federal-contracts-mcp

The $800B federal contracting market, searchable in seconds.

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What Is This?

The US federal government awards more than $800 billion in contracts every year across thousands of agencies, programs, and NAICS categories. That data is technically public — posted to USASpending.gov — but querying it directly means wrestling with a complex REST API, navigating opaque filter syntax, paginating through thousands of results, and manually reconciling award data with contractor identifiers. Most BD teams either pay five-figure subscriptions to GovCon databases or skip the research entirely.

This actor wraps USASpending.gov's Award Search API into a clean, filterable interface that returns structured contract award data in seconds. Filter by agency, NAICS code, PSC code, contractor name, award amount range, and fiscal year — then get normalized output with every field your pipeline needs: award ID, recipient name, award amount, awarding agency, NAICS code, and contract start date. No API key required for the underlying source. No data normalization work on your end.

It ships in two modes: Batch mode for one-shot research runs (export to JSON, feed a spreadsheet, trigger a workflow), and MCP server mode for live tool-use inside Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any MCP-compatible AI agent. GovCon analysts, BD directors, and prime contractor business development teams use this to map competitive landscapes, size addressable markets, and build prospect pipelines — without ever leaving their AI assistant.

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Who Uses This

Government Contractor BD Directors You need to know who is winning NAICS 541512 (computer systems design) contracts at DHS before your next proposal. Currently you're either paying $15K/year for Deltek GovWin or manually exporting CSVs from SAM.gov. This actor returns every award in that NAICS at that agency for the last 3 fiscal years in one call — sorted by award amount, with recipient names you can match against your teaming pipeline.

Prime Contractor Competitive Intelligence Teams You need to know which small businesses are winning SBIR awards in your product space so you can evaluate acquisition targets or teaming partners. A single filtered query returns award amounts, recipient names, and start dates for every relevant contract — ready to feed your CRM or a downstream enrichment workflow.

Market Sizing Analysts You're building a TAM model for a federal IT services pitch deck. You need total obligated dollars in NAICS 541511 over the last 5 fiscal years, broken down by agency. This actor returns that data structured and ready to aggregate — no pivot tables, no manual data cleaning.

Grant and Contract Writers at Research Universities You need to understand the funding landscape before writing a proposal — who got awards in your research area, from which agencies, at what funding levels. This actor gives you a peer landscape analysis in under a minute.

Investigative Journalists and Policy Researchers You're tracking contractor concentration in defense spending, or following the money on a specific federal program. Filter by agency + PSC code + fiscal year and get every award in scope, ready for analysis.

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Key Features

Feature	Detail
Data coverage	$800B+/year in federal prime contract awards via USASpending.gov
Filter: Agency	Any federal agency (DOD, DHS, HHS, NASA, VA, etc.)
Filter: NAICS code	6-digit NAICS for industry-specific searches
Filter: PSC code	Product/Service Code for procurement category filtering
Filter: Contractor name	Substring or exact match on recipient name
Filter: Award amount range	Min/max dollar thresholds
Filter: Fiscal year	Single year or multi-year range (FY2015–FY2025)
Output format	Normalized JSON with all required award fields
MCP server mode	Live tool-use in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, any MCP client
Batch mode	One-shot runs exportable to JSON/CSV
Pagination	Handles USASpending pagination automatically
Rate limiting	Built-in retry logic with exponential backoff

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Quick Start

Batch Mode

Input:

{
  "mode": "batch",
  "agency": "Department of Homeland Security",
  "naics_code": "541512",
  "fiscal_year_start": 2022,
  "fiscal_year_end": 2024,
  "award_amount_min": 1000000,
  "award_amount_max": 50000000,
  "max_results": 50
}

Output (truncated to 2 records):

[
  {
    "award_id": "HSHQDC-23-C-00041",
    "recipient_name": "Accenture Federal Services LLC",
    "award_amount": 18450000,
    "awarding_agency": "Department of Homeland Security",
    "naics_code": "541512",
    "psc_code": "D307",
    "start_date": "2023-03-15",
    "period_of_performance_end": "2026-03-14",
    "description": "IT Systems Integration and Modernization Support"
  },
  {
    "award_id": "HSHQDC-22-C-00089",
    "recipient_name": "Leidos Inc.",
    "award_amount": 12800000,
    "awarding_agency": "Department of Homeland Security",
    "naics_code": "541512",
    "psc_code": "D301",
    "start_date": "2022-09-01",
    "period_of_performance_end": "2025-08-31",
    "description": "Cybersecurity Operations Center Support"
  }
]

MCP Server Mode

Add to your Claude Desktop claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "federal-contracts": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "apify-actor-mcp",
        "--actor-id", "your-username/federal-contracts-mcp",
        "--token", "YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Then in Claude: "Search for NAICS 541330 engineering contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers over $5M awarded in FY2024."

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MCP Tools Exposed

search_federal_contracts

Search and filter federal contract awards from USASpending.gov.

{
  "tool": "search_federal_contracts",
  "arguments": {
    "agency": "Department of Defense",
    "naics_code": "541330",
    "fiscal_year_start": 2024,
    "fiscal_year_end": 2024,
    "award_amount_min": 5000000,
    "max_results": 25
  }
}

get_contract_detail

Retrieve full details for a specific award by ID.

