Original research · RFPCapture
2026 Federal Opportunity Benchmark: Analysis of SAM.gov Opportunities
A data-backed analysis of 71,161 federal opportunities in the RFPCapture shared catalog, derived from public SAM.gov (and Grants.gov) notice fields.
Headline finding. The RFPCapture shared catalog contained 71,161 federal opportunities with usable posting dates in this snapshot.
- Dataset
- RFPCapture shared catalog of federal opportunities derived from public SAM.gov and Grants.gov notice fields (structured catalog fields only).
- Sample size
- 71,161 opportunities with an authoritative posting date after scanning 74,255 titled catalog rows (3,094 lacking authoritative posted date excluded).
- Date range
- Posting dates 2011-07-06 to 2026-09-04 (full catalog span). Volume-over-time charts emphasize recent months; growth uses trailing 90 vs prior 90 posting days ending 2026-09-04.
- Source provenance
- Counts of opportunities, agencies, NAICS, PSC, notice types, set-aside labels, and posting months are derived by RFPCapture from public SAM.gov/Grants.gov fields. They are analysis products, not official SAM.gov statistics. Response-window rankings are not published on this page.
- Last updated
- 2026-09-04 · Published 2026-09-03
Executive summary
This benchmark summarizes the public federal opportunity corpus currently represented in RFPCapture: 71,161 notices across 2,046 agency strings, 844 NAICS codes, and 1,470 PSC codes. Response windows are measured only where both posting date and deadline are present (69,894 notices).
Figures below are RFPCapture-derived counts from structured public source fields. They are not official SAM.gov statistics and should not be read as a complete historical archive of every federal notice ever published.
Key findings
- The RFPCapture shared catalog contained 71,161 federal opportunities with usable posting dates in this snapshot.
- DEPT OF DEFENSE › DLA LAND AND MARITIME accounted for 10.6% of observed opportunities (7,540 notices).
- NAICS 236220 (Commercial and Institutional Building Construction) was the largest industry code at 5.2% of opportunities with a NAICS value.
- The most common notice type was “Combined Synopsis/Solicitation” (52.4% of notices with a typed classification).
- Among 51,029 notices with an explicit set-aside field value, 86.8% carried a set-aside designation and 13.2% were labeled unrestricted / no set-aside used.
- 28.3% of opportunities had a blank or unspecified set-aside field and are excluded from the set-aside vs unrestricted split.
- Response-window medians and agency/NAICS turnaround rankings are published in the Federal Proposal Timeline Benchmark, which uses authoritative posting dates only and excludes amendment-like notices from the primary sample.
- Among opportunities with a populated PSC, PSC 53 was the most frequent classification (5.4% of PSC-tagged notices).
What the data shows right now
- The RFPCapture shared catalog contained 71,161 federal opportunities with usable posting dates in this snapshot.
- DEPT OF DEFENSE › DLA LAND AND MARITIME accounted for 10.6% of observed opportunities (7,540 notices).
- NAICS 236220 (Commercial and Institutional Building Construction) was the largest industry code at 5.2% of opportunities with a NAICS value.
- The most common notice type was “Combined Synopsis/Solicitation” (52.4% of notices with a typed classification).
- Among 51,029 notices with an explicit set-aside field value, 86.8% carried a set-aside designation and 13.2% were labeled unrestricted / no set-aside used.
- 28.3% of opportunities had a blank or unspecified set-aside field and are excluded from the set-aside vs unrestricted split.
- Response-window medians and agency/NAICS turnaround rankings are published in the Federal Proposal Timeline Benchmark, which uses authoritative posting dates only and excludes amendment-like notices from the primary sample.
- Among opportunities with a populated PSC, PSC 53 was the most frequent classification (5.4% of PSC-tagged notices).
Cite with care
- Figures are RFPCapture catalog analysis products, not official SAM.gov statistics.
- Catalog coverage reflects ingestion windows — treat long historical date spans as catalog presence, not complete market history.
