How to find government contracts to bid on
Federal contract opportunities are posted publicly on SAM.gov, and registering there is free. These five steps take a small business from nothing to a response. Updated ; 10,752 federal opportunities were open at that read.
Register your business in SAM.gov
Registration in the System for Award Management is free and gives your business its Unique Entity ID (UEI). It must be renewed every year. Start at sam.gov; nobody needs to be paid to do it for you.
Find your NAICS codes
Each notice names a NAICS code for the work it buys. Look yours up at the US Census Bureau (census.gov/naics) and list them in your SAM.gov registration. Our NAICS pages show how many notices are open under each code.
Check whether you qualify for a set-aside
Some notices are set aside for small businesses, 8(a), HUBZone, women-owned or service-disabled veteran-owned firms. The rules and certification are on sba.gov. Our set-aside pages list the open ones.
Search the open opportunities by what you do
Search SAM.gov Contract Opportunities directly, or search Bid Watch US by trade and state; this week's counts by trade are in this table. Read the full notice, its attachments and amendments, and note the response date and time zone.
Respond through the official notice on SAM.gov
Every response goes to the contracting office named in the notice, by the method and deadline it states. Ask questions only through the contacts the notice gives. A free weekly email of new notices for your trade helps you catch the next one.
Sources: sam.gov, census.gov/naics, sba.gov/federal-contracting. Bid Watch US never sells SAM.gov registration and never asks for payment to bid.
Bid Watch US is run by Bikoosh, an independent tracker, not affiliated with SAM.gov or the US government.