Federal Contract Opportunities Monitor (SAM.gov, unofficial)

Get new and updated U.S. federal contract opportunities from SAM.gov delivered as clean JSON, CSV or Excel, filtered by keyword, NAICS code, set-aside, state and notice type. Run it on a schedule and monitor mode returns only notices that are new or changed since the last run, so you get a daily bid feed without re-reading the same solicitations.

Independent, unofficial tool. Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) or SAM.gov. No API key or login needed: by default it reads SAM.gov's official public daily Contract Opportunities extract from SAM.gov Data Services. Add your own free SAM.gov API key to get same-day data plus attachment links through the official GSA Get Opportunities Public API instead. It never scrapes the SAM.gov website. Official source: SAM.gov.

What does Federal Contract Opportunities Monitor do?

This Actor searches SAM.gov Contract Opportunities (solicitations, sources sought, presolicitations, award notices and more) and turns each notice into a structured record with agency, NAICS, set-aside, deadline, place of performance, contacts, attachment links and a direct SAM.gov link.

• 🔎 Filter precisely: keywords, NAICS codes, small-business set-aside (Total Small Business, 8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, WOSB, EDWOSB and more), state (as matched by SAM.gov, see below), notice type and posted-date range.
• 🔔 Monitor mode: remembers every notice it has seen (notice ID plus a fingerprint of key fields such as deadline, title, type, set-aside, attachments and award). Each run outputs only new or changed (amended) notices, marked in the changeStatus field.
• 🗂️ Multiple saved searches: give each search its own monitorKey to keep separate "already seen" lists, for example one per client or per product line.
• 🔑 No API key required: works out of the box from SAM.gov's official daily extract. A free SAM.gov key is optional.
• 📎 Attachment links (with your key): direct download links for solicitation documents (SOWs, PWS, amendments) when SAM.gov provides them.
• 📝 Optional short summary: pulls the notice description and adds a short extractive summary (the first sentences of the description, no AI involved).
• 🛡️ Protects your API quota (with your key): fetches 1,000 records per request, enforces a hard maxApiRequests cap, splits date ranges longer than one year automatically (an API limit) and retries with backoff on rate limits and server errors.

Who is it for?

• Small and mid-size government contractors who want a daily list of new set-aside solicitations in their NAICS codes and state, without logging in to SAM.gov every morning.
• Bid hunters and proposal consultants who track opportunities for several clients. Use one monitorKey per client.
• Business development (BD) and capture teams that feed opportunities into a CRM, Google Sheet, Slack channel or email digest via Apify integrations.
• Market researchers who want historical award notices (noticeTypes: ["award"]) to see which agencies buy what and who wins.
• Developers and AI agents that need clean JSON about federal demand via the Apify API.

Data sources: keyless extract or your own API key

	Keyless (default)	With your API key
Source	SAM.gov Data Services public extract ContractOpportunitiesFullCSV.csv (all active notices)	GSA Get Opportunities Public API
Freshness	Published once a day (overnight, U.S. time). Notices posted today appear in tomorrow's extract.	Live
Attachment links	Not included (attachments is empty; open samUrl)	Included
Descriptions	Included (used for keyword matching and summary, free). Very long descriptions are cut at about 32,000 characters in the extract.	One extra request per notice
Archived / inactive notices	Not included (active notices only)	Included
Awardee	Name and address in one text field	Name
Quota	None	10 or 1,000 requests/day

source = auto (default) uses your key if you entered one, otherwise the keyless extract. Each record says which one it came from in dataSource.

How to get a free SAM.gov API key (optional)

The key is optional. Add your own personal SAM.gov public API key if you need same-day notices, attachment links or archived notices. It's free.

1. Create an account or sign in at sam.gov (sign-in uses Login.gov).
2. Open your Profile → Account Details.
3. Under Public API Key, re-enter your password and generate the key. Copy it right away, because it is only shown until you leave the page.
4. Paste it into the SAM.gov public API key input field. Apify stores it encrypted as a secret input.

