Federal Award Intelligence — Who's Winning, USASpending.gov

The Grant/RFP Opportunity Radar (#68) answers "what's open to bid." This answers the question a bidder actually needs before writing a proposal: who is already winning in my NAICS code, and how much?

USASpending.gov is the official federal spending transparency database — every contract award, obligation, and modification. Unlike SAM.gov, it's entirely free and keyless — no registration, no daily quota.

The product is the ranking, not the rows

Raw award data is a chore to read one row at a time. The default output mode aggregates every award by recipient into a who's-winning table — total dollars, award count, and which agencies each company works with. That's the actual competitive-intelligence question a GovCon bidder is asking.

Input

{ "searches": [{ "naicsCode": "541512" }], "outputMode": "competitors" }

Sample output (competitors mode — the default)

{
  "recipient": "BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON INC",
  "totalAmount": 3748504712.97,
  "awardCount": 4,
  "agencies": "Department of Veterans Affairs"
}

Switch to outputMode: "awards" for individual award rows instead of the aggregated ranking.

Typical uses

• Competitive intelligence before bidding — see who's actually winning in your NAICS code before writing a proposal against them.
• Teaming-partner research — identify companies with a strong track record in a specific agency to approach as a subcontractor or prime.
• Market sizing — total dollars awarded in a NAICS code over a period gives a real market-size estimate, not a guess.

Pricing

$3.00 / 1,000 results ($0.003 per row — competitor ranking row or individual award row, depending on outputMode).

⚠️ Read before you act

• daysBack filters by recent activity, not original award date. USASpending's time-period filter includes contract modifications — a decades-old base contract (a large IDIQ, for example) can still appear if it was modified recently. This is correct behavior for tracking who's currently active, not a bug.
• NAICS filtering reflects USASpending's own classification, which can occasionally differ from how a company itself describes its work.
• This is historical/awarded data, not open opportunities — pair with the Grant/RFP Opportunity Radar (#68) for what's still open to bid.

FAQ

• Do I need an API key? No — USASpending.gov's API is completely free and keyless, unlike SAM.gov.
• How far back can I search? Up to 5 years (daysBack up to 1825).
• Can I search by agency instead of NAICS? Yes — add agency to a search entry to filter by awarding agency.

Related actors

• Grant/RFP Opportunity Radar — what's open to bid (SAM.gov), the forward-looking complement to this actor's historical/awarded data.
• Funded-Lab Sales Radar — the same "official public database as competitive intelligence" pattern, for NIH research grants.