US Gov Contracts Intel

Mines the $700B/year US federal contract market through SAM.gov and USAspending - opportunities, awards, recompete radar, vendor intel, set-aside filters.

What does US Gov Contracts Intel do?

It pulls and intelligence-classifies records from two official public APIs - SAM.gov Opportunities v2 (active RFPs / RFIs / sources sought / synopses / award notices) and USAspending v2 ($7T+ of historical contract awards back to 2000, plus FPDS subaward data). Both are free; SAM.gov requires a free API key.

Features

• Active opportunity monitor - filter live SAM.gov opportunities by NAICS, agency, value range, set-aside type, response-deadline window.
• Historical award analysis - last N years of awards for any agency or vendor via USAspending.
• Re-compete radar - flag contracts whose period of performance ends inside the next 6 / 12 / 18 months.
• Vendor competitive intel - given a vendor name or UEI/DUNS, returns total federal revenue, agencies served, NAICS distribution, win count, prime-vs-sub split, largest awards, first/last award dates.
• Subcontractor opportunity feed - subaward data for smaller vendors winning under big primes.
• Set-aside filter - 8(a) / WOSB / EDWOSB / SDVOSB / VOSB / HUBZone / IndianEconomic only.

Use cases

• B2B vendors selling INTO the federal government building daily opportunity feeds.
• Capture / business-development teams scoring win-loss against agencies they target.
• GovCon consultants building competitive vendor profiles for clients.
• Teaming opportunity discovery via subaward data (find the primes who routinely sub).
• Recompete pipeline planning 12-18 months ahead of incumbent contracts.
• Federal market analysts tracking set-aside flow and small-business contracting trends.

FAQ

Q: Is this legal? A: Yes. SAM.gov and USAspending.gov are official US-government public-data systems. Every record this actor pulls is mandated-public under federal transparency law (FFATA / DATA Act). No login is required to read this data.

Q: Do I need a SAM.gov API key? A: Yes for any mode that hits active_opportunities or set_aside_only (SAM.gov's Opportunities API requires an API key). The key is free - sign up at https://sam.gov, request a key from your Account Details > API Key panel. USAspending.gov modes (historical_awards, recompete_radar, vendor_intel, subcontracts) do not require any key.

Q: Why might a run fail? A: The three most common failure modes are (1) missing or invalid SAM.gov API key for opportunity modes, (2) SAM.gov rate limits (1,000 requests/day per key - the actor handles backoff but a heavy run may need a higher-tier key), and (3) overly broad NAICS / PSC filters returning millions of records - narrow your filters or split into per-agency runs.

Q: How fresh is the data? A: SAM.gov active opportunities update in near-real-time as agencies post solicitations. USAspending awards lag by 30-90 days as agencies report obligations. Subaward data lags by 30 days from prime-contract obligation. The actor stamps every record with its source-system load date so you can compute true freshness.

Q: Can I schedule this daily or weekly? A: Yes. Daily cron is appropriate for active_opportunities and set_aside_only (new solicitations drop every business day). Weekly is appropriate for historical_awards and vendor_intel. Monthly is appropriate for recompete_radar (12-18 month look-ahead planning). Apify Schedules + dedupe on notice_id (opportunities) or award_id_piid (awards) gives clean deltas.

Q: Does it integrate with my CRM or data tooling? A: Yes. Apify webhooks POST every run to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Apollo, or any HTTP endpoint. Zapier, Make.com, and n8n templates available. Dataset exports as JSON / CSV / Excel / XML for Salesforce GovCon Cloud, GovTribe, or your in-house capture system.

Q: How does pricing work? A: PAY_PER_EVENT. You pay per opportunity / award / subaward record emitted, with surcharges on enriched vendor-intel rollups. You only pay for what the actor actually emits.

Related Actors

• sec-edgar-intel - pull SEC filings for the public companies you find in vendor-intel rollups (8-K M&A, going-concern, executive departures) before pitching them as teaming partners.
• b2b-sales-triggers - convert award notifications and recompete-radar windows into outbound sales triggers for your BD / capture team.
• uspto-patent-intel - check IP portfolio of competitors and teaming candidates before submitting a proposal.