Daily quota (set by SAM.gov, not by this Actor):

SAM.gov account	API requests per day
Personal account without a SAM.gov role	10
Account with a SAM.gov role (e.g. an entity registration) or a federal user	1,000

One request returns up to 1,000 notices, so 10 requests a day is plenty for a daily monitor. With a 10/day key, keep Fetch descriptions + summary off (it costs one extra request per notice) and use only a few NAICS codes (each code needs at least one request).

Key safety: the key is only sent to api.sam.gov. It is never logged (request URLs are masked as api_key=***) and never written to the dataset or key-value stores. Don't share your key with anyone, and rotate it every 90 days, as the SAM.gov Terms of Use require.

How to use it

1. Click Try for free / Start. No key is needed; optionally paste your own SAM.gov API key.
2. Add your filters: NAICS codes, a set-aside, a state, notice types and/or keywords.
3. Leave Monitor mode on and give the search a Monitor name (for example it-services-indiana).
4. Run it once. The first run returns every match in the date window (by default the last 7 days).
5. Schedule it (for example daily at 7:00 AM). Each later run returns only new or changed notices.
6. Download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or connect an integration (email, Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, webhooks).

Input

Field	Key	Type	Default	Description
Data source	source	select	auto	auto (key → API, no key → keyless extract), bulk (always keyless) or api (requires your key).
SAM.gov public API key	apiKey	string (secret)	– (optional)	Your own personal SAM.gov public API key. Leave empty for keyless mode.
Keywords	keywords	array of strings	–	Notices matching any keyword in the title, solicitation number or description (keyless mode always searches descriptions; with a key, only when descriptions are fetched). With a key and exactly one keyword it is also sent to the API's title filter.
NAICS codes	naicsCodes	array of strings	–	NAICS codes (up to 6 digits; prefixes like 5415 also work in keyless mode). With a key, each code is a separate API query, so it costs at least one request.
Set-aside	setAside	select	–	One set-aside per run: SBA, SBP, 8A, 8AN, HZC, HZS, SDVOSBC, SDVOSBS, WOSB, WOSBSS, EDWOSB, EDWOSBSS, LAS, IEE, ISBEE, BICiv, VSA, VSS.
State	state	string	–	Two-letter state code, e.g. IN, passed to SAM.gov's state filter. SAM.gov matches the place of performance and may also match the contracting office's state, so some results can be performed elsewhere or list no location.
Notice types	noticeTypes	array	all types	solicitation, combined_synopsis_solicitation, presolicitation, sources_sought, special_notice, award, justification, surplus_sale, intent_to_bundle.
Posted within last N days	postedWithinDays	integer	7	Used when Posted from is empty.
Posted from	postedFrom	date (YYYY-MM-DD)	–	Start of the posted-date range. Ranges longer than one year are split automatically.
Posted to	postedTo	date (YYYY-MM-DD)	today	End of the posted-date range.
Monitor mode	monitorMode	boolean	true	Output only notices that are new or changed since the previous run with the same monitor name.
Monitor name	monitorKey	string	default	Separate seen-lists for different saved searches.
Include attachment links	includeAttachments	boolean	true	Add download links for notice attachments (API mode only; empty in keyless mode).
Fetch descriptions + summary	fetchDescriptions	boolean	false	Fetches each notice's description for keyword matching and a short summary. API mode only: costs one extra API request per notice, so use it only with a 1,000/day key. Keyless mode always includes descriptions.
Max results	maxItems	integer	500	Maximum number of results saved per run.
Max API requests per run	maxApiRequests	integer	8	API mode only. Hard cap that protects your daily SAM.gov quota. If it's reached, the run log warns that results may be incomplete.

Example input (no key needed)

{
  "naicsCodes": ["541512", "541519"],
  "setAside": "SBA",
  "state": "IN",
  "noticeTypes": ["solicitation", "combined_synopsis_solicitation", "sources_sought"],
  "postedWithinDays": 3,
  "monitorMode": true,
  "monitorKey": "my-it-bids"
}

To use the live API instead (same-day data plus attachment links), add "apiKey": "YOUR_SAM_GOV_KEY" and optionally "maxApiRequests": 6.

