How to track a competitor's federal contract wins
Find the competitor's Unique Entity ID in SAM.gov, then query USASpending by that identifier rather than by company name. Every prime award they hold is public, including the agency, the amount and the period of performance end date. That end date is the recompete date, and it is the field worth watching.
/mcp. Nothing here needs an API key or a signup.
Company names are the worst possible key for this. Legal entity names differ from trading names, subsidiaries file under their own registrations, and a firm you know as one brand may appear in federal data under three separate records.
Start with the identifier, not the name
Since 4 April 2022 the federal government has identified contractors by the Unique Entity ID assigned in SAM.gov, which replaced the DUNS number. Look the competitor up once, keep the identifier, and every later query is exact.
| Search by | Result quality |
|---|---|
| Trading name | Misses subsidiaries, catches unrelated firms with similar names |
| Legal entity name | Better, still misses affiliates and post-merger renames |
| Unique Entity ID | One entity, exactly, with no false positives |
If a competitor has grown by acquisition, collect an identifier for each acquired entity. Awards signed before the acquisition stay attached to the original record and never migrate.
The four things worth extracting from each award
An award record answers more questions than "did they win."
- Awarding agency and sub-agency. Which office already trusts them, and which
contracting officer signed. This is where a competitor is defended.
- Period of performance end date. The single most valuable field. It tells you
when the work comes up for recompete, which is the only date that changes what you do next.
- Set-aside type. Whether the win was competed openly, restricted to a
socioeconomic category, or sole-sourced. A sole-source award is not a competitive loss and should not be counted as one.
- Place of performance. Where the work is actually done, which is often
nowhere near the company's headquarters.
Watching the first two together produces something a headline never gives you: a map of which agencies a competitor is embedded in, and the calendar on which each relationship reopens.
Subawards show the layer below the prime
Prime contractors report their subcontracts under federal transparency rules, and those records are searchable separately. Two uses:
If the competitor is a prime, their subaward records name the specialist firms they depend on. If the competitor is a subcontractor, you will not find them in prime award data at all, and subaward search is the only place they exist. Plenty of firms that feel like competitors have never held a prime contract.
The subcontracting guide covers using that same data from the other direction, to find work rather than to track a rival.
Automating the watch
Manual competitor research goes stale the week you finish it. The award feed is the part worth automating, because new records arrive on a reporting clock rather than continuously.
# free, no key, no wallet: recent awards matching a competitor's name curl "https://thebotwire.com/contracts/preview?q=leidos&since=14d" # paid route, $0.01, up to 50 records with agency, amount and place of performance curl "https://thebotwire.com/contracts/latest?q=leidos&size=over-10m&since=14d&limit=50"
The wire reads USASpending, deduplicates across polls and returns each record with a link back to the source, so any figure can be checked against the federal record rather than trusted. Timing matters here: awards publish days after signature, and the award data lag guide explains why a quiet week is usually normal rather than a miss. Route parameters are listed at /llms-full.txt.
What this data will not tell you
Being honest about the gaps saves you from wrong conclusions.
Award records carry the obligated amount, not the competitor's margin, staffing or win rate. They show contract actions, not bids lost. A firm bidding constantly and losing looks identical to a firm that never bid. And classified work, along with certain intelligence community contracting, is not in public data at all, so an apparently quiet defense contractor may be busy.
FAQ
Can I find out how many contracts a competitor bid on and lost?
No. Public award data records what was awarded, not who competed. The number of offerors received is sometimes disclosed on an award notice or in a debriefing, and that is the only routine visibility into a competitor's losing bids.
How do I find a competitor's Unique Entity ID?
Search SAM.gov for the company. Entity registration records are public and carry the identifier along with the registration status and NAICS codes the firm claims. Registration lapses are visible too, and an expired registration means the firm is ineligible for award until it renews.
Is it legal to monitor a competitor's federal awards?
Yes. Federal spending records are published deliberately under transparency law and are open to anyone with no account required. This is public information about public money, and using it is standard practice across the industry.
How do I know when a competitor's contract comes up again?
Read the period of performance end date on the award, then subtract the agency's typical procurement lead time. Solicitations for a recompete commonly post six to twelve months before the incumbent contract ends, so the end date is a planning anchor rather than the date to start work.
Sources
The switch from DUNS to the Unique Entity ID on 4 April 2022 is documented by GSA. Award and subaward records, including recipient search and period of performance fields, are published at USASpending.gov with an open API documented at api.usaspending.gov.
Related: How do I find out who won a government contract I bid on? · How do I find federal contract awards by state?