Federal Contract Solicitations Posted (Monthly)

## What this measures

The number of contract solicitations federal agencies posted on SAM.gov in each month: requests for proposals, requests for quotes, invitations for bids, and combined synopsis/solicitations for commercial items.

## Why it matters

A solicitation comes before an award, so the count is the front of the federal spending pipeline, months before the obligations show up in USAspending.

## How to read it

Strongly seasonal: agencies rush to obligate money before the fiscal year ends on September 30, so the late summer runs highest and October to January lowest. Compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The series starts in January 2020 at 12,700. The latest month, September 2026, is 25,724. The high is 30,308 (August 2023) and the low 10,629 (December 2021).

## What it does not say

Not every federal purchase is posted: purchases under $25,000, orders under existing contracts and some classified or urgent buys are not. Solicitations rarely carry a dollar value, so these series count notices, not dollars. One requirement can be posted as several notices.

## How it's built

Each notice is counted once, by its posted date and its base type, the type it was first posted as (a solicitation later turned into an award notice still counts as a solicitation). Solicitations = solicitations and combined synopsis/solicitations. History from January 2020: SAM.gov replaced FBO.gov as the system of record in November 2019, and about half the notices carried over from FBO have no department. From the last 25 months Palanor keeps one slim row per notice and recomputes the closed months on every run; a month is published three days after it ends.

## Source

SAM.gov Contract Opportunities, U.S. General Services Administration: the public data extracts on sam.gov/data-services (ContractOpportunitiesFullCSV.csv, every active notice, daily; the Archived Data files FY2018 on). Public domain. Refreshed daily by /api/cron/sam-opportunities-sync.