Output

Each result is one SAM.gov notice. Example from API mode (shortened, illustrative values). In keyless mode attachments is empty, descriptionApiUrl is null, summary is filled, and dataSource is sam.gov-bulk-extract:

{
  "noticeId": "a1b2c3d4e5f60718293a4b5c6d7e8f90",
  "title": "Network Cybersecurity Support Services",
  "solicitationNumber": "W912XX-26-R-0042",
  "noticeType": "Solicitation",
  "baseType": "Solicitation",
  "postedDate": "2026-10-10",
  "responseDeadline": "2026-11-01T17:00:00-04:00",
  "agency": "DEPT OF DEFENSE.DEPT OF THE ARMY",
  "naicsCode": "541512",
  "naicsCodes": ["541512"],
  "classificationCode": "D310",
  "setAsideCode": "SBA",
  "setAside": "Total Small Business Set-Aside (FAR 19.5)",
  "active": true,
  "placeOfPerformance": {
    "city": "Indianapolis",
    "state": "IN",
    "zip": "46216",
    "country": "USA",
    "streetAddress": null
  },
  "award": null,
  "contacts": [
    {
      "type": "primary",
      "name": "Jane Doe",
      "title": "Contracting Officer",
      "email": "jane.doe@army.mil",
      "phone": "5555550100"
    }
  ],
  "samUrl": "https://sam.gov/opp/a1b2c3d4e5f60718293a4b5c6d7e8f90/view",
  "descriptionApiUrl": "https://api.sam.gov/prod/opportunities/v1/noticedesc?noticeid=a1b2c3d4e5f60718293a4b5c6d7e8f90",
  "attachments": [
    "https://sam.gov/api/prod/opps/v3/opportunities/resources/files/0123456789abcdef/download"
  ],
  "summary": null,
  "additionalInfoLink": null,
  "dataSourceNote": null,
  "dataSource": "sam.gov-api",
  "changeStatus": "new"
}

• changeStatus is new for a notice not seen before and changed for a notice whose key fields changed (for example an amended deadline or new attachments).
• placeOfPerformance fields are null when SAM.gov doesn't publish them. Many notices list no location or only part of it (e.g. country only).
• award is filled for award notices: { "amount", "date", "number", "awardee" }.
• summary is always filled in keyless mode (when the notice has a description); with a key, only when Fetch descriptions + summary is on.
• descriptionApiUrl (API mode only) is the SAM.gov description endpoint. It needs your API key appended (&api_key=...), and the key is never stored in the output.
• Each run also saves a RUN_SUMMARY record in the run's key-value store with the data source, number of results, API requests used (0 in keyless mode; extract rows scanned and the extract's last-modified time instead), whether the request cap was hit, and new/changed/unchanged/filtered counts.

The dataset's Opportunities view shows status, title, type, agency, posted and due dates, NAICS, set-aside, place, SAM.gov link, summary and attachments in a table.

How much does it cost?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. You pay only for results, and Apify platform usage is included (you don't pay for compute separately).

• $3.00 per 1,000 results ($0.003 per result).
• Actor start fee: $0.00005 per GB of run memory (minimum one event), a fraction of a cent per run.

Scenario	Results	Approx. cost
Daily monitor, ~10 new notices/day for 30 days	300	~$0.90/month
One-off search returning 100 notices	100	~$0.30
1,000 results	1,000	~$3.00
Historical pull of 10,000 award notices	10,000	~$30.00

Start fees add well under one cent per run. In monitor mode you pay only for new or changed notices, because unchanged ones are skipped and not saved. Use Max results to put a hard ceiling on what a single run can cost. No SAM.gov key is needed; if you add one, the key and its quota are free.