- For citation-grade response windows and agency turnaround rankings, use the Federal Proposal Timeline Benchmark.
Federal opportunity volume
Catalog totals: 70,942 SAM.gov-classified notices and 219 grant-sourced notices. 1,811 notices show amendment/modification language in the title or type field (descriptive only; not removed from totals).
Agency analysis
Agency labels are shortened from the raw SAM hierarchy string for readability. Counts remain at the full hierarchy key (no invented department roll-ups).
NAICS analysis
| NAICS | Opportunities | Share of NAICS-tagged |
|---|---|---|
| NAICS 236220 — Commercial and Institutional Building Construction | 3,586 | 5.2% |
| NAICS 336413 | 2,762 | 4% |
| NAICS 332911 | 1,739 | 2.5% |
| NAICS 238220 | 1,662 | 2.4% |
| NAICS 332510 | 1,617 | 2.3% |
| NAICS 332722 | 1,206 | 1.7% |
| NAICS 541330 — Engineering Services | 1,194 | 1.7% |
| NAICS 811210 | 1,099 | 1.6% |
| NAICS 811310 | 1,034 | 1.5% |
| NAICS 237990 | 982 | 1.4% |
| NAICS 334220 | 920 | 1.3% |
| NAICS 541519 — Other Computer Related Services | 899 | 1.3% |
| NAICS 513210 | 893 | 1.3% |
| NAICS 334419 | 841 | 1.2% |
| NAICS 541715 — R&D in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences | 825 | 1.2% |
PSC analysis
69,781 opportunities had a populated Product Service Code in classification or spending-context fields.
Opportunity types
| Notice type | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Combined Synopsis/Solicitation | 37,150 | 52.4% |
| Solicitation | 17,639 | 24.9% |
| Presolicitation | 5,846 | 8.2% |
| Sources Sought | 5,006 | 7.1% |
| Special Notice | 4,111 | 5.8% |
| Award Notice | 845 | 1.2% |
| Federal Grant | 219 | 0.3% |
| Justification | 113 | 0.2% |
| Sale of Surplus Property | 2 | 0% |
Set-aside analysis
Explicit set-aside designations: 44,283. Labeled unrestricted / no set-aside used: 6,746. Blank/unspecified fields: 20,132 (excluded from the set-aside vs unrestricted split). Program-family detail is published in the 2026 Federal Small-Business / Set-Aside Benchmark.
| Set-aside label | Count | Share of explicit |
|---|---|---|
| Small Business Set Aside - Total | 19,064 | 37.4% |
| Total Small Business Set-Aside (FAR 19.5) | 17,351 | 34% |
| No Set aside used | 6,746 | 13.2% |
| Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) Set-Aside (FAR 19.14) | 2,976 | 5.8% |
| Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Set Aside | 1,859 | 3.6% |
| SBA Certified Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Program Set-Aside (FAR 19.15) | 1,270 | 2.5% |
| Women-Owned Small Business | 362 | 0.7% |
| 8(a) Set-Aside (FAR 19.8) | 259 | 0.5% |
| 8a Competed | 176 | 0.3% |
| Indian Small Business Economic Enterprise | 175 | 0.3% |
| Historically Underutilized Business (HUBZone) Set-Aside (FAR 19.13) | 111 | 0.2% |
| HUBZone Set Aside | 108 | 0.2% |
| Indian Small Business Economic Enterprise (ISBEE) Set-Aside (specific to Department of Interior and Indian Health Services) | 92 | 0.2% |
| Buy Indian Set-Aside (specific to Department of Health and Human Services, Indian Health Services) | 86 | 0.2% |
| 8(a) Sole Source (FAR 19.8) | 69 | 0.1% |
Response windows
This page is the volume and market-mix authority. Detailed response-window medians, exclusion controls (amendment-like notices), and agency/NAICS turnaround rankings are published in the Federal Proposal Timeline Benchmark, which uses authoritative posting dates only and never uses ingestion timestamps (run_utc / created_at_utc). Browse live federal opportunities and federal procurement forecasts for current market coverage.
