Stop Guessing: Use Archive Search
Archive Search is the research tool inside SAMstream that answers the question every contractor asks before bidding: what has the government actually paid for work like mine? The video above walks through it live. Here is what it covers.
What Archive Search gives you
SAMstream has categorized federal award data going back to 1976. When an agency posts an award, you can look it up: the winning price, the awardee, the date, and in many cases the original solicitation paperwork. That means you can bid with a number you can defend instead of a guess.
How to research pricing with Archive Search
- Search your industry. Type a term like “janitorial” and Archive Search returns awarded contracts across the country.
- Filter down to your market. Narrow results by state, city, or even zip code, and by set-asides such as woman-owned, veteran-owned, SBA, or HUBZone.
- Open the details. View Details shows the full award record, and when the paperwork is still available you can open the original solicitation to see exactly what the government paid for.
- Check a specific opportunity. From any opportunity page, the “try to find pricing” button scrapes the archive for that project’s own award history, so you can see what it went for the last time it was competed.
Turning history into a winning bid
Many SAMstream users pull the last award for a project, run it through an inflation calculator, and land remarkably close to the winning number. For the full strategy, read our guide to using past contract data to bid smarter and winning with past performance.
Ready to price your next bid with real data? See how SAMstream works or start your free 7-day trial.
