Compare
The government sites, the enterprise platforms, and the gap between them
Here is what you get by going to the government systems yourself, what the enterprise tools add on top, and where LastAwarded sits. The last rows are our own gaps.
Side by side
| Need | SAM.gov and USASpending directly | Enterprise capture platforms | LastAwarded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Find open notices in my codes | Yes, with patience. Saved searches exist but the interface is built for contracting officers. | Yes, with a capture team to run it. | Yes, cleaned up, tagged by work type, with who won last time on the same page. |
| See award history back to FY2001 for one code | The data is there. Building the view takes a spreadsheet and an afternoon per code. | Yes. | Yes, one page per code, rebuilt nightly. |
| Know the incumbent and when their contract ends | Scattered across award records under several spellings. | Yes, with analyst support. | Yes, resolved vendor records and a recompete table with a plain score. A company page opens with a read: what they hold that ends inside 24 months, how much they depend on their largest offices, whether they are growing and how they win. And one ending contract opens onto who is positioned around it. The government does not publish who bid, and the page says so. |
| Get alerted | SAM.gov saved-search email exists for notices. Nothing for recompetes. | Yes. | Yes: notices, deadlines and recompetes, on your schedule. |
| Plain-English brief of a notice | No. | Sometimes, through analysts. | Yes, AI-written from the notice text and labeled as such. |
| Turn my own hours and rates into a price | No. A spreadsheet, every time. | No. Proposal pricing is a separate product again, bought separately. | Yes. Roles, hours and salaries in, with the indirect pools applied in the order they actually apply, and the wrap rate out. |
| Know whether that price is in the room | The award amounts are published. Joining your own number to them is manual. | The opportunity platform does not hold your price. The pricing platform does not hold the market. | Yes, and this is the join nothing else makes: your total placed on the distribution of what that office has actually paid, and every role checked against what that role is published at. |
| Track what a contract is actually costing me | No. | No. That is the accounting system, which is a third product from a third vendor. | Yes. Cost against the contract and against each line, burdened by the same arithmetic the bid used, measured against what has actually been obligated. |
| Get the funding notice before the money runs out | No. | No. | Yes. The limitation of funds threshold watched against recorded cost, plus whether spend is running ahead of the clock. |
| Compare what I bid to what it cost | No. | No, because the estimate and the actual live in two different products and neither can see the other. | Yes, on one screen and through one implementation of the arithmetic, so the variance is the business rather than the difference between two systems. |
| Know my own win rate, by office and by code | The awards are published. Joining a year of your own bids to them by hand is a day of work nobody has. | Pipeline tools track what you told them. None of them check it against the record. | Yes. What you marked submitted, joined to the award published on that notice, counted only over what was actually settled. |
| Run a pipeline with an owner, a next action and a weighted forecast | No. | Yes, in the platform or in a separate pipeline product. | Yes. A list, a board by stage and a forecast weighted by your chance of winning, with tasks, gate reviews and color-team reviews on each pursuit, and each pursuit linked to its bid worksheet and its contract. |
| See every date I am tracking in one calendar | No. | Sometimes, for pursuits only. | Yes. Deadlines, next actions, reviews, contract dates and what is on your watchlist on one screen, and the same dates as a feed for your calendar program. |
| Keep the timesheets, pay inputs and job-cost ledger a rate is worked out from | No. | The accounting platform does, as a separate product. | Yes. A staff list, timesheets with approval and an audit trail, what payroll paid, a ledger of direct and indirect cost, and a rate set for each fiscal year worked out from your own entries. It does not run payroll, move money or file anything for you. |
| An analyst who calls the program office | No. | Yes. That is a real advantage and it is part of what the price reflects. | No. Everything here is read from what is published. |
| Price | Your own time, every day, for ever. | Tens of thousands a year, typically. | Paid plans from one person to an enterprise team. See pricing. |
| Teaming and subcontracting intelligence | Entity search exists. | Strong. | Subaward reporting: which primes paid which subcontractors, filterable by code and state, plus a directory of registered suppliers. And partner candidates ranked by how many reasons apply to you: pays subcontractors in your code, wins at your offices, holds a vehicle you are not on, holds a certification you do not. Your own company and excluded companies are left out, and your account keeps a shortlist. |
