About PlainFedContract

Our Mission

PlainFedContract exists to make federal government contract spending data transparent and accessible to everyone. The U.S. federal government awards hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts every year, but understanding where that money goes requires navigating complex procurement databases and deciphering government data formats. We believe taxpayers, researchers, journalists, small business owners, and policy analysts deserve a simpler way to explore this critical public information.

Our mission is to bridge the gap between raw government procurement data and the people who need it. Whether you are a small business owner exploring federal contracting opportunities, a journalist investigating agency spending patterns, a researcher studying government procurement trends, or simply a taxpayer curious about how public funds are allocated, PlainFedContract provides a clean, searchable interface that makes the data understandable without requiring specialized technical knowledge.

Data Sources

All data on PlainFedContract comes directly from USAspending.gov, the official open data source of federal spending information maintained by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. USAspending.gov was established under the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) of 2006 and expanded by the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) of 2014. It is the authoritative, government-mandated source for federal contract award data.

Our database aggregates data from multiple USAspending.gov API endpoints, including spending-by-award records, recipient profiles, agency references, geographic spending breakdowns, and NAICS industry classifications. The data includes:

  • 5,000+ Contractors: Companies and organizations receiving federal contract awards, ranked by total obligations. Each profile includes UEI identifiers, recipient level classifications, and cumulative award amounts.
  • 111 Federal Agencies: Every department and agency with contract activity, including budget authority figures and total obligation amounts.
  • 499 NAICS Industries: Contract spending categorized by the North American Industry Classification System, the standard used by federal agencies to classify business establishments when awarding contracts.
  • 56 States and Territories: Geographic distribution of federal contract spending by place of performance, covering all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 5 U.S. territories.

Publisher

PlainFedContract is built and maintained by ", an independent web studio that creates free data portals making government information more accessible to the public. Kiznis Studio operates a portfolio of data portals spanning government spending, education, healthcare, infrastructure, and other domains where public data exists but is difficult to access through official interfaces.

We are not affiliated with the U.S. government, USAspending.gov, the Department of the Treasury, or any federal agency. PlainFedContract is an independent project that transforms publicly available government data into a more user-friendly format. Our revenue comes from advertising, not government contracts or agency partnerships, ensuring editorial independence in how we present the data.

Methodology

Our automated ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipeline downloads data from USAspending.gov's REST API endpoints, normalizes contractor names, computes aggregations, builds relationship tables between agencies, contractors, industries, and states, and loads everything into an optimized SQLite database. No data is fabricated, interpolated, or editorially modified. All values trace directly back to USAspending.gov records.

For complete details on our data processing pipeline, the specific API endpoints we query, how contractor profiles are built from aggregated award data, and the known limitations of our approach, see our comprehensive methodology page.

Data Currency

Our database currently reflects federal contract spending through fiscal year 2024 (October 2023 through September 2024). USAspending.gov receives data from federal agencies on a rolling basis through the Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation (FPDS-NG), with agencies required to report contract actions within three business days of execution.

We refresh our database on a quarterly cycle, pulling updated data from USAspending.gov to capture newly reported contract actions, modifications, and de-obligations. Each refresh produces a complete snapshot of cumulative spending data rather than incremental updates, ensuring consistency across all pages. The most recent data pull was performed in Q1 2025.

Editorial Independence

Content on PlainFedContract is compiled by our editorial team. Raw data from BLS, DOL, EEOC, and related labor agencies is transformed into readable profiles by our continuous editorial pipeline, validated against the source before publication. The PlainFedContract editorial team, operating under Kiznis Studio, is responsible for editorial standards, methodology, and corrections.

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from employers, agencies, or any labor-market entity. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense — advertisers do not influence which entities we cover or how we present data, and they do not receive preferential placement.

Limitations & Disclaimer

This site is for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, federal contract data has inherent limitations that users should understand:

  • Data may lag behind current contract actions by several weeks due to agency reporting timelines and FPDS-NG processing cycles.
  • Classified contracts, particularly in defense and intelligence, may not appear in the public data or may have redacted recipient information.
  • Only prime contract data is included — subcontract spending is not captured.
  • Our database covers the top 5,000 contractors by obligation amount; smaller recipients may not appear.
  • De-obligations and contract modifications may cause totals to differ from initial award values.

PlainFedContract does not provide financial, investment, or business advice. Contract award data reflects historical spending patterns and should not be used as the sole basis for business planning or investment decisions. The presence of a company in this database indicates only that it has received federal contract awards, not an endorsement. Always verify important information with official sources at USAspending.gov.

Editorial Standards

PlainFedContract uses editorial drafting to summarize structured federal-contract datasets and generate first-pass narrative for entity pages, NAICS overviews, and guides. Every published page is reviewed by a Kiznis Studio human editor before release, with a particular focus on (a) factual claims that can be verified against USAspending.gov, FPDS-NG, GSA Advantage, or SAM.gov; (b) disclosure of dataset limitations and reporting lag; and (c) avoidance of speculative attribution (e.g., implying an entity is "guaranteed" future revenue from a contract obligation). Aggregated totals and ranking pages are computed deterministically from the source dataset — no model is asked to invent a number that does not exist in the underlying USAspending.gov record.

Methodology, limitations, and column-level data dictionaries are linked from every detail page via the methodology page. Material editorial changes (new dataset vintage, new ranking computation, new entity-classification rule) are reflected by bumping the page dateModified and re-running the underlying ETL. We do not back-fill the byline date when only formatting changes.

Contact

For questions, feedback, data correction requests, or partnership inquiries, email hello@plainfedcontract.com. We welcome reports of data discrepancies and typically respond within two business days.