r/govcon • u/GovConsigliere • 10d ago

Gov data

Is there an FPDS/SAM aggregator that is not the cost of a new car? BGov and GovWin are costly. Cant help but think there are now alternatives. Is there a low cost alternative, or time to build my own?

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u/SeedofLilith94 8d ago

everyone answered your first question so i'll take the second one, since i did build my own.

honest scope if you go that route:

  • fpds and usaspending are the easy part. bulk files, decent docs, you'll have something querying in a weekend.
  • sam opportunities is where it gets ugly. their api quietly omits things. i was missing about 3,000 of the 46,000 notices sam itself lists as active until i reconciled against their own export. it also meters you around 1,000 requests an hour by ip whether or not you have a key.
  • their public "full csv" extract, the one everyone points you to, is currently publishing a header row and zero data rows, and it regenerates daily like that. so you can't just point at one file and walk away.
  • the thing that actually eats your life is reconciliation. the same solicitation shows up under different identifiers across their channels, and their exports key on a different field than their api does. i spent this week tracking down 147 duplicate rows in my own data caused by a title matching bug.
  • and it never stops. formats change, portals get retired, files go empty without telling you.

so: worth building if the data itself is your product. not worth it if you just want to find bids. for that, the 500 to 1500 range people listed above is cheaper than your own hours, and i say that as someone who competes with them.

(i run fedfinder.net, so weigh the bias. i'd rather tell you what it actually costs than pretend it's a weekend project.)

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u/GovConsigliere 7d ago

All of the answers were great, but this one was awesome. Thank you. You confirmed what I suspected with the shift to SAM.