| Know what an office will buy next | Nothing. Some agencies publish a forecast spreadsheet on their own site, in their own format. | Yes, where the agency publishes one. | Repeat buys projected from the award record itself, with a window, a confidence and the buys behind it, so a market with no published forecast is still answered. Published agency lines sit in the same list where they exist, labelled as intentions rather than as readings of the record. |
| Reach the contracting officer before the RFP | Named on each notice, one notice at a time. | Yes, usually from a contact database. | Every officer and specialist named on the notices, searchable by office and by the codes they put out. Only what the notice published. |
| Find work that drew only one bid | The field is in the data. Filtering by it is not offered. | Sometimes. | Yes, a filter on both award history and recompetes. The clearest opening for a new supplier. |
| Know what the work goes for before bidding | Every award is published. Working out a range for one code at one office is a spreadsheet and an afternoon, and it goes stale. | Yes, and it is usually the most expensive part of the contract. | A price band per code and class, per office and nationally: the median, the middle half, the full spread, and the awards behind it. |
| Know whether the price is reachable | The fields exist and have to be joined by hand. | Yes, with analyst support. | Beside every band: how often it is competed, how often one supplier answered, whether it is fixed price, and how much of it the incumbent holds. |
| How far back the history goes | Everything, if you can query it yourself. | Often further back than here. Some start in fiscal 2000, usually on the dearer plans. | Fiscal 2001 onward, on every plan. Awards signed before October 2000 are not in it, so a platform that starts earlier holds years this product does not. |
| Civilian agency coverage | Complete. | Complete. | Complete: every awarding agency, every NAICS code, every fiscal year back to FY2001. |
| Task orders under IDIQs | Visible on USASpending, one order at a time. | Yes. | Yes. Every order carries the vehicle above it. A vehicle page shows the orders by buying office and by fiscal year, and every company that has received them with its share. |
| Search the vehicles themselves, not just the awards | No. A vehicle is a field on an award record, not a thing you can list or filter. | Yes, and it is a headline feature. | A directory of the IDIQs, GWACs, schedules, blanket purchase agreements and basic ordering agreements on record. The list finds a vehicle by any code it has carried. A vehicle whose own record is on file shows its ceiling, what is left and when it ends, and one known only from its orders says so. |
| Know whether there is room on a vehicle | No. The record never states how many companies hold one. | Yes. | A vehicle page shows every company that has received orders under it, with its share, after every one of them is resolved to a single identity, and the first orders by year. A vehicle known only from its orders says so, and no count of holders is stated for it. |
| Know whether a vehicle is still being used | The orders are there. Deciding from them takes a query per vehicle. | Usually. | Marked quiet when no order has been written in two years, whatever the end date says, because a vehicle can run for years after the last order. |
| See what an office buys without competing it | Nothing. Notices and orders are in different systems and are not joined. | Partly, through award analytics. | The share of an office's money in a code that leaves as an order rather than a competition, stated on the capture recommendation, with the vehicles it goes through named. |
| Know what will be funded before anything is bought | The DoD Comptroller publishes the P-1, R-1 and O-1 exhibits as spreadsheets. Reading one means downloading a workbook per year and reconciling columns that move between requests. | Yes, and a budget module is usually the dearest line on the price list. | Every procurement, research and operations line in the request, searchable, with each line read across published requests so a program about to start buying shows as one. See defense budget. |
| Know what the buying is about to require, while it can still be argued with | The Federal Register and Regulations.gov publish every proposed and final rule. Neither has any idea what a NAICS code is, so finding the ones that touch your work means reading close to thirty thousand documents a year. | Regulatory tracking is usually a separate product with its own subscription, aimed at compliance and counsel rather than at a supplier deciding whether to bid. | Every rule tagged to the NAICS and PSC codes it touches, sorted by the comment deadline rather than the publication date, with the market each one touches shown in money from the awards. And the open solicitations citing a clause whose text is under revision, which exists nowhere else because it needs the rules and the notices in one database. See rules and funding. |