Corpus context only (not a turnaround ranking): 69,894 notices in this snapshot have both an authoritative posting date and a deadline. Median calendar days (posted → deadline): 11 · 1,155 invalid/outlier windows discarded. Cite Timeline Benchmark for agency/NAICS comparisons.
Fastest-growing categories
Period-over-period growth rates are not published in this edition because the prior 90-day posting window is too sparse relative to the trailing window (catalog coverage ramp). Publishing percentage growth would overstate market change. Monthly volume charts above remain available.
Concentration of federal procurement activity
Within this catalog snapshot, opportunity volume concentrates in a relatively small set of agency offices and NAICS codes: the top agency string accounts for 10.6% of notices, and the top NAICS accounts for 5.2% of NAICS-tagged notices. Combined Synopsis/Solicitation dominates typed notice classifications at 52.4%.
What this means for federal contractors
- Short response windows are common in this corpus — teams that wait for weekly digests may miss notices with single-digit day windows.
- Agency office strings and NAICS concentration imply that coverage strategy should be specific (office + code), not only department-level.
- Set-aside fields are often blank; treat unspecified set-aside as unknown, not as unrestricted.
- Use this benchmark to calibrate expectations; validate any pursuit against the live notice on SAM.gov.
Original research
Methodology
- Data source
- RFPCapture shared federal opportunity catalog (company_id shared SAM.gov / Grants.gov ingestion). Primary public source: SAM.gov Contract Opportunities; grant-sourced rows counted separately when source_type or notice_id indicates Grants.gov.
- Date range
- Posting dates 2011-07-06 to 2026-09-04 (full catalog span). Volume-over-time charts emphasize recent months; growth uses trailing 90 vs prior 90 posting days ending 2026-09-04.
- Sample size
- 71,161 opportunities with an authoritative posting date after scanning 74,255 titled catalog rows (3,094 lacking authoritative posted date excluded).
- Inclusion / exclusion
- Included: shared-catalog opportunities with non-empty titles and a posting date field used for volume analysis. As of the 2026-09-04 integrity update, ingestion clocks (run_utc/created_at_utc) are disallowed for citation of response windows; agency/NAICS turnaround rankings are withdrawn here. Excluded: rows without titles; USASpending award obligations; gated/tenant overlays. Blank set-aside fields are unspecified, not unrestricted.
- Amendments / duplicates
- One catalog row per notice_id in the shared company scope (database uniqueness). Amendment/modification language in titles or opportunity_type is counted as amendment-like for descriptive context only; amendments are not removed from volume totals because each notice_id is a distinct SAM record in the catalog. For response-window analysis that excludes amendment-like notices, see the Federal Proposal Timeline Benchmark.
- Response window
- Detailed response-window analysis (exclusions, authoritative-date audit, agency/NAICS rankings) is deferred to /research/federal-proposal-timeline-benchmark. Corpus-level window sample size retained for context only and must not be cited as the turnaround authority.
- Agency / NAICS grouping
- Agency volume uses the raw SAM agency hierarchy string on each row. Display labels shorten multi-segment hierarchy to department › leaf office without inventing roll-up counts. NAICS = first 4–6 digits of the structured naics field. PSC = normalized classificationCode / pscCode / spending-context PSC when present. Public hub links are attached only when a matching public agency/NAICS/PSC hub slug exists.
- Public vs derived
- Counts of opportunities, agencies, NAICS, PSC, notice types, set-aside labels, and posting months are derived by RFPCapture from public SAM.gov/Grants.gov fields. They are analysis products, not official SAM.gov statistics. Response-window rankings are not published on this page.
- Date-field audit
- run_utc and created_at_utc are ingestion/database clocks and are never used as publication dates. Authoritative posting dates come from opportunities.posted_date (column), raw_json.postedDate/openDate, or sam_summary_json equivalents.