Scheduling and monitoring tips

• Schedule daily (Console → Schedules). SAM.gov posts notices throughout business days, so a daily morning run with postedWithinDays: 2 or 3 covers weekends and delays while monitor mode removes duplicates. In keyless mode the extract is refreshed once a night (U.S. time), so running more than once a day adds nothing.
• One monitor name per saved search. If you change filters a lot, use a new monitorKey so the old seen-list doesn't hide results.
• Want the full list again? Turn Monitor mode off for a one-off run, or use a new monitor name.
• Stay inside your quota (with a key). Requests per run ≈ (number of NAICS codes, or 1) × (pages of 1,000 results) × (number of one-year windows), plus one per notice if descriptions are fetched. Keep maxApiRequests below your daily limit, especially with a 10/day key.
• Get alerts: add an integration to email yourself the dataset, post to Slack, append to Google Sheets, or call a webhook when a run succeeds.
• Several notice types in one run: the SAM.gov API only filters by one notice type per request, so when you select more than one type the Actor fetches all types and filters them after download. That's normal and uses the same number of requests.

FAQ

Is this an official SAM.gov or GSA product? No. It's an independent tool that uses SAM.gov's official public data: the daily Contract Opportunities extract (no key) or the GSA Get Opportunities Public API (with your key). Always check the original notice on SAM.gov (the samUrl link) before bidding.

Does it scrape the SAM.gov website? No. Without a key it downloads the public extract that SAM.gov publishes on its Data Services page for exactly this purpose. With a key it calls the public API at api.sam.gov. It never uses sensitive or FOUO SAM.gov APIs.

Do I need a SAM.gov API key? No. It works with no key from SAM.gov's official daily extract. Add your own free key if you want same-day notices, attachment links and archived notices. SAM.gov issues keys to individual users and its Terms of Use forbid sharing them, so the Actor never supplies one for you.

I got a "rate limit hit (HTTP 429)" error. You've used your daily SAM.gov quota (10 requests/day for accounts without a role). Wait for it to reset, lower maxApiRequests, use fewer NAICS codes, or turn off descriptions.

The log says it stopped at maxApiRequests. Results may be incomplete. Narrow your filters (shorter date range, fewer NAICS codes) or raise the cap if your quota allows.

How does it detect "changed" notices? The SAM.gov API has no "last modified" field, so the Actor fingerprints key fields (title, type, response deadline, active flag, archive date, set-aside, NAICS, attachments, award, solicitation number, posted date). If any of them change, the notice is returned again with changeStatus: "changed". Edits to the description text alone are not detected.

Does the state filter only return work performed in that state? Not always. The Actor passes your state to SAM.gov's own state filter, which matches the place of performance and may also return notices whose contracting office is in that state. Many notices also list no place of performance at all, or only partial location data, so placeOfPerformance fields can be empty (null). The Actor outputs exactly what SAM.gov publishes. Check the notice on SAM.gov (samUrl) to confirm where the work happens.

Do keywords search the full description? Yes in keyless mode. With a key, only when Fetch descriptions + summary is on; otherwise keywords match the title and solicitation number.

Can I get award data? Yes. Select the award notice type. Award notices include amount, date, award number and awardee name when SAM.gov publishes them.

Can I use it via API or with AI agents? Yes. Like every Apify Actor, it can be started via the Apify API, the JavaScript or Python clients, or MCP-compatible agents, and results come back as JSON.

Data sources, credits and terms

• Data: SAM.gov Contract Opportunities, via SAM.gov's public Data Services daily extract or the official GSA public API. It's public U.S. government information. Thanks to GSA and SAM.gov for publishing it.
• D&B attribution: award notices with an award date before 2022-04-04 may contain data supplied by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B). Those items carry a dataSourceNote field. Keep the attribution and don't redistribute that data in bulk (see the SAM.gov Restricted Data Use terms).
• Contracting-officer contact details appear exactly as the government publishes them on each notice.
• You are responsible for following the SAM.gov Terms of Use and its rate limits.

Support

Found a bug, need a filter that isn't supported, or want a custom feed for your team? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab in Apify Console and include your run ID (never your API key). Feedback and feature requests are welcome.

Built and maintained by Wade Works.