How to Look Up Government Contracts: The Step-by-Step Guide (2026)
Whether you want to find active opportunities, research past awards, or track competitor activity — here is exactly how to look up government contracts using free and paid tools.
What Are You Looking For?
"How to look up government contracts" means different things depending on what you need:
Each question has a different answer. Here is the step-by-step for each.
Looking Up Active Opportunities (Contracts You Can Bid On)
Step 1: Go to SAM.gov → Contract Opportunities
Navigate to sam.gov and click "Contract Opportunities." This is where every federal contract opportunity over $25,000 is legally required to be posted.
Step 2: Search by keyword, NAICS code, or set-aside type
The search interface lets you filter by:
Step 3: Save your search and set alerts
SAM.gov has a "Follow" feature that emails you when new opportunities match your criteria. This is free and essential -- you should have at least 3-5 saved searches running at all times.
Limitation: SAM.gov only shows what is currently posted. By the time an RFP appears on SAM.gov, the best-positioned firms have been tracking the opportunity for months. For earlier intelligence, you need tools that track expiring contracts and pre-solicitation signals.
Looking Up Past Contract Awards (Who Won What)
Option A: USAspending.gov (Easiest)
USAspending is the friendliest interface for browsing. But it runs 30-90 days behind real-time and lacks modification-level detail.
Option B: FPDS.gov (Most Detailed)
FPDS has the most granular data. You can see:
Limitation: FPDS has a hostile user interface. Queries frequently time out. Reports are limited to 100 rows. Downloading bulk data requires technical skills.
Option C: Fed-Spend (Fastest)
Search once, get results from all sources combined. Enter a contractor name, NAICS code, agency, or keyword. Results include:
[Search contract awards →](/search)
Looking Up What Agencies Pay (Pricing Intelligence)
This is the question most contractors care about and the hardest to answer with free tools alone.
The Free Method (Slow, Incomplete)
This works but takes hours per NAICS code and the 100-row export limit means you are working with a tiny sample.
The Fast Method
The [Pricing Intelligence Engine](/dashboard/pricing) does this analysis instantly. Enter your NAICS code and see:
This tells you whether your proposed pricing is competitive before you spend weeks writing a proposal.
Looking Up Expiring Contracts (Recompete Opportunities)
Recompetes are the highest-probability wins in federal contracting. When a contract expires, the government must re-award the work. If you are positioned early, your win rate is 3x higher than on net-new bids.
The Free Method
The Fast Method
The [Recompete Pipeline Dashboard](/dashboard/recompete-pipeline) tracks 85,000+ contracts expiring in the next 18 months. Each entry includes:
Sort by vulnerability score to find opportunities where the incumbent is underperforming. These are the contracts most likely to change hands.
Looking Up a Specific Contractor
What You Can Learn
For any federal contractor, public data reveals:
How to Do It
Researching competitors and incumbents is the foundation of effective capture strategy. Knowing who holds the contract, how much they are being paid, and how well they are performing tells you whether the opportunity is worth pursuing.
The Bottom Line
Looking up government contracts is straightforward once you know which system has the data you need:
The data is public. The intelligence is in how you use it.
[Start searching →](/search)