SAM.gov: How to Find and Win US Government Contracts

SAM.gov is the front door to US federal contracting. Every business that wants to win a federal contract registers there, and federal agencies use it to post the opportunities that are open to the public, from early market research to the final award.

This guide covers what SAM.gov holds, how to get registered without the usual delays, how to search for government contracts that fit your business, how to work through a solicitation, and what a full year of award data says about where federal money goes. If you are comparing tools for the proposal work that follows, our shortlist of GovCon proposal software covers the platforms built for federal contractors.

What is SAM.gov?

SAM.gov, the System for Award Management, is the official US government system for doing business with federal agencies. It is managed by the General Services Administration (GSA). It brings together several systems that used to be separate, and for a contractor the most important parts are:

• Entity registration. Your business record: legal name, address, Unique Entity ID (UEI), NAICS codes, size and the representations and certifications agencies rely on. You need an active registration to receive most federal awards.
• Contract Opportunities. The governmentwide point of entry where agencies post contract notices. It replaced FedBizOpps (FBO.gov), which moved to beta.SAM.gov in November 2019 before beta.SAM.gov became SAM.gov in May 2021.
• Assistance Listings. Descriptions of federal grant and assistance programs, formerly the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA).
• Exclusions. The list of businesses and individuals barred from receiving federal awards.
• Wage determinations. The Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon wage rates that apply to many service and construction contracts.
• Contract award data. Federal contract award records and reports, which moved into SAM.gov from FPDS.gov.

Federal buying is governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), plus agency supplements such as the DFARS for the Department of Defense. Contracting officers follow those rules when they decide how to buy, what to publish, and how to evaluate offers, so knowing the basics helps you read every solicitation that follows. The FAR is also being rewritten through the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, which many agencies already apply through class deviations, so section numbers in a solicitation may not match older guides.

How the federal government buys: FY2025 in numbers

We analyzed federal contract obligations for fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025) using the public USAspending.gov API, which publishes the contract data agencies report to the Federal Procurement Data System. The figures cover every contract action in the year, including orders under existing vehicles, and they agree closely with GAO’s own snapshot of federal contracting for the same year.

The federal market is large and concentrated. The Department of Defense accounts for most contract spending, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services complete the five largest buyers. If you sell to civilian agencies, the field is smaller than the headline suggests, and knowing which agencies buy your category matters more than the total.

Most federal contract dollars are competed, but a meaningful share is not, and many purchases are orders placed under contracts that already exist. Services make up the larger part of what agencies buy. Both points shape strategy: a services firm that only bids on new open solicitations sees part of the market, while one that also positions for the vehicles agencies order from sees more.

How to register your business in SAM.gov

Registration is free, and so is the Unique Entity ID. Plan for it to take time: SAM.gov advises allowing at least ten business days after you submit for a registration to become active, and validation problems add more, so start well before you plan to bid.

1. Create a SAM.gov account. SAM.gov signs you in through Login.gov, so you set up a Login.gov account with your email address and multi-factor authentication first.
2. Get your Unique Entity ID. The UEI is the 12-character identifier SAM.gov assigns to your entity. It replaced the DUNS number in April 2022. You can request a UEI on its own, but to bid on contracts you need a full registration.
3. Gather your details. Have your legal business name and physical address exactly as registered, your Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN or EIN) with the legal name the IRS holds for it, your entity size, and the NAICS codes that describe what you sell.
4. Complete the registration. Enter your core data, assertions (such as NAICS codes), representations and certifications, and points of contact. The representations and certifications cover statements contracting officers would otherwise collect in each offer, including whether you are a small business for each NAICS code you list.
5. Wait for validation. SAM.gov validates your name and address, checks your TIN with the IRS and, for US entities, the Defense Logistics Agency assigns or validates your CAGE code (foreign entities need an NCAGE code first). If either check fails, SAM.gov emails you, so watch your inbox.
6. Renew every 365 days. The UEI never changes, but the registration expires. Put the renewal date in your calendar with a few weeks of lead time.

Common registration blockers

• Name and address mismatches. The legal name and address you enter must match the records SAM.gov validates against. Abbreviations, old addresses and suite numbers are frequent causes of delay.
• TIN mismatches. The TIN and legal name must match the IRS record for your business exactly. A recently formed company may need to wait until its EIN is fully active with the IRS.
• Expired registrations. Letting the registration lapse can make you ineligible for an award at the worst possible moment. Renew early.
• Paid “registration services”. Some companies charge for SAM.gov registration or send official-looking renewal emails. SAM.gov is clear that the government will never ask you to pay to register, update or renew.

If you get stuck, the Federal Service Desk (FSD.gov) handles SAM.gov support, and your local APEX Accelerator offers free help with registration and getting ready to bid.

How to find government contracts on SAM.gov

Searching Contract Opportunities does not require an account. Signing in is what lets you save searches and get notified.

Search with the codes agencies use. Every notice carries a NAICS code (the industry) and a product and service code (PSC, what is being bought). Start with the NAICS codes in your registration, then add the PSCs that describe your work, because agencies do not always code requirements the way you would. Filter further by set-aside type, place of performance, agency and response date.

Know the notice types. Each one tells you where the agency is in its process:

• Sources sought: market research, often framed as a request for information (RFI). The agency is asking who could do the work, often to decide whether to set it aside for small businesses. Responding is how you get on the radar.
• Presolicitation: advance notice that a solicitation is coming, often with an estimated release date.
• Solicitation and combined synopsis/solicitation: the live opportunity, with the request for proposals (RFP) or request for quotes (RFQ) attached.
• Award notice: who won and at what value. Useful for competitive intelligence even when you did not bid.
• Special notice, justification and intent to bundle: industry days, explanations of non-competitive awards, and notices that requirements are being combined.

