Five free tools answer almost any government contract search: SAM.gov award notices (no account), SAM.gov's Contract Awards search (free account, the old FPDS data), USAspending.gov (no account), the DoD daily contracts page, and the SAM.gov Data Bank. Which one you want depends on the question you are asking: who won a specific solicitation, what a competitor holds, or who won anything in your niche today. Here is the lookup workflow for each, current as of July 2026, after a year in which the traditional answer (FPDS ezSearch) stopped existing.

Five free tools cover the whole award record

Tool 1: SAM.gov award notices (fastest, no account)

When an agency announces a winner, the award notice appears in SAM.gov's Contract Opportunities search, and you can read it without logging in. Award notices carry the awardee's name, the awarding office, and usually the dollar value.

1. Go to sam.gov, open Search, and pick the Contract Opportunities domain.
2. Enter your keyword, solicitation number, or agency.
3. In the filters, set Notice Type to Award Notice and sort by updated date.

One quirk we confirmed by testing: you cannot shortcut this with a hand-typed URL like sam.gov/search/?keywords=cybersecurity, which renders an empty search form. Run the search in the interface, then copy the long URL from the address bar if you want to save or monitor it; that URL encodes the whole query and re-renders your live results. The SAM.gov alerts guide covers saving and watching these searches in depth.

The limitation: notices only exist when a contracting officer publishes one. Plenty of awards, especially smaller ones, never get a notice. For those, you need the data.

Tool 2: SAM.gov Contract Awards search (the full record)

This is the search that replaced FPDS ezSearch when FPDS.gov was decommissioned in February 2026. It covers every unclassified contract action above the micro-purchase threshold, including modifications and task orders that never had a public notice.

1. Sign in to SAM.gov with a free Login.gov account (no entity registration needed just to search).
2. Select the Contract Awards domain in Search.
3. Filter by keyword, awarding agency, NAICS, set-aside, or legal business name. Partial matches work, which the old ezSearch never supported.

This is the tool for "did this company win anything from this agency in the last quarter" and "list every action on this contract number."

Tool 3: USAspending.gov (no account, best for company lookups)

USAspending republishes the same award data with zero login friction, and it has the feature the others lack: recipient profiles. Search a company and you get its entire federal book on one page: every award, obligation totals over time, subawards, and the agencies it sells to.

1. Open usaspending.gov and search the company name (or browse Award Search for keyword and agency filters).
2. Open the recipient profile and sort the award table by recent action date.
3. For buyer-side research, agency profiles show obligations and new award activity per agency.

This is the tool for competitor snapshots, incumbent research before a recompete, and any search where you would rather not manage a login.

Match the tool to the question you are asking

Tool 4: The DoD daily contracts page (defense, same-day)

For defense awards, skip the databases. The Department of War publishes every contract of $7.5 million or more each business day at 5 p.m. Eastern, in plain dated lists naming the awardee, amount, work, and contracting activity. If your question is "what did DoD award today," this page answers it hours or days before the data systems catch up. Our DoD contracts awarded guide breaks down the page's rules and each announcement's anatomy.

Tool 5: SAM.gov Data Bank (rankings and rollups)

For aggregate questions, the Data Bank's standard reports skip the query-building entirely: Top 100 contractors, small business goaling by agency, and federal procurement rollups. This is the tool for "who are the biggest contractors in this market"; for individual award lookups, tools 1 through 3 are the right reach.

Which tool answers your question?

Stop repeating the search: get told instead

Every search above has a repeat problem. The question "who won?" becomes "who wins next?", and the answer changes weekly. Rather than re-running five lookups, put a monitor on the result pages:

• Your keyword, award notices only. Run the SAM.gov search with the Award Notice filter, copy the full URL, and paste it into Visualping with a daily check and a prompt like "Alert me when a new contract award notice is posted or a new awardee is announced."
• A competitor or incumbent. Monitor their USAspending recipient profile weekly with "Alert me when this company receives a new award, modification, or extension." That single monitor covers new wins, ceiling increases, and the extensions that push a recompete date.
• The defense wire. Monitor the DoD contracts page daily with your platform or competitor names in the prompt.

Visualping AI reads each change, writes a plain-language summary, and applies an importance flag against your prompt, so the new awardee reaches your inbox while a re-sorted list stays out of it. In a March 2026 sample of Visualping checks, roughly 11.5% of detected changes were worth an alert; the rest were filtered as noise. The full source-by-source setup, including protest windows and teaming plays for the day an award drops, is in our guide to government contract award alerts.

FAQ: searching government contract awards

Where can I see who won government contracts for free?

All five tools above are free. Start with SAM.gov award notices for announcements (no account) and USAspending for the full transaction record (no account). The only login any of them requires is a free Login.gov account for SAM.gov's Contract Awards data search.

How do I find who won a contract if there is no award notice?

Search the solicitation number or a distinctive keyword in SAM.gov's Contract Awards domain, or check USAspending a week or two after the award decision. Contract actions must be reported to the federal data system even when no public notice is posted, so the record shows up on the agency's reporting cycle.

What replaced FPDS for contract searches?

SAM.gov's Contract Awards search, as of February 24, 2026. Same data, new interface, and a Login.gov account requirement for full search. USAspending remains the no-account path to the same award records; the federal procurement data system guide covers the whole migration.

Can I search state and local contract awards the same way?

Not in one place. Each state runs its own portal, and coverage of awards varies. Our directory of every award source links all 50 state portals plus DC, with notes on what each publishes.

Next time, let the answer find you. Create a free monitor on your search results page and get an email when a new winner appears.