How to read this thing

A row, chip by chip

58% chance of 2 bidders or fewer The prediction. It is the share of past awards in this buyer's history for this kind of work that drew two offers or fewer, smoothed toward the overall rate. Green above 80, red at 20 and under, amber in between. It is a probability about the field you would face, not a promise.

HIGH · this tier is right 81% of the time Confidence is about the evidence, not the prediction. HIGH means the exact cell (this buyer, this product code, this industry code) holds enough history to stand on. MEDIUM means we had to widen the cell to find enough history. LOW and VERY LOW mean a handful of awards or fewer. The hit rate after the dot is measured on real outcomes for that tier — see our record for how.

no signal — not enough history, so we show no number When a buyer has never bought this kind of work, there is nothing to predict from. We say so instead of dressing up the national average as a forecast.

buyer takes newcomers 38% of the time Of this buyer's awards, the share that went to a firm they had never used. High is good news for an outsider.

open to outside bidders mixed — check before you bid restricted — likely already promised Whether work like this is genuinely competed or placed directly (sole source, brand name, 8(a) direct award). A quiet row that is restricted is not an easy win: either the notice itself says so, or work like it almost never goes to an outsider here.

bid it get known to this office first The bid-or-knock line. When quiet awards in this cell were mostly competed, a proposal is the right move. When they were mostly placed without competition, the winner was known to the office before any notice appeared, and that is the work to do first. It shows only when the cell has enough quiet awards to say.

$120K–$410K (37 past awards) What similar work has paid: the middle half of past award values in the cell, with the count behind it. "Varies widely" means the spread is too big to be a useful guide.

competition prediction A struck chip means there is an answer and it is behind the subscription. An absent chip means there is no answer.

details → opens the row in full, with the past awards behind the prediction: who won, how many offers, what it paid, whether it was competed. The evidence is the product; check it before you spend a week on a proposal.

The three boards

Browse is work posted right now on SAM.gov with a deadline still ahead. Expired notices drop off automatically. The contracting contact from the notice is shown on every row.

Coming up is contracts someone holds today whose term ends inside your window, built from the federal award archive. Nothing has been posted yet — that is the point. Extra chips here: drew 1 offer last time (how many bid when it was last awarded), what usually follows (in this cell last year, how often the incumbent kept it, it changed hands, or nothing followed), holder was new to this buyer, and who posts for this office (the contracting staff whose names appear on this office's recent notices). September 30 is the federal fiscal year end, when a large share of contracts roll over.

Forecast is what agencies say they intend to buy, from two feeds. DHS publishes its own, with an estimated posting date, award quarter, dollar range, the requirements contact and the small-business coordinator; where a DHS forecast is a follow-on to a contract in our archive, the row carries the same prediction chips as Coming up. The GSA-run government-wide forecast tool carries dozens of other agencies' planned buys: award year, value band, set-aside strategy and status, usually with a contact email, but no release date. The feed filter shows either on its own.

People

Everyone named as the contact on a SAM.gov notice since fiscal 2022: name, email, phone, office, what they post and how often. That part is public and open to anyone.

Subscribers see the record: each officer's notices joined to the award record by solicitation number, so the row says how the work they put out actually went. Drew 2 offers or fewer is the share of their awards with an offer count that were that quiet. Placed without competition is the share whose award record says no one was allowed to compete. Went to a newcomer is the share won by a firm with no award from that agency in the three years before. A record shows only once five notices match an award; below that the row says so instead of guessing.

Filters, saved searches and alerts

Industry code, agency, text, product code, set-aside, state, deadline window and value band on the open board; holder size, offers last time and current value on Coming up; dollar range and state on Forecast. Junk in a filter is ignored rather than erroring.

Subscribers can save any search as a standing filter (the "Tell me" box under the search). It runs after each nightly refresh and reports new matches daily, weekly or monthly by email and in Messages. Each match is reported once. The first run shows the current matches and marks the rest as seen, so you are not flooded. A standing filter also has a CSV button on your account page.

Pipeline

Press track on any row to put it in your pipeline with a status — bidding, watching, won, lost, passed — and your own notes. The row is kept as it was when you tracked it, so it stays after the notice closes or the contract ends, and a won or lost bid keeps its record. The account page shows what is due within 14 days. The whole pipeline downloads as CSV.

Downloads

Every board and every standing filter has a Download CSV button that exports the whole current search, every row, as often as you like, with the same columns the page shows in plain words. No cap, no meter.

Our record

Predictions are checked against what the government later publishes about each award. The accuracy shown on every chip is measured on a fixed window of the most recent years and published the same way whether it goes up or down, so nobody — including us — picks the years that flatter it. The full record and the method →

Your account

One subscription works on one device at a time. Signing in somewhere new asks whether to sign the other device out; you can also release a device from your account page. Idle devices are signed out after 30 days.

Under what you track, codes worth a look lists the industry codes that small firms winning in your codes also hold awards in, from the federal record, with how many notices are open in each today. The same list sits on every market page. It is how you find the work filed under a number that is not yours.

Questions: the Support page keeps the whole conversation in your account; we answer there and by email, usually the same day.

Billing runs through Stripe; the account page opens the portal for card changes and cancellation. Lost password: use the reset link on the sign-in page. Anything else: support@uncontestedbids.com.