Federal Award Monitor — who won what, daily (USAspending.gov)

Get a daily feed of only the new or modified federal awards that match your watchlist — contracts, grants, loans and IDVs from USAspending.gov, filtered by recipient, awarding agency, NAICS, PSC code and keyword. The monitor remembers every award it has already reported, so a scheduled run emits just the delta (marked new or updated when the obligated amount changed), posts a summary to your webhook, and costs you only for what actually changed. No API key, no login.

SAM.gov tells you what is being solicited. This tells you who won it — the other half of a capture, competitive-intelligence or subcontracting workflow.

Use cases

• Competitor watch — recipients: ["Booz Allen", "Leidos", "SAIC"]: every new task order or modification they receive, with agency, NAICS, PSC, amount and period of performance.
• Subcontracting leads — naicsCodes: ["236220"], agencies: ["Department of Veterans Affairs"]: primes that just won construction work in your lane, with their UEI and location so you can reach out.
• Agency account intelligence — agencies: ["Department of Homeland Security"], pscCodes: ["D"]: all new IT-services awards at DHS, who got them and through which parent IDV.
• Grant tracking — awardTypes: ["grants"], keywords: ["opioid"]: new project grants and cooperative agreements by topic, with the CFDA / assistance-listing number.
• Sales-team alerts — point webhookUrl at Slack, Zapier or Make and ship a morning "new awards" digest.

How it works

1. Queries USAspending's award search for awards with a transaction (new award or modification) dated within the last lookbackDays, one query per watch item and award-type group, newest-modified first.
2. Compares each award against the monitor's saved state (generatedInternalId → award amount).
3. Emits a record when the award is unseen (changeType: "new") or its obligated amount changed (changeType: "updated", with previousAmount), optionally enriched from the award detail record (recipient UEI and location, total obligation, period of performance, parent IDV, funding agency).
4. Saves the updated state, then POSTs a run summary to webhookUrl if set.

State lives in a named key-value store award-monitor-<hash of monitorId> in your Apify account, capped at 50,000 awards (oldest recorded are dropped). Delete the store to reset a monitor.

Watch items vs. global filters

recipients, naicsCodes, pscCodes and keywords are watch items: each entry is queried on its own and a match is tagged with matchedFilter (recipient:Lockheed, naics:541512, psc:D, keyword:radar). An award matching several watch items is emitted once, under the first one that found it.

agencies, awardTypes, minAmount and lookbackDays are global and apply to every watch item. With no watch items the monitor emits everything that passes the global filters (matchedFilter: "agency:…" or "all").

Input

Field	Default	Notes
recipients	[]	Partial recipient names (USAspending recipient search). "Lockheed" also matches Sikorsky, a Lockheed subsidiary
agencies	["Department of Defense"]	Top-tier awarding agency names or abbreviations (DOD, VA, GSA, HHS, DHS, NASA, DOE, DOT). Resolved against USAspending's agency list; "Veterans" → Department of Veterans Affairs. Empty = all agencies
naicsCodes	[]	2–6 digit NAICS, prefixes allowed (54 = all professional services)
pscCodes	[]	Product/Service Codes, prefixes allowed (D = IT services, R4 = professional support, 70 = IT equipment)
keywords	[]	Terms matched in the award description
awardTypes	["contracts"]	Group names or raw codes, see below
minAmount	0	Skip awards obligated below this amount
lookbackDays	7	Awards with a transaction dated within N days
includeDetails	true	One extra request per emitted award for UEI, location, obligation, PoP, parent IDV
maxNewPerFilter	10	Cap per watch item and award group; the rest stays unseen for the next run
maxItems	10	Overall cap per run
firstRunMode	emitAll	emitAll reports every current match on the first run; baseline records them silently
webhookUrl	""	Optional POST target for the run summary
monitorId	default	One state store per ID — run several watchlists side by side

Award type codes

USAspending only allows one group per query; the monitor runs each requested group separately.

Group	Codes
contracts	A BPA call · B purchase order · C delivery order · D definitive contract
grants	02 block grant · 03 formula grant · 04 project grant · 05 cooperative agreement
loans	07 direct loan · 08 guaranteed / insured loan
idvs	IDV_A GWAC · IDV_B IDC (multi-agency / other) · IDV_B_A requirements · IDV_B_B IDIQ · IDV_B_C definite quantity · IDV_C FSS · IDV_D BOA · IDV_E BPA

Reporting lag

Agencies report to USAspending after the fact. Civilian agencies usually appear within a few days to 30 days; the Department of Defense delays contract data by about 90 days, so a 7-day DoD window shows only a trickle (mostly modifications). For DoD watchlists use lookbackDays: 30–120; the seen-state keeps the feed free of duplicates regardless of how wide the window is.

