naming is inconsistent. Search endpoints want "Award ID", "Recipient Name", "Recipient UEI" (capitalized, spaced) in the fields array. Response keys echo that. Other endpoints use recipient_id, uei, etc. in lowercase snake_case. Read the example response before guessing.
• Sort is required. spending_by_award demands a sort field and order ("asc"/"desc"). Missing them returns a 400 with a list of allowed sort values.
• spending_by_award returns hollow data. NAICS, PIID, total obligation, date signed, award type, solicitation identifier all come back NULL from this endpoint. Known API limitation, not a script bug. For the real fields, fetch each award by ID from /awards/{generated_internal_id}/.
• Pagination. page (1-indexed) + limit, not offset. Max 100 per page.
• Award type codes. "A","B","C","D" = contracts. "02","03","04","05" = grants. Filter with award_type_codes.
• Recipient resolution. recipient_id is USASpending's hashed identifier (example: d41a6b8a-9d6a-0d28-7e24-989e31731aad-C), not UEI. Look up a recipient profile by UEI via /api/v2/recipient/.
• Data lag. 2-4 weeks behind SAM.gov. Data path is SAM.gov -> FPDS -> USASpending. For anything newer, use SAM.gov directly.
• Coverage. Includes contract recipients that never appear in SAM.gov Award Notices (different reporting path). Measured against our SAM dataset (April 2026): 22,949 contractors exist in USASpending but not in SAM award notices; 4,840 appear in both.

Most useful endpoints for contractor research:

• POST /api/v2/search/spending_by_award/ - award-level list (thin fields; use for pagination)
• GET /api/v2/awards/{generated_internal_id}/ - full award detail (NAICS, PSC, business categories, extent competed, 69 contract fields)
• POST /api/v2/search/spending_by_category/recipient/ - aggregated by recipient (top awardees in a NAICS, agency, etc.)
• POST /api/v2/search/spending_by_category/naics/ - aggregated by NAICS (market sizing)
• POST /api/v2/search/spending_by_transaction/ - transaction-level (unlike spending_by_award, this one actually returns NAICS in the results)
• POST /api/v2/download/awards/ - async bulk export, up to 500,000 records per job, returns a download URL when ready
• GET /api/v2/recipient/{recipient_id}/ - recipient profile

Matching SAM to USASpending. Use award_number (SAM) = piid (USASpending). Do not try to match on solicitation_identifier; it's NULL in spending_by_award results.

Full docs: api.usaspending.gov.

Four endpoints specific to contractor research. See the full API docs for everything else.

Rate limit: 1,000 requests/hour across the whole API (Developer and Pro). Authentication is a Bearer token in the Authorization header.

UEI (Unique Entity Identifier)

The 12-character alphanumeric ID the federal government assigns to every registered contractor. Replaced DUNS in 2022. Shows up as award_uei_sam in SAM data, recipient_uei in USASpending.

CAGE code

Commercial and Government Entity code. 5 characters. Assigned by DLA. Used alongside UEI in contracting. Still relevant for DoD.

DUNS

Legacy Dun & Bradstreet identifier. Deprecated for federal use in 2022. If you see a DUNS in old research, look up the current UEI via SAM.gov.

NAICS code

6-digit industry classification. 541512 = "Computer Systems Design Services", 236220 = "Commercial and Institutional Building Construction", etc. Each federal contract is tagged with one primary NAICS.

PSC (Product Service Code)

Federal-specific classification, more granular than NAICS. 4-character code. Example: D302 = "IT and Telecom - Systems Development". Used heavily in DoD contracting.

Set-aside

Contract restricted to a specific small-business category. SBA = total small business. SDVOSBC = Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business. WOSB = Women-Owned Small Business. 8(a) = Economically Disadvantaged Small Business. HUBZone = Historically Underutilized Business Zone.

Award Notice

The notice type SAM.gov publishes when a contract has been awarded. Our data and HigherGov pull from here. Contains awardee UEI, amount, date, but minimal additional context.

Solicitation number

The procuring agency's ID for a specific solicitation. Not globally unique. Example: FA8620-25-R-0009.

Award number

The specific contract identifier after award. Also not globally unique across agencies. Example: FA8620-25-C-0012.

Prime vs sub

Prime = direct contract holder with the government. Sub = works for the prime. SAM.gov award feeds cover primes only. Sub-award data (from FSRS reporting) is available in USASpending.

How is a federal contractor different from a federal grant recipient?
Contract = the government buys something from you. Grant = the government gives you money to do something (research, services to a population). Different legal frameworks, different data feeds. USASpending covers both; SAM.gov Award Notices are contracts only.

How do I find a contractor's annual revenue?
Federal revenue specifically: sum their awards in USASpending for the fiscal year. Total revenue (including commercial): not public unless they're a public company. ZoomInfo and similar private-sector tools have approximations but they're often wrong.

Why does the same company appear under different names?
Reorgs, acquisitions, abbreviations, capitalization inconsistencies. "LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION" and "Lockheed Martin Corp." and "LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP" may all be the same UEI. UEI is the stable identifier; name variations are noise.

Can I find who bid on a solicitation but lost?
No. Losing bidders are not public. Only the winning award is announced. You can infer likely bidders by looking at who regularly wins similar NAICS + agency combinations.

How do I verify a contractor's small-business status?
SAM.gov entity registration page. Look at their SBA certifications and self-representations. The relevant fields are "SBA Certifications" (8(a), HUBZone, etc.) and "Representations and Certifications." This is self-reported but audited.

Is there a free API that replaces HigherGov?
No single free API covers everything HigherGov does (opportunity tracking plus award history plus document enrichment plus alerting). USASpending replaces the award history piece. SAM.gov replaces the opportunity piece. Document enrichment (OCR, keyword extraction on solicitation PDFs) is where HigherGov genuinely adds value and free alternatives don't exist.

What if I just need to check one or two companies occasionally?
USASpending's web UI is free and fine for occasional manual lookups. Our API makes sense when you're doing this at volume, or when you need peer analysis that isn't available elsewhere.

Can I see subcontracts?
Via USASpending's sub-award search. Subcontractor data comes from FSRS reporting and has quirks (prime contractors self-report; accuracy varies). Our API does not currently include sub-award data.

How fresh is each source?
SAM.gov: real-time for opportunities, usually same-day for award notices. USASpending: 2-4 weeks behind SAM.gov (data flows SAM.gov to FPDS to USASpending). Our API: within 24 hours of SAM.gov publication (hourly ingestion).

Why does a company show up in USASpending but not in SAM award notices (or vice versa)?
Different reporting paths. SAM.gov Award Notices are what contracting officers publish on the opportunity feed. USASpending pulls from FPDS, which captures more contract actions (modifications, task orders under IDIQs, micro-purchases above $10K threshold reporting, etc.) but with a 2-4 week lag. In our April 2026 measurement, 22,949 contractors appear in USASpending without a matching SAM Award Notice, and 6,286 SAM-only contractors have no matching USASpending record (mostly recent, still inside the propagation window). For complete coverage, you need both.

If you want to automate the workflows on this page against our API, the relevant endpoints are listed in the cheatsheet above. Pricing at govconapi.com/#pricing. For everything else, USASpending and SAM.gov will get you there with more effort.

Last updated: April 2026 · API reference · Questions