USAspending.gov
USAspending
Also known as: USAspending, the federal spending transparency site
Visit USAspending →Operated by U.S. Treasury (Bureau of the Fiscal Service)
At a Glance
- Official site
- usaspending.gov
- Run by
- U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service
- When you use it
- To research agency spending, awards, and trends — and via a public API
- Cost
- Free to search, download, and query via the API
- Mandated by
- FFATA (2006) and the DATA Act (2014)
What It Is
USAspending.gov is the federal government's public spending-transparency website, run by the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Fiscal Service. It was created to satisfy the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) of 2006 and expanded under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) of 2014, which require the government to publish where its money goes. The site aggregates federal spending across contracts, grants, loans, and other financial assistance, pulling contract data largely from FPDS and combining it with agency financial data. Anyone can search awards by agency, recipient, NAICS code, place of performance, and time period; visualize spending trends; and download the underlying data — and there is a robust public API for programmatic access. Where FPDS is the detailed contracting system of record, USAspending is the broader, more accessible public window onto the same awards plus the rest of federal spending.
When You Touch It
- To research an agency's spending — see totals and trends by agency, program, and recipient.
- To profile competitors and incumbents — look up a company's federal awards across agencies.
- For data at scale — the public API and bulk downloads support programmatic market analysis.
- To validate a market's size — gauge how much money actually flows into your NAICS and place of performance.
Key Features
| Feature | What It Means |
|---|---|
| The public transparency layer | It exists to make federal spending public under FFATA and the DATA Act, so it is built for open search and download. |
| Broader than contracts | It covers contracts, grants, loans, and other assistance — a fuller picture of federal spending than FPDS alone. |
| Draws contract data from FPDS | Its contract records are largely fed from FPDS, so the two are linked views of the same awards. |
| Free API and bulk data | A public API and downloadable datasets let firms analyze spending programmatically at scale. |
What It Means for an SDVOSB
USAspending is the easiest place for an SDVOSB to answer the big-picture question — where is the money actually going? — before drilling into FPDS for the contract-level detail. Use it to size a market: how much a target agency spends in your NAICS and location, which recipients dominate, and how spending is trending year over year, so you invest capture effort where real dollars flow. Its recipient search doubles as competitor intelligence — look up the incumbents and likely competitors to see the breadth of their federal footprint. And because there is a free API, a more data-driven SDVOSB can pull spending data programmatically to build its own pipeline and market models rather than clicking through one award at a time.
Watch Out For
- Treating it as the contracting system of record — for authoritative contract-action detail, FPDS is the source.
- Mixing spending types — grants and assistance are included, so filter to contracts when you mean contract spending.
- Reporting lag — data reflects what agencies have reported, which can trail recent activity.
- Reading totals without context — a big agency total says little until you filter to your NAICS, set-aside, and location.
Run the Numbers
Frequently Asked
What is USAspending.gov?
USAspending.gov is the federal government's public spending-transparency website, run by the Treasury Department. Created under the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) of 2006 and expanded by the DATA Act of 2014, it aggregates federal spending — contracts, grants, loans, and other assistance — into searchable, downloadable data. Its contract data is drawn largely from FPDS. Anyone can search by agency, recipient, NAICS code, and time period, or use the free public API, at no cost.
How is USAspending different from FPDS?
FPDS is the government's detailed contract-reporting system of record, used mainly by the acquisition community. USAspending.gov is the public transparency website that aggregates federal spending for the general public, pulling contract data from FPDS and combining it with grants and other financial assistance. USAspending is broader and more user-friendly; FPDS is the authoritative, contract-focused source. For market research, many firms start on USAspending to size a market and then use FPDS for contract-level specifics.
Can I download data from USAspending.gov?
Yes. USAspending.gov is built for open access: you can download award data in bulk and query it through a free public API. That makes it useful for firms that want to analyze federal spending programmatically — building pipelines, sizing markets, or profiling competitors — rather than reviewing awards one at a time in a web interface.
Primary Sources
- USAspending.gov — Official site
- USAspending.gov — Public API
- FAR Subpart 4.14 — Reporting Executive Compensation and First-Tier Subcontract Awards
Plain-English reference, not legal advice. Government systems are periodically consolidated, renamed, or migrated to new addresses, and the FAR/DFARS sections that govern them are amended from time to time — always confirm the current system, its URL, and its requirements against the official site and the actual solicitation before relying on it, and consult qualified counsel for your specific situation.
Change log (1)
- LaunchedPublished the federal contracting systems & databases reference covering the online systems an SDVOSB registers in, is found in, and is evaluated through — SAM.gov (FAR Subpart 4.11), the Unique Entity ID (FAR 52.204-6), VetCert (13 CFR Part 128), SAM.gov Contract Opportunities (FAR 5.201), the Dynamic Small Business Search (FAR 19.202-2), SBA SubNet (FAR Subpart 19.7), the Federal Procurement Data System (FAR Subpart 4.6), USAspending.gov (FFATA/DATA Act), CPARS (FAR Subpart 42.15), FAPIIS (FAR 9.104-6), the Supplier Performance Risk System (DFARS 252.204-7019/7020), the electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (FAR 52.219-9), and the FFATA Subaward Reporting System (FAR 52.204-10) — each with an at-a-glance quick-facts card showing the official site and operating agency, a when-you-touch-it list, a key-features table, an SDVOSB-specific angle, watch-outs, FAQPage, Article, Dataset, and BreadcrumbList structured data, primary-source citations, and cross-links into the glossary, how-to guides, forms, clauses, FAQ, and the set-aside eligibility, size-standard, win-probability, price-to-win, and subcontracting calculators.