Integrations

• Zapier - push to HubSpot/Salesforce/Pipedrive/Apollo
• Make.com - workflow automation
• n8n - self-hosted automation
• Apify webhooks - POST to your endpoint
• API + dataset export (JSON/CSV/Excel/XML)
• MCP / AI agents - call from Claude/GPT/LangChain

Modes

Mode	Source	SAM.gov key needed?
active_opportunities	SAM.gov	yes
historical_awards	USAspending	no
recompete_radar	USAspending	no
vendor_intel	USAspending	no
subcontracts	USAspending subaward	no
set_aside_only	SAM.gov filtered	yes

Input

See .actor/INPUT_SCHEMA.json. Sample: every active 8(a) IT services opportunity in VA/MD/DC closing in 30 days:

{
    "mode": "set_aside_only",
    "sam_gov_api_key": "YOUR_KEY",
    "naics_codes": ["541512", "541511", "541519"],
    "set_aside_types": ["8(a)"],
    "place_of_performance_state": ["VA", "MD", "DC"],
    "response_deadline_days": 30,
    "max_results": 500
}

DOD IT contracts expiring in the next 12 months (recompete pipeline):

{
    "mode": "recompete_radar",
    "naics_codes": ["541512"],
    "agencies": ["Department of Defense"],
    "recompete_window_months": 12,
    "min_value_usd": 1000000,
    "max_results": 500
}

Output

Sample output: ./.actor/sample-output.json — copy-paste-ready preview of real-looking records.

First record inline:

{
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-13T21:02:14Z",
  "mode": "opportunity_search",
  "source": "sam_gov",
  "available": true,
  "reason": null,
  "notice_id": "fa872126r0042",
  "solicitation_number": "FA8721-26-R-0042",
  "title": "C-130J Avionics Sustainment & Engineering Support Services",
  "description": "The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center seeks engineering and sustainment support for the C-130J avionics suite, including software maintenance, hardware refresh planning, and integration of next-generation comms upgrades over a 5-year base + 5 option years.",
  "opportunity_type": "Solicitation",
  "contract_type": "IDIQ",
  "set_aside": null,
  "set_aside_description": null,
  "naics": "541330",
  "naics_description": "Engineering Services",
  "classification_code": "AC23",
  "agency": "Department of Defense",
  "sub_agency": "Department of the Air Force",
  "office": "Air Force Life Cycle Management Center / WLNN",
  "agency_code": "5700",
  "place_of_performance": {
    "city": "Robins AFB",
    "state": "GA",
    "zip": "31098",
    "country": "United States",
    "country_code": "USA"
  },
  "response_deadline": "2026-07-22T17:00:00Z",
  "posted_date": "2026-05-08T13:00:00Z",
  "archive_date": "2026-08-22T17:00:00Z",
  "action_date": null,
  "award_amount": null,
  "base_and_all_options_value": 480000000.0,
  "total_obligated_amount": null,
  "recipient_name": null,
  "recipient_uei": null,
  "recipient_duns": null,
  "recipient_address": null,
  "period_of_performance_start": "2026-10-01",
  "period_of_performance_end": "2031-09-30",
  "url": "https://sam.gov/opp/fa872126r0042/view",
  "raw_links": [
    {
      "label": "Attachment_J1_PWS.pdf",
      "url": "https://sam.gov/api/prod/opps/v3/opportunities/fa872126r0042/resources/J1.pdf"
    }
  ],
  "recompete_months_remaining": null,
  "recompete_window_months": null,
  "is_recompete_candidate": null,
  "prime_recipient_name": null,
  "prime_award_id": null,
  "subaward_type": null,
  "vendor_metrics": null
}

Every record is normalized to one shape regardless of source. Sample:

{
    "scraped_at": "2026-05-14T12:00:00Z",
    "mode": "recompete_radar",
    "source": "usaspending",
    "available": true,
    "title": "IT Services Recompete Vehicle - DoD CIO",
    "agency": "Department of Defense",
    "naics": "541512",
    "set_aside": "8(a)",
    "recipient_name": "Booz Allen Hamilton",
    "base_and_all_options_value": 12500000,
    "period_of_performance_end": "2027-03-31",
    "recompete_months_remaining": 10.5,
    "is_recompete_candidate": true,
    "url": "https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_..."
}

Failed lookups still emit a row with available: false and a reason.

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

Event	Price
opportunity_record	$0.005
award_record	$0.005
recompete_alert	$0.010
vendor_intel_record	$0.015
subcontract_record	$0.005

FAQ

Q: Do I need a SAM.gov API key? A: Only for SAM.gov-backed modes (active_opportunities, set_aside_only). USAspending modes need no key. Get a free SAM key at https://open.gsa.gov/api/get-opportunities-public-api/ in five minutes.

Q: How often is USAspending data refreshed? A: USAspending updates nightly from FPDS / FABS. Action dates older than 24 hours should appear in the feed.

Q: Does this hit PACER, FedBizOpps legacy, or DLA-only feeds? A: No - SAM.gov and USAspending only. Both are the canonical post-2017 government feeds and cover the active vendor universe.

Q: How does the recompete classifier work? A: It computes months between today and period_of_performance_end. Contracts inside recompete_window_months are tagged is_recompete_candidate: true with recompete_months_remaining populated.

Support

Open an issue on the actor's GitHub or contact the maintainer through Apify Store. Include the run ID and the mode + input config used.

Changelog

See ./CHANGELOG.md.