Federal Contractor Search API

Who this page is for: developers building procurement tools, BD/sales platforms, RFP-matching systems, market research dashboards, or any product that needs to identify federal contractors by business attributes. Compliance teams building automated supplier discovery workflows.

What this page is NOT: a replacement for SBA's certification-validation services. We expose what SAM publishes (mostly self-certified flags). For SBA-certified-program confirmation (8(a), HUBZone, SBA-certified WOSB), see data caveats.

Five filter parameters, combinable. At least one must be provided.

• q=<name>: case-insensitive name substring (2-100 chars). Trigram-indexed for fuzzy matches. Available on Developer tier; everything below requires Pro Bundle.
• naics=<code>: 6-digit NAICS code (no Y/N suffix). Matches both the entity's primary NAICS and any of its claimed secondary NAICS.
• state=<XX>: 2-letter US state code. Matches the entity's registered physical state.
• business_type=<code>: 2-3 char SAM business-type code (e.g. 8W WOSB, QF SDVOSB, 27 Self-Cert SDB, A8 Non-Profit). 76 valid codes; unknown codes return 400.
• active_only=true: restrict to currently-active SAM registrations.

Pagination via limit (1-100, default 20) and offset (≥0, default 0). The response includes pagination.total for the full match count.

Real queries, real result counts (sourced from a recent prod sweep).

GET /api/v1/entities/search?state=CA&business_type=8W&active_only=true

GET /api/v1/entities/search?naics=541330&active_only=true

GET /api/v1/entities/search?state=TX&business_type=QF&active_only=true

GET /api/v1/entities/search?state=NJ&business_type=8E&active_only=true

GET /api/v1/entities/search?state=MD&business_type=27&active_only=true

GET /api/v1/entities/search?q=BOEING&limit=5

Each match is the short form (uei, legal_business_name, dba_name, registration_status, registration_expiration_date, primary_naics, business_types, business_types_labels, physical_city/state/country). Pagination metadata at the top.

{
  "query": {
    "q": null, "naics": "541330",
    "state": "CA", "business_type": "8W",
    "active_only": true
  },
  "pagination": {
    "limit": 20, "offset": 0,
    "total": 487, "has_next": true
  },
  "results": [
    {
      "uei": "...",
      "legal_business_name": "ACME ENGINEERING LLC",
      "dba_name": null,
      "registration_status": "A",
      "registration_expiration_date": "2026-08-12",
      "primary_naics": "541330",
      "business_types": ["27", "2X", "8W", "A2", "LJ"],
      "business_types_labels": [
        "Self Certified Small Disadvantaged Business",
        "For Profit Organization",
        "Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB)",
        "Woman-Owned Business",
        "Limited Liability Company"
      ],
      "physical_city": "OAKLAND",
      "physical_state": "CA",
      "physical_country": "USA"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

For a full record (CAGE codes, full address, NAICS list, PSC, source date), call /api/v1/entities/{uei} on the UEI from each result.

If your use case is one-off lookup of a known firm, sam.gov works fine. If you need filtered lists in your code, this endpoint trades $39/mo for the work of integrating against SAM's official API or scraping DSBS.

• /api/v1/entities/{uei} (Developer): full entity record for any UEI returned in a search result.
• /api/v1/entities/by-cage/{cage} (Developer): same lookup keyed by CAGE for legacy DoD systems.
• /api/v1/companies/{uei} (Pro Bundle): adds award history aggregations to the entity profile.
• /api/v1/entities/expiring (Pro Bundle): same filters, scoped to registrations expiring within N days.
• /api/v1/exclusions/search?uei={uei} (Developer): debarment check on UEIs from search results.
• /api/v1/vendor-risk/bulk (Pro Bundle): batch up to 100 UEIs from search results for risk screening.

The multi-filter mode (NAICS, state, business_type, active_only) is on the Pro Bundle ($39/mo). Name-only search (q=) is available on the Developer tier ($19/mo) for use cases like autocomplete and known-name lookup.

• Developer ($19/mo): q name search, plus single-UEI and single-CAGE lookups, exclusions search, awards search, opportunities. 1,000 requests/hour.
• Pro Bundle ($39/mo): everything Developer has, plus this multi-filter search, registration-expiration radar, entity + awards merge on /companies/{uei}, seven-signal vendor-risk screening.

No annual contracts, no setup fees, monthly billing via Stripe. Cancel anytime.

Is the result list deterministic?

Yes. Sort is alphabetical by legal_business_name. Pagination via offset is stable as long as the underlying data doesn't change between calls. Polling the same query multiple times within the same data snapshot returns the same results.

Why do I get an error when I pass business_type=ZZ?

To prevent silent empty-result confusion. Unknown business-type codes return 400 with a pointer to the valid-code list. The 76 valid codes are documented in our OpenAPI spec.

Does NAICS match the entity's "primary" NAICS or any NAICS they claim?

Both. We match the entity's primary_naics field AND any matching code in their declared naics_codes[] array. The Y/N/E suffix variants (SAM's per-NAICS small-business eligibility flag) are all matched.

Can I get the awards or NAICS-spread for each search result?

Not in this response (would explode the payload size). Get UEIs from search, then call /api/v1/companies/{uei} per UEI for award aggregations. Pro Bundle covers both endpoints.

What's the rate limit for paginated bulk export?

1,000 requests/hour per API key (60/min per IP burst). At limit=100, that's 100K records/hour theoretical maximum. For larger one-time exports, contact us; we can offer flat-rate bulk dumps.

Does the search support fuzzy NAICS (e.g. "all 5413xx" engineering)?

Not currently. Pass exact 6-digit NAICS codes. If you want NAICS-prefix wildcards or hierarchical roll-ups (3-digit, 4-digit, 5-digit), let us know; it's a tractable addition if usage warrants it.

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