- Posted-date sources (eligible rows)
- Column 70,216; raw_json 945; sam_summary_json 0.
Source notes
Public-source figures come from SAM.gov, Grants.gov, or other primary listings stored in the catalog. RFPCapture-derived figures are analysis products computed from those fields and are labeled separately.
- RFPCapture-derivedOpportunity counts, agencies, NAICS, PSC, set-aside labelsCounts of opportunities, agencies, NAICS, PSC, notice types, set-aside labels, and posting months are derived by RFPCapture from public SAM.gov/Grants.gov fields. They are analysis products, not official SAM.gov statistics. Response-window rankings are not published on this page.
- Public sourceSAM.gov / Grants.gov notice fieldsRFPCapture shared federal opportunity catalog (company_id shared SAM.gov / Grants.gov ingestion). Primary public source: SAM.gov Contract Opportunities; grant-sourced rows counted separately when source_type or notice_id indicates Grants.gov.
- RFPCapture-derivedResponse-window rankingsNot the citation authority on this page — see Federal Proposal Timeline Benchmark for authoritative-date turnaround analysis with exclusion tables.
Limitations
Catalog coverage reflects RFPCapture ingestion windows and filters, not the entire historical SAM.gov archive. Sparse older posting dates may exist; growth metrics intentionally use trailing 90-day windows to avoid calendar-span distortion. Agency string variants are not fully consolidated. Title-keyword amendment detection is approximate. This page is the volume / mix authority; Timeline Benchmark is the response-window authority. This page is the volume/mix authority; Timeline Benchmark is the response-window authority.
Metrics omitted or not rate-published
- Fastest-growing categories / period-over-period growth rates — prior 90-day posting window is too sparse relative to the trailing window (catalog coverage ramp), so percentage growth would overstate market change
- Agency/NAICS response-window rankings on this page — withdrawn; cite Federal Proposal Timeline Benchmark
- Ingestion-timestamp (run_utc/created_at_utc) posting-date proxies — disallowed for turnaround citation
Citation kit
Use this kit to cite RFPCapture research in articles, briefings, newsletters, and AI systems. Statistics below are also rendered as HTML on this page — not image-only.
Short research summary
The RFPCapture shared catalog contained 71,161 federal opportunities with usable posting dates in this snapshot. Dataset: 71,161 opportunities with an authoritative posting date after scanning 74,255 titled catalog rows (3,094 lacking authoritative posted date excluded).. Publisher: RFPCapture. Canonical: https://www.rfpcapture.com/research/2026-federal-opportunity-benchmark.
Recommended citation
RFPCapture. 2026 Federal Opportunity Benchmark: Analysis of SAM.gov Opportunities. September 3, 2026. Retrieved from https://www.rfpcapture.com/research/2026-federal-opportunity-benchmark.Headline statistics
The RFPCapture shared catalog contained 71,161 federal opportunities with usable posting dates in this snapshot.
DEPT OF DEFENSE › DLA LAND AND MARITIME accounted for 10.6% of observed opportunities (7,540 notices).
NAICS 236220 (Commercial and Institutional Building Construction) was the largest industry code at 5.2% of opportunities with a NAICS value.
The most common notice type was “Combined Synopsis/Solicitation” (52.4% of notices with a typed classification).
Among 51,029 notices with an explicit set-aside field value, 86.8% carried a set-aside designation and 13.2% were labeled unrestricted / no set-aside used.
28.3% of opportunities had a blank or unspecified set-aside field and are excluded from the set-aside vs unrestricted split.
Response-window medians and agency/NAICS turnaround rankings are published in the Federal Proposal Timeline Benchmark, which uses authoritative posting dates only and excludes amendment-like notices from the primary sample.
Among opportunities with a populated PSC, PSC 53 was the most frequent classification (5.4% of PSC-tagged notices).
Chart and graphic assets
Downloadable SVG chart exports include RFPCapture attribution. Prefer citing the canonical study URL alongside any graphic.
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