Save your searches and follow notices. Once you are signed in, save each search so you can rerun it without rebuilding the filters, and SAM.gov sends notifications to the email address on your account. When you find an opportunity you plan to pursue, follow the notice so you hear about amendments and question-and-answer documents, and consider adding your business to its interested vendors list, where other businesses, including potential teaming partners, can see you.

Look beyond SAM.gov for orders. A large share of federal spending flows through existing contracts such as the GSA Multiple Award Schedule and agency IDIQ vehicles, and orders under those are usually competed only among the businesses that already hold the contract. Schedule requests for quotes, for example, are issued through GSA eBuy, which only schedule contract holders can see. Winning a place on the right vehicle can matter as much as winning any single solicitation.

Before you commit a team to an opportunity, run it through a structured bid/no-bid decision. The opportunities you decline give your best people time for the ones you can win.

How to read a federal solicitation and respond

Most negotiated federal solicitations follow the Uniform Contract Format, which splits the document into lettered sections. Two of them decide most of your response:

• Section L, Instructions, conditions, and notices to offerors. How to structure your proposal: volumes, page limits, fonts, file formats and what to include in each part.
• Section M, Evaluation factors for award. How the agency will score you: the evaluation factors, their relative importance, and whether award goes to the best value tradeoff or the lowest price technically acceptable offer.

Section C (the statement of work or performance work statement) describes the work itself, and the clauses in Sections I and K carry the contract terms and the certifications that apply. Commercial item solicitations use a shorter format, but the same discipline applies: find the instructions, find the evaluation criteria, and answer both.

Map every requirement before writing. Pull each instruction from Section L, each evaluation factor from Section M and each requirement from the statement of work into one list with an owner and a page reference. A proposal compliance matrix is the standard way to do this, and it doubles as the checklist your reviewers score against.

Use the question period. The solicitation names a contracting officer or contract specialist and a deadline for questions. Answers often come back as an amendment posted to SAM.gov for every offeror to see, so follow the notice and check for amendments right up to the due date. Each amendment has to be acknowledged in your offer.

Write to Section M. Evaluators score what the evaluation factors ask for, in the order they ask for it. Make each strength easy to find and easy to credit, and back every claim with evidence from past performance. Our step-by-step guide to writing bid responses that win covers structure, evidence and review in more depth.

Submit early. Proposals are due at the exact date, time and method the solicitation states, whether that is an email address, an agency portal or another system. Late proposals are generally not considered, so plan to submit well before the deadline and confirm receipt.

Small business set-asides and certifications

The government sets aside contracts for small businesses, and agencies report against a government-wide goal for the share of prime contract dollars that small businesses receive. Whether you count as small depends on the SBA size standard for the NAICS code of each solicitation, so a business can be small for one opportunity and not for another.

Size standards are one reason to get your NAICS codes right. Professional, scientific and technical services, the sector that covers engineering, IT, consulting and research work, is second only to manufacturing in federal contract obligations, and each code within it has its own size standard.

Beyond general small business set-asides, the SBA runs programs that open further set-aside and sole-source opportunities:

• 8(a) Business Development: for small businesses owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.
• HUBZone: for small businesses located in, and employing people from, historically underutilized business zones.
• Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) and Economically Disadvantaged WOSB (EDWOSB): set-asides in industries where women-owned businesses are underrepresented.
• Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB): certified through SBA’s Veteran Small Business Certification (VetCert) program.

Each program has its own eligibility rules and certification process through SBA’s certification portal. Once you are certified, filter Contract Opportunities by the matching set-aside type so those notices are in your saved searches from the start.

Using award data to plan your pipeline

Award data is the most under-used planning tool in federal contracting. USAspending.gov publishes contract awards with the agency, recipient, value, NAICS code, PSC and period of performance, and SAM.gov now hosts the contract award data that used to live on FPDS.gov. Read together, they tell you:

• Which agencies and offices buy what you sell, and how much they spend on it each year.
• Who the incumbents are, which tells you who you are competing against and who might want a subcontractor.
• When contracts end. A contract whose period of performance ends in 12 to 18 months is a candidate for recompetition. That is the time to talk to the program office and watch for the sources sought notice, long before the solicitation appears.

Agencies also publish procurement forecasts of what they expect to buy, and small business offices hold industry days and one-on-one sessions. Combine forecasts, award data and early notices, and your pipeline fills with opportunities you have seen coming. For converting those opportunities into awards, read our step-by-step guide on how to win a bid, and our look at how AI is changing government bid responses covers the drafting side.

State and local government contracts

SAM.gov covers federal opportunities. State agencies, counties, cities, school districts and transit authorities buy through their own systems, for example:

• California: Cal eProcure
• Texas: Electronic State Business Daily (ESBD)
• New York: New York State Contract Reporter
• Florida: Vendor Bid System (VBS)

Each has its own registration, notification options and rules, and many local governments post bids on their own websites. Our guide to finding RFPs covers how to keep several portals manageable.

Make SAM.gov part of a repeatable capture process

SAM.gov gives every business the same notices. The contractors who win consistently use it the same way every time: they keep their registration current, save searches that match how agencies actually code their work, respond to sources sought notices, track contract end dates, and qualify each opportunity before they write.

The response itself is where that consistency pays off. Many contractors answer commercial RFPs and security questionnaires alongside federal solicitations, and AutoRFP.ai handles that commercial work by drafting each answer from content the team has already approved and showing the source behind it (see our RFP software page). Federal-specific needs such as CUI handling and FAR clause review belong in the GovCon tools from our shortlist.