| Know what Congress is willing to fund, not just what was asked for | Congress.gov carries every bill. Working out which of some twenty thousand touch federal buying, and which stage each reached, is a job. | Legislative tracking is another separate subscription, and the bills are rarely joined to the budget request or to the awards. | Appropriations, the annual defense authorization, procurement and small business bills, each with the stage it reached, the fiscal year it funds, and the budget lines underneath it where the Department asked for the money. |
| See who was handed work without competition, and when that ends | The justifications are posted to SAM.gov as notices. There is no way to list them, filter them by authority, or sort them by when the sole source expires. | Carried, as notices in a feed, like everything else. | A justification is treated as an object: the company, the FAR authority, the value, the date the lock comes off and what the agency said it would do to open it up. Sorted by the expiry rather than the posting date, so the top of the list is what can still be shaped. See sole source. |
| Know whether a market ever admits anybody new | The data is there. Working it out means reconciling every spelling of every company name across a decade, by hand, per market. | No. These platforms rank markets by size, which is the opposite question. | An openness score per code per buying office: how often somebody wins there for the first time, how large that first win is, which door it came through, and whether first-time winners ever win again. |
| Decide what to pursue, not just what exists | Nothing. The decision is yours to make from raw records. | Yes, and it is the reason these platforms cost what they cost. | A brief assembled from the record, a pursue or walk-away recommendation with every signal written out, and a short plan. Sized against your own company and your set-aside certifications. |
| Capture plan per pursuit | No. | Yes, usually a long form somebody has to keep current by hand. | Yes, and the facts around it are recomputed every time you open it, so the plan cannot drift out of date with the record. |
| Know what a named role costs an hour | GSA publishes the CALC rates. Nothing joins them to the award record or rolls them into a band. | Yes, and it is one of their headline modules. | Every awarded ceiling rate on the GSA schedules, rolled into a band per role: the median, the middle half, and what experience, a degree and a clearance are each worth on top. |
| See a competitor's published hourly rates | Searchable on CALC, one company at a time, disconnected from anything they have won. | Yes. | On their incumbent page, beside everything they have won, because both are the same company. |
| Grant opportunities, not just grant awards | Grants.gov has them. It is a separate site with a separate search and no award history behind it. | Yes, on the dearer tiers. | Posted and forecasted, forecasts first, each one opening onto what has already been paid under the same assistance listing. |
| Know whether a partner is debarred | SAM.gov publishes the exclusion list. Checking it is a separate search you have to remember to run. | Yes. | Marked on the vendor page above everything else, and every teaming candidate is checked against it before it is suggested to you. |
| Analyze any slice yourself, with maps | You can export and build it in a spreadsheet. | Yes, and it is what the seat price is for. | Six views over any filter: trends, shares with a concentration index, categories, two maps, vehicles and awardees. To take the data out: Excel and CSV on the main lists and for your own work, and an API key on Capture and Enterprise, with a public reference at /api/. |
| State and local opportunities | Not federal, so not there. | Yes, on the dearer tiers. | No, and it is not on the roadmap. There is no single federal source for it: fifty-odd separate portals, each publishing its own way. This product is federal, and does that properly rather than covering everything thinly. |
| Protest history | GAO publishes decisions on its website, readable one at a time. | Yes. | Not from GAO. GAO publishes no API, no feed and no bulk file, so the only way in is scraping their pages, which breaks on their next redesign. If that changes, it goes in. The bid protests decided at the Court of Federal Claims are here, as GovInfo publishes them, on a screen of their own and on the page of each company with a case. |
| National stock numbers and part-level buying | WebFLIS exists and needs an account. | Yes. | No. There is no open machine-readable NSN feed: WebFLIS requires a login and PUB LOG is a paid subscription. |
| DLA quote requests posted only to DIBBS | DIBBS shows them, one page at a time, after you accept a system-access banner. | Some do, by scraping. | No, and it is the gap we like least. DIBBS is where DLA puts its automated small-dollar RFQs, which is exactly the work a machine shop quotes, and DLA does not publish them anywhere else. It has no API, no feed and no bulk file, and every page sits behind a Department of Defense consent banner, so the only route in is a scraper that clicks through a system-access notice. That is not a published feed, it is someone else's login screen, and it is the one place this product will not go. DLA awards are all here, because they are reported to the central contract record like everyone else's. If DLA ever publishes DIBBS machine-readably, it goes in the same week. |
