US Federal Spending — Contracts, Grants & Loans

Search US federal contracts, grants and loans by recipient, agency or keyword. Who received them, how much was promised, how much was actually paid, by which agency and for what.

What it does

USAspending.gov is the official record of United States government spending. This Actor searches it and returns one row per award with 22 fields, largest first.

The distinction it preserves is between what was awarded and what was paid. amount_usd is the obligation; outlays_usd is money that has actually left the Treasury. A large award with outlays near zero has barely started.

What you get

22 fields per row, including award_id, recipient_name, amount_usd, outlays_usd, outlay_ratio, awarding_agency, awarding_sub_agency, award_type, start_date, end_date, place_state, description and duration_days.

The table view shows 12 of them; all 22 are in the JSON, CSV and Excel downloads.

Input

Field	Meaning
awardTypes	contracts, grants, loans, direct_payments, other.
recipient	Recipient name.
agency	Awarding agency.
keyword	Free-text search.
fromDate / toDate	Restrict by award period.
maxAwards	Stop after this many. 0 removes the cap.

{
  "awardTypes": ["contracts"],
  "recipient": "Lockheed Martin",
  "maxAwards": 200
}

Sample output

One record, trimmed to the fields shown in the table view:

{
  "award_id": "DENA0003525",
  "recipient_name": "NATIONAL TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS OF SANDIA, LLC",
  "amount_usd": 42774168231.25,
  "outlays_usd": 26301056802.91,
  "outlay_ratio": 0.6149,
  "awarding_agency": "Department of Energy",
  "awarding_sub_agency": "Department of Energy",
  "award_type": "DEFINITIVE CONTRACT",
  "start_date": "2017-01-18",
  "end_date": "2027-04-30",
  "place_state": "NM",
  "issues": ""
}

Pricing

Event	Per 1,000	Notes
Award	$1.00	One charge per award returned

There is no start fee and no per-row dataset fee.

What it does not do

This is not financial or legal advice. It is the federal record, cleaned. Amounts are reported by the awarding agencies and are corrected over time.

Negative amounts are real. De-obligations appear as negative outlays and negative ratios. issues marks them negative_amount. Exclude them for gross awards, include them for net spending, but decide which you mean.

No sub-awards. This returns prime awards. Money passed from a prime contractor to subcontractors is reported separately and is not in these rows.

Descriptions are often missing. Agencies are inconsistent about filling them. issues marks no_description rather than leaving a silent blank.

Search is by the fields above, not full text over documents. There is no contract text here, only the award record.

Notes

Sort by outlay_ratio rather than by amount to see what is actually being spent. A large obligation with a ratio near zero has barely started.

period_ended separates finished contracts from live ones without comparing dates by hand.

Search by recipient to map a competitor's federal revenue; by agency and keyword to find who is winning work in a field.

Support

Open the Issues tab with the award_id and the field that looks wrong.

Licence and attribution

Award data from USAspending.gov, the official source of United States government spending data, published by the Department of the Treasury. As a work of the US federal government it carries no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. The Treasury does not endorse this Actor.