{
  "tool": "get_contract_detail",
  "arguments": {
    "award_id": "W912DR-24-C-0012"
  }
}

summarize_agency_spend

Return total obligated dollars and award count for an agency + optional NAICS/PSC filter across a fiscal year range.

{
  "tool": "summarize_agency_spend",
  "arguments": {
    "agency": "Department of Veterans Affairs",
    "naics_code": "621111",
    "fiscal_year_start": 2020,
    "fiscal_year_end": 2024
  }
}

top_contractors

Return the top N contractors by total award amount for a given set of filters.

{
  "tool": "top_contractors",
  "arguments": {
    "agency": "NASA",
    "fiscal_year_start": 2022,
    "fiscal_year_end": 2024,
    "top_n": 10
  }
}

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Input Schema

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	"batch"	"batch" or "mcp"
agency	string	—	Federal agency name (partial match supported)
naics_code	string	—	6-digit NAICS code
psc_code	string	—	Product/Service Code (4-char)
contractor_name	string	—	Recipient name substring search
award_amount_min	number	—	Minimum total obligated amount (USD)
award_amount_max	number	—	Maximum total obligated amount (USD)
fiscal_year_start	integer	—	Start of fiscal year range (e.g. 2020)
fiscal_year_end	integer	—	End of fiscal year range (e.g. 2024)
max_results	integer	100	Maximum records to return (up to 10,000)
sort_by	string	"award_amount"	Sort field: award_amount, start_date, recipient_name
sort_order	string	"desc"	"asc" or "desc"

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Use Case Recipes

Recipe 1: Competitive Landscape for a Proposal

Map every competitor winning NAICS 541511 work at DoD over $2M in the last 2 fiscal years:

{
  "agency": "Department of Defense",
  "naics_code": "541511",
  "fiscal_year_start": 2023,
  "fiscal_year_end": 2024,
  "award_amount_min": 2000000,
  "sort_by": "award_amount",
  "max_results": 200
}

Outcome: Ranked list of recipients with award amounts — tells you who dominates the space and at what contract sizes.

Recipe 2: Expiring Contract Pipeline

Find contracts awarded in FY2022 that are likely entering option year or recompete territory:

{
  "agency": "Department of Homeland Security",
  "fiscal_year_start": 2022,
  "fiscal_year_end": 2022,
  "award_amount_min": 5000000,
  "sort_by": "start_date"
}

Outcome: Contracts now 2+ years old — prime recompete targets for BD pipeline.

Recipe 3: Small Business Market Entry Research

Find all awards under $500K in NAICS 541714 (R&D in biotechnology) at NIH:

{
  "agency": "National Institutes of Health",
  "naics_code": "541714",
  "award_amount_max": 500000,
  "fiscal_year_start": 2022,
  "fiscal_year_end": 2024
}

Outcome: SBIR/STTR and small prime landscape — identify teaming partners or set-aside opportunities.

Recipe 4: TAM Calculation for Federal Vertical

Total obligated spend in facilities management (PSC code S201) across all civilian agencies FY2020–FY2024:

{
  "psc_code": "S201",
  "fiscal_year_start": 2020,
  "fiscal_year_end": 2024,
  "max_results": 5000
}

Outcome: Aggregate this output to get a 5-year TAM with year-over-year trend for an investor deck.

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Connecting to Claude Desktop / Claude Code

Claude Desktop (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS, %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "federal-contracts": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "apify-actor-mcp",
        "--actor-id", "your-username/federal-contracts-mcp",
        "--token", "apify_api_YOURTOKEN"
      ],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

Claude Code (add to project .claude/settings.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "federal-contracts": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["apify-actor-mcp", "--actor-id", "your-username/federal-contracts-mcp", "--token", "apify_api_YOURTOKEN"]
    }
  }
}

Once connected, ask Claude: "Who are the top 10 contractors winning IT services work at the VA in FY2024?" — Claude will call the tool and return structured results in plain language.

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Pricing

Volume	Price
First 1,000 results	$0.50
1,001 – 50,000 results	$0.40/1k
50,000+ results	$0.30/1k
MCP server (per session-hour)	Metered by result count

ROI context: A single GovWin IQ subscription runs $12,000–$20,000/year. A BD analyst spending 4 hours manually pulling USASpending data earns that back at $150/hr in 20 minutes. This actor pays for itself on the first query.

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Data Source and Freshness

• Primary: USASpending.gov Award Search API (v2) — official federal procurement data published by the Department of Treasury
• Update frequency: USASpending.gov updates daily; actor reflects data as of prior business day
• Historical depth: FY2001 to present (awards prior to FY2008 have limited metadata)
• Coverage: All federal prime contract awards over $10,000 (mandatory reporting threshold); includes IDIQs, task orders, grants, and direct awards

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Technical Notes

• No API key required for USASpending.gov — the actor handles all authentication internally
• Large queries (10,000+ records) use cursor-based pagination and may take 30–90 seconds
• NAICS codes should be 6-digit strings (e.g., "541512" not 541512)
• Agency names use USASpending's canonical naming — partial matches are supported but exact matches are faster
• Award amounts reflect total obligated value, not ceiling (IDIQ ceilings are noted separately when available)
• The actor normalizes all currency fields to USD integers

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Support

• Issues: File a GitHub issue on the actor repository
• Apify Community: community.apify.com
• USASpending API docs: api.usaspending.gov
• Enterprise / custom integrations: Contact via Apify actor page