| Shred a solicitation into a compliance matrix | No. You read the PDF and build the table yourself, which is a day per solicitation. | Yes, and it is the feature every one of them leads with. Generated by a model from the document. | Yes, and extracted rather than generated: every row is the solicitation's own sentence with the section and paragraph it came from, so any row can be checked against the PDF in seconds and the table is the same whether or not AI is switched on. See the compliance matrix. |
| Spot the evaluation factor nobody asked you to submit | No, and nothing joins Section L to Section M for you. | Not offered. Their matrices list both sections; none of them cross-check one against the other. | Yes. Every Section M factor is matched to the Section L instruction behind it, and the ones with nothing behind them are reported at the top, with the words the match was made on printed so you can disagree with it. It is a question to the contracting officer with a deadline in days. |
| Page limits, fonts, margins and the deadline, separately | In the document, wherever they happen to sit. | Inside the matrix with everything else. | Pulled out and put first, because they are conditions for being read rather than requirements to be answered. A proposal over the page limit is returned, not marked down. |
| Proposal writing | No. | Often, on the dearer tiers. | The writing is yours. It holds what a proposal is written from: your past performance, resumes and rate sheets in the library, the compliance matrix and the priced bid, and it lays the first draft out with your own passages under each requirement. AI writing of one part from those passages is optional and off until you turn it on. |
| A library for your own documents | No. | Often. | Yes. Past performance, proposals, resumes and rate sheets, uploaded to a private library that only people on your account can open, and matched to the requirements of a solicitation with no AI. AI writing in a proposal draft is optional and off until the owner of the account or a manager turns it on. Until then nothing in the library goes to an AI model. |
| Take everything you put in with you | Your own spreadsheets are already yours. | Depends on the contract. | Yes. Your work is yours to take: the owner downloads everything the account holds as one file, every list, every record and every document. |
The middle column describes the category rather than any one product, because most of these platforms quote privately and a claim about a specific one would be hearsay. Check every claim in the other two columns against the sources themselves.
What the category costs, using only the prices companies publish themselves
Most platforms in this market quote privately, so most of the figures that circulate are hearsay and none of them appear here. Two do publish a price list on their own website, and those are public facts worth stating.
HigherGov publishes $500 a year for one user and $2,500 a year for up to ten, with enterprise priced on request. EZGovOpps publishes four annual tiers from $2,695 to a Platinum plan starting at $5,995, plus a one-time $299 account set-up cost. The platforms aimed at large primes and at government affairs teams do not publish anything, and are sold per seat with an annual commitment.
LastAwarded is $149 to $499 a month, with every part of the record on every paid plan. The tiers differ in how many watches, seats, rows and briefs you get, not in which parts of the record you are allowed to see. A budget module, a vehicle directory and labor rates are not upsells here, because cutting one record into modules and billing for each one is a pricing trick rather than a product.
Prices change. These were read from each company's own pricing page and are linked below so you can check them rather than take our word for it.
Where the money actually goes in this category
The expensive platforms are priced for organizations with a procurement department, a seat count and an analyst team. Two of the things they sell, analyst-tracked pre-RFP intelligence and named organization charts, are a standing human operation rather than a product, and no amount of engineering substitutes for them. Those are worth paying for if you need them. What this product does instead is the joining: the federal record organized around your codes and your calendar, with the bid, the contract and the books beside it, for a company of any size. That is what the price here buys.
See who was last awarded in your NAICS
Every code, every buying office, every vendor and every recompete, organized from the federal record and read nightly. Start on one code with no card. A plan opens every code.
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