US Government Contracts Search

Search US federal awards, federal opportunities, and selected state/local procurement sources in one run.

• ✅ Search 5 US procurement sources with one keyword list
• ✅ Find federal award history, live federal opportunities, and state/local procurement signals in one output
• ✅ Use it without coding, or connect it to ChatGPT, Claude, MCP, Make, Zapier, or n8n
• ✅ Export structured results to Excel, CSV, JSON, XML, or RSS
• ✅ Free $5 Apify credit lets you test real searches before you pay anything

US public procurement data is fragmented. Federal awards live in one system, live opportunities in another, and state/local opportunities are spread across platform portals and local open-data sources. This Actor gives you one search layer across the sources currently wired into the SIP gateway, so you can find buyers, awards, opportunities, and procurement pages faster.

This Actor is best for discovery, monitoring, early market research, and workflow automation. It is not a full bid-management suite, and it is not a complete database of every state, county, city, school district, and agency in the US.

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What you can do with it

1. Search federal contract award history with one keyword

If you want to know who has won federal business in a category, start with the federal awards side of this Actor.

What you enter

• Search terms like cybersecurity, uniform, IT services, consulting
• Keep federal awards enabled

What you get back

• Award descriptions
• Awarding agencies
• Award amounts
• Recipient or awardee names
• Award and end dates
• Links back to the USAspending award page

This is useful when you need to answer questions like:

• Who already sells this into the federal market?
• Which agencies are spending on this category?
• What size are the awards?

2. Find active federal opportunities from SAM.gov

If you care about open opportunities rather than historical awards, keep the federal opportunities source enabled.

What you enter

• Search terms like software development, medical supplies, training, facilities maintenance
• Keep federal opportunities enabled

What you get back

• Opportunity titles
• Contracting agencies
• Solicitation numbers
• NAICS and set-aside details when available
• Posted dates and response deadlines
• Direct links back to SAM.gov

This is the part of the Actor you use when you want a faster answer to: what is open right now that matches my category?

3. Build a first-pass state and local procurement watchlist

Federal procurement is only part of the picture. This Actor also includes selected state/local procurement sources so you can get broader public-sector signals in one run.

What you enter

• Search terms like waste management, fleet, HVAC, school security, public works
• Keep state/local procurement enabled

What you get back

• Public opportunity links from Bonfire portals
• Public opportunity links from PlanetBids portals
• Solicitation records from the Montgomery County, Maryland dataset used for the OpenGov source
• Source labels showing which state/local source produced each record

This is useful when you want an initial watchlist or a quick scan of state/local activity without checking each portal one by one.

4. Track agencies, vendors, and categories across multiple source types

Some searches need both history and pipeline, not just one or the other.

What you enter

• One or more search terms like cyber, transit, construction, translation
• Enable multiple source groups together

What you get back

• Federal awards from USAspending.gov
• Federal opportunities from SAM.gov
• Selected state/local procurement results from the included source set
• A single dataset with normalized preview fields such as name, type, status, authority, _source, and _search_term

That makes it easier to go from market scan -> shortlist -> export -> follow-up without rebuilding the same search in separate systems.

5. Connect procurement discovery to AI agents or automation

This Actor works for manual use, but it is also meant to slot into downstream workflows.

What you enter

• Search terms and source toggles in Apify
• Or the same input through API, MCP, or automation tools

What you get back

• Structured records in the Actor dataset
• Stable source labeling
• Search-term tracing for each record
• Output that can feed research summaries, spreadsheets, alerts, CRMs, and AI workflows

This is the right pattern when you want search once, reuse everywhere.

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How to use

You do not need to write code to use this Actor.

1. Open the Actor and click Try for free
2. Enter one or more search terms such as cybersecurity, uniform, IT services, or construction
3. Choose which source groups to include:
   • federal awards
   • federal opportunities
   • state/local procurement
4. Set max results per source
5. Run the Actor
6. Review the results in Apify or export them as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS

If you are just testing, the free Apify credit is enough to validate real searches and decide whether this workflow fits your use case.

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What you get back

The Actor returns normalized records from the selected US procurement sources. Exact fields vary by source, but the output is designed so you can review mixed results in one table instead of jumping between unrelated systems.

Common normalized preview fields include:

Field	What it means
name	Normalized primary title or label for preview
type	Normalized record type such as contract_award, procurement_opportunity, or state_local_procurement
status	Status when available from the source
country	Usually US
authority	Upstream source or platform such as USAspending.gov, SAM.gov, Bonfire, OpenGov, or PlanetBids
_source	Human-readable source label
_search_term	The keyword that produced the record
_collected_at	UTC collection timestamp

Depending on the source, you may also see:

• award amounts
• awardee names
• agency names
• solicitation numbers
• NAICS codes
• set-aside details
• posted dates
• response deadlines
• source URLs

Here is a simplified example:

[
  {
    "name": "Enterprise cybersecurity support services",
    "type": "contract_award",
    "country": "US",
    "authority": "USAspending.gov",
    "_source": "USAspending.gov",
    "_search_term": "cybersecurity"
  },
  {
    "name": "Cloud modernization support",
    "type": "procurement_opportunity",
    "country": "US",
    "authority": "SAM.gov",
    "_source": "SAM.gov",
    "_search_term": "cloud"
  },
  {
    "name": "Public works maintenance services",
    "type": "state_local_procurement",
    "country": "US",
    "authority": "Bonfire",
    "_source": "Bonfire (State/Local)",
    "_search_term": "maintenance"
  }
]

The goal is not to pretend every source has identical semantics. The goal is to make cross-source procurement review fast enough to act on.

