US Federal Contracts & Grants

Official US federal procurement data — contract opportunities, awards, and grants — from SAM.gov, USAspending.gov and Grants.gov. No scraping.

This actor pulls the same authoritative feeds that the multi-thousand-dollar GovCon platforms resell, and hands you clean, provenance-tagged JSON: SAM.gov contract opportunities (RFPs, solicitations, combined synopses, sources sought, award notices), USAspending.gov award history, and Grants.gov funding opportunities — filterable by keyword, NAICS, agency, set-aside, place of performance and response deadline.

It is the US-market counterpart to eu-ted-tenders-api-fresh: same buyer, same workflow, new continent.

Why this one

• Official sources only. GSA's own open.gsa.gov APIs and the free SAM.gov daily bulk extract, USAspending (Treasury), Grants.gov (HHS). There is no anti-bot wall to fight and no ToS grey area — this is published government data, designed to be consumed programmatically.
• The no-key path is the rich path. SAM.gov's Data Services publishes a nightly full snapshot of active notices (~230 MB, no key, no registration) that carries the full description text and a public opportunity link — fields the rate-limited API returns only as a URL.
• Cleaner than the current market. Existing actors mostly dump the raw API payload. This one normalises to a stable, flat schema, stamps every record with source, source_url, fetched_at and actor_version, and never fabricates a missing value.
• Built for the real constraint. SAM.gov keys are personal and rate-limited, so the actor is designed for incremental, scoped pulls — not naive full-table dumps that hit the daily cap in one run.

Input

Field	Type	Notes
sources	array	sam.gov, usaspending.gov, grants.gov (default ["usaspending.gov", "grants.gov"] — see Prefilled default below)
samApiKey	secret	Optional. Your personal SAM.gov public API key. Omit to use the free bulk CSV (no key).
useBulkCsv	boolean	Stream the free official daily Contract Opportunities CSV (~230 MB, no key) when no API key is set. Off by default.
keywords	array	Narrow free-text terms (title/description/solicitation match)
naicsCodes	array	NAICS codes (also passed to the USAspending award search)
agencies	array	Department/subtier names (one per request)
setAsides	array	Official GSA set-aside codes: SBA, SBP, 8A, 8AN, HZC, HZS, SDVOSBC, SDVOSBS, WOSB, WOSBSS, EDWOSB, EDWOSBSS, LAS, IEE, ISBEE, BICiv, VSA, VSS. SAM.gov takes one per request, so each code is run as a separate scoped request.
procurementTypes	array	o solicitation, k combined synopsis, p pre-solicitation, r sources sought, s special notice, a award, u justification (J&A), g sale of surplus property, i intent to bundle. (f and l are retired upstream.)
placeOfPerformanceState	string	Two-letter state code(s) (e.g. VA or VA,MD)
postedFrom / postedTo	string	YYYY-MM-DD; auto-chunked to SAM.gov's 1-year window; also bounds the USAspending period
responseDeadlineFrom / responseDeadlineTo	string	YYYY-MM-DD
maxRecords	integer	Hard cap across all sources, split evenly between them (default 200)
maxApiRequests	integer	Safety budget (default 9 — fits a 10/day personal SAM.gov key)
includeFullText	boolean	Fetch full notice descriptions on the API path (costs 1 request per notice); ignored on the bulk-CSV path, which already includes full text

Prefilled default — designed to pass a 5-minute, secret-free QA run

The prefilled input deliberately uses the two keyless, small, fast sources — sources: ["usaspending.gov", "grants.gov"] with maxRecords: 200 — so a run:

• needs no API key (both sources are unauthenticated), and
• does not touch the ~230 MB bulk CSV (that download only happens when you explicitly pick sam.gov and set useBulkCsv: true).

A measured prefilled run returns ~200 records (100 awards + 100 grants) in under 4 seconds using the default 9-request budget. Selecting sam.gov without a key and without useBulkCsv logs a clear message and is skipped rather than silently downloading 230 MB.