Recommended setup for a daily feed

1. Create a task with your filters and set monitorId to something meaningful (competitors-it).
2. First run: set firstRunMode to baseline and lookbackDays to 90. This records everything currently matching, emits nothing, and stops your first day from being a 2,000-row backlog.
3. Switch firstRunMode back to emitAll (it only matters when the state is empty anyway), keep lookbackDays wide (30 civilian, 120 DoD) and raise maxNewPerFilter / maxItems to 200+.
4. Schedule the task daily. USAspending loads new agency submissions overnight (US time), so a run at 06:00–08:00 America/New_York catches the previous day's load.
5. Point webhookUrl at Slack (incoming webhook), Zapier, Make, or your own endpoint.

The default settings ({}) run in emitAll mode on Department of Defense contracts so you see real output on the first try.

Example: competitor and NAICS watch for an IT services firm

{
  "recipients": ["Booz Allen", "Leidos", "Guidehouse"],
  "naicsCodes": ["541512", "541519"],
  "pscCodes": ["D"],
  "agencies": ["HHS", "VA", "DHS"],
  "awardTypes": ["contracts", "idvs"],
  "minAmount": 250000,
  "lookbackDays": 30,
  "maxNewPerFilter": 100,
  "maxItems": 500,
  "firstRunMode": "baseline",
  "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/XXX/YYY/ZZZ",
  "monitorId": "it-competitors-civilian"
}

Other quick profiles:

• Construction subcontracting in one agency: naicsCodes: ["236220", "237310"], agencies: ["Department of Veterans Affairs", "General Services Administration"]
• Research grants by topic: awardTypes: ["grants"], keywords: ["quantum", "photonics"], agencies: []
• New IDIQ vehicles government-wide: awardTypes: ["idvs"], agencies: [], minAmount: 10000000

Output

One record per new or modified award:

{
  "awardId": "N0002424F8580",
  "piid": "N0002424F8580",
  "fain": null,
  "generatedInternalId": "CONT_AWD_N0002424F8580_9700_N0002417D6421_9700",
  "awardCategory": "contracts",
  "awardType": "DELIVERY ORDER",
  "recipientName": "UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN",
  "recipientUei": "MG1PPMPNS9G3",
  "recipientLocation": { "city": "AUSTIN", "state": "TX", "zip": "78758", "country": "UNITED STATES" },
  "awardAmount": 146250,
  "totalObligation": 146250,
  "description": "TIME FREQUENCY ENHANCEMENT OF GNSS MONITOR STATIONS",
  "naicsCode": "541712",
  "naicsDescription": "RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE PHYSICAL, ENGINEERING, AND LIFE SCIENCES (EXCEPT BIOTECHNOLOGY)",
  "pscCode": "AC32",
  "pscDescription": "NATIONAL DEFENSE R&D SERVICES; DEFENSE-RELATED ACTIVITIES; APPLIED RESEARCH",
  "cfdaNumber": null,
  "awardingAgency": "Department of Defense",
  "awardingSubAgency": "Department of the Navy",
  "fundingAgency": "Department of Transportation",
  "fundingSubAgency": "Immediate Office of the Secretary of Transportation",
  "dateSigned": "2024-09-12",
  "startDate": "2024-09-12",
  "endDate": "2027-09-30",
  "periodOfPerformanceEnd": "2027-09-30",
  "lastModifiedDate": "2026-09-25 14:33:49",
  "placeOfPerformanceState": "TX",
  "placeOfPerformanceCity": "AUSTIN",
  "parentAwardId": "N0002417D6421",
  "usaspendingUrl": "https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_N0002424F8580_9700_N0002417D6421_9700",
  "matchedFilter": "agency:Department of Defense",
  "changeType": "new",
  "previousAmount": null,
  "firstSeenAt": "2026-09-28T21:47:59.037Z",
  "monitorId": "default"
}

awardId is the PIID for contracts and IDVs and the FAIN for grants and loans. awardAmount is the obligated amount (loan value for loans). firstSeenAt is set on new records; updated records carry previousAmount instead. Grants and loans have no NAICS/PSC but carry cfdaNumber. With includeDetails: false the detail-only fields (recipientUei, recipientLocation, totalObligation, dateSigned, periodOfPerformanceEnd, placeOfPerformanceCity, parentAwardId) are null.

Webhook payload

POSTed once per run as application/json, also saved as the SUMMARY record in the run's key-value store:

{
  "monitorId": "it-competitors-civilian",
  "runAt": "2026-09-29T11:00:03.118Z",
  "newCount": 7,
  "updatedCount": 2,
  "scanned": 412,
  "seenTotal": 1830,
  "baseline": false,
  "awards": [ { "...first 50 records, same shape as the dataset..." } ]
}

The full list is always in the run's dataset; use the Apify API or an integration to pull it if a run produces more than 50.

Pricing

Pay per event: a small start fee plus a per-award fee only for records emitted. A daily monitor that finds nothing new costs just the start fee.

Notes

• A watch item scans at most 3,000 awards per group per run (newest-modified first). Narrow the filters or shorten the lookback if a profile exceeds that.
• Agency names must be top-tier departments; sub-agencies (Navy, NIH, FEMA) are not accepted as filters but appear in awardingSubAgency on every record.
• Recipient search is USAspending's own name search, so it also returns subsidiaries and DBAs.
• Data comes from USAspending.gov's public API and is limited to transactions since FY2008.