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Coverage

This Actor currently searches 5 US procurement sources:

Source	What it covers	Best use
us_federal_spending_awards_search	USAspending.gov federal award search	Historical federal award research
us_federal_procurement	SAM.gov federal opportunities	Open federal opportunities and solicitation tracking
us_bonfire_procurement_links	Bonfire public procurement opportunities	State/local procurement discovery
us_opengov_procurement_links	Montgomery County, Maryland solicitations dataset	Local solicitation search from a concrete open-data source
us_planetbids_procurement_links	PlanetBids public procurement opportunities	State/local procurement discovery

Coverage needs to be stated carefully here because these 5 sources are not all the same type of source.

• USAspending.gov is a federal award history source
• SAM.gov is a federal opportunities source
• Bonfire and PlanetBids are state/local procurement discovery layers, not complete nationwide state/local contract databases
• The OpenGov source in this Actor is currently backed by a Montgomery County, Maryland solicitations dataset, not the entire OpenGov ecosystem

So the right mental model is:

• strong for federal award + federal opportunity + selected state/local discovery
• not a full replacement for every procurement portal
• not a complete nationwide local-government procurement warehouse

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Pricing

This Actor is currently listed on Apify with pay-per-usage pricing.

That means your cost depends on:

• your Apify plan
• how often you run the Actor
• how many sources you search
• how much platform compute the run consumes

For current platform pricing, check the Actor pricing tab on Apify:

• https://apify.com/lentic_clockss/us-government-contracts-search/pricing

In practical terms, the free Apify credit is enough to test the workflow, run real searches, and decide whether the Actor fits your monitoring or research process before committing to paid usage.

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Connect to your tools

You can run this Actor manually or connect it to your existing stack.

Tool	How to use it
Apify Console	Run it directly with a form input
Make.com	Use the Actor via Apify integration
Zapier / n8n	Trigger runs and send results into downstream workflows
ChatGPT / Claude	Connect through Apify MCP
Scripts / apps	Call it through the Apify API

If you want to use it with AI workflows, Apify MCP is usually the cleanest path.

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When to use something else

This Actor is a strong fit when you want a practical public-procurement discovery layer across federal data and selected state/local sources.

Choose something else if you already know you need a narrower or deeper system:

• Use a bid-management platform if you need proposal workflow, tasking, collaboration, and submission management
• Use a federal-only procurement tool if you need deep SAM.gov-specific filtering or agency-by-agency workflows
• Use a dedicated state, county, or city pipeline if you need complete coverage for one local jurisdiction
• Use paid GovCon intelligence tooling if you need account planning, incumbent mapping, and analyst-style enrichment beyond public source search

In short, this Actor is best for finding public procurement signals quickly, not for replacing every downstream contracting workflow.

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FAQ

Q: Does this cover all US government contracts?
A: No. It covers 5 currently configured sources: USAspending.gov awards, SAM.gov opportunities, Bonfire opportunities, a Montgomery County MD solicitations dataset under the OpenGov source, and PlanetBids opportunities.

Q: Does it include both federal awards and open federal opportunities?
A: Yes. USAspending.gov covers federal award history, and SAM.gov covers federal opportunities.

Q: Does state/local coverage mean all states and all local governments?
A: No. Bonfire and PlanetBids are discovery layers for public procurement opportunities, and the OpenGov source in this Actor is currently a specific Montgomery County, Maryland dataset.

Q: Can I use more than one search term in a run?
A: Yes. You can pass a keyword list, and the Actor will search each term across the enabled sources.

Q: Can I export the results?
A: Yes. Apify datasets can be exported in formats like JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, and RSS.

Q: Is this a proposal-writing or bid-submission tool?
A: No. This Actor is for search, discovery, monitoring, and workflow input, not bid submission or proposal management.

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Related Actors

If you are building a broader public-sector research workflow, these may also help:

Need	Actor
US building permits and local development signals	US Building Permits Scraper
Canada public procurement	Canada Government Contracts Search
Singapore public-sector source discovery	Singapore Government Data Search
Japan public-sector source discovery	Japan Government Data Search

More actors: apify.com/lentic_clockss

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Also Available

• Direct API: https://opendata.best/api/v1/data
• Postman collection: Fork and test
• GitHub: Collection source files