Example

{
  "sources": ["sam.gov", "usaspending.gov"],
  "useBulkCsv": true,
  "keywords": ["cybersecurity", "zero trust"],
  "naicsCodes": ["541512"],
  "setAsides": ["SBA", "SDVOSBC"],
  "procurementTypes": ["o", "k", "r"],
  "responseDeadlineFrom": "2026-09-01",
  "maxRecords": 1500
}

The above uses the no-key bulk CSV path for SAM.gov (set useBulkCsv: true, leave samApiKey empty). To use the live API instead, provide samApiKey and set maxApiRequests within your key's daily quota.

Output

One dataset record per opportunity / award / grant. Contract-opportunity record (abridged):

{
  "record_type": "contract_opportunity",
  "notice_id": "abc123def456",
  "solicitation_number": "W91QUZ-26-R-0001",
  "title": "Zero Trust Architecture Support Services",
  "opportunity_type": "Solicitation",
  "posted_date": "2026-09-10 14:00:00",
  "response_deadline": "2026-10-15 16:00:00",
  "agency": "DEPT OF DEFENSE.ARMY",
  "naics_code": "541512",
  "classification_code": "R408",
  "set_aside": "Total Small Business",
  "set_aside_code": "SBA",
  "place_of_performance_state": "VA",
  "place_of_performance_zip": "22060",
  "award_number": null,
  "award_amount": null,
  "awardee_name": null,
  "description_url": "https://api.sam.gov/prod/opportunities/v1/noticedesc?...",
  "attachment_links": ["https://.../SOW.pdf"],
  "source": "sam.gov",
  "source_url": "https://sam.gov/opp/abc123def456/view",
  "fetched_at": "2026-09-27T10:00:00Z",
  "actor_version": "0.1.0"
}

Award records (record_type: "award") carry award_id, recipient_name, award_amount, awarding_agency, dates and NAICS. Grant records (record_type: "grant") carry opportunity_number, agency, funding ceilings/floors, response_deadline, contact details and CFDA numbers.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: run start $0.004 + $0.0009 per record (tiers down to $0.0004 at Diamond). (Final, 2026-09-27.)

A typical 1,500-record run costs $0.004 + 1,500 × $0.0009 ≈ $1.35. Market for the same dataset (Apify store API, 2026-09-27): the closest paid competitors charge $0.001 (jungle_synthesizer, 169 users — our named leader, which we sit 10% under), $0.0025 (scrapesage) and $0.003 (fortuitous_pirate) per record. The run-volume leader, automation-lab, charges a $0.000115 commodity floor with only 12 users; we deliberately do not chase that floor (see PLAN.md §5).

Responsible use

• This actor consumes official, public data via documented APIs and the free SAM.gov bulk extract. Still run it considerately.
• Honour your own SAM.gov key's daily quota. Keys are personal to your account (default 10 requests/day for a non-federal personal key; 1,000/day once role-backed). Set maxApiRequests within your budget; the actor will not exceed it.
• SAM.gov includeFullText and attachment downloads cost extra upstream requests — leave them off unless you need them.
• Some fields (contracting-officer names, grant contact names/emails) can be personal data. Do not use them for unsolicited marketing, and check your own obligations under GDPR/CCPA before republishing.
• Respect the upstream services' own terms. We publish a tool; how you run it is your choice.

Development

python3 -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt        # apify~=4.0, httpx~=0.28, pytest
pytest -q                              # 22 tests, no network, no API key
python -m src.main                     # local run (reads local input.json)

pytest output for this draft: 22 passed (streaming CSV parser incl. quoted multi-line descriptions, filters, normalisation, pagination, request-budget hard stop, 429 handling, and a check that API keys never appear in error messages).

Note: requirements.txt pins apify~=4.0 (not the older ~=1.7) because pay-per-event billing via Actor.charge does not exist in the 1.x SDK.