Find And Analyze Competing Bidders
How to Identify and Analyze Potential Bidders for a Government Contract or Grant Opportunity
Identifying potential competing bidders for a contract or grant opportunity can help you competitively position your proposal, understand how strong competition is likely to be, and can assist in teaming efforts.
Most Contract Opportunity pages will show an automatically generated list of potential competing bidders based on the agency, PSC, set-aside, and other details of the contract opportunity. To find a contract opportunity enter the title or solicitation ID in the search bar at the top of each page or search for the Contract Opportunity in the Contract Opportunity search. If a contract opportunity has not been publicly disclosed, see below for two other methods to identify potential bidders.
Note that for historical contract opportunities, HigherGov lists potential competing bidders as if the contract opportunity was being competed today. This can be helpful in identifying contractors that may have bid on an opportunity and not won or identifying who would potentially bid if an historical opportunity is reopened or recompeted in the future.
If you use the HigherGov CRM, each saved Pursuit will have a list of the potential bidders listed on the Bidders tab. The accuracy of the bidders shown here is dependent on how fully data has been completed for the pursuit (for example, Agency, Set Aside NAICS codes, and Title / Description).
The HigherGov Ranking Analysis Tool sorts parent contractors and grant recipients by their total level of federal obligations. This can be useful in finding potential bidders who have relevant prior experience to compete for a contract or grant.
To access the HigherGov Ranking Analysis Tool, go to Explore --> Analysis in the sidebar and choose the Awardee Rankings tab. To search for potential bidders, first select the relevant category of Awards under the Includes drop-down (Contracts or Grants, Sub or Prime). Next, add Filters for data relevant to the contract opportunity.
For contracts the recommended filters to add include (but is not limited to):
- Agency (Awarding)
- NAICS or PSC
- Set Aside (select No Set Aside Used for Full & Open competition)
- Potential Value (suggest setting a very wide range)
For grants the recommended filters to add include (but is not limited to):
- Agency (Awarding)
- Amount Obligated (suggest setting a very wide range)
- Assistance Type
- Place of Performance
If you are not finding many results, you can extend the date period to the past 3 or 5 years or try broadening or removing filters. If the opportunity is a contract is being competed under a Master IDIQ or BPA vehicle, we recommend looking at the relevant vehicle page and analyzing the awardees and vehicle share of that vehicle specifically.
Once you have identified a potential bidder, you can learn more about their prior experience, contract vehicle access, partners, and other details relevant to their competitive positioning by reviewing their Awardee page. For more information see the below guide:
If the Awardee has a GSA Schedule such as a Multiple Award Schedule, the schedule can provide more context about what services and products the contractor provides beyond what you can typically find on their website and also can assist in understanding how they price their services and products.
You can find an Awardee's GSA schedule on the Awardee page. Alternatively, you can also search for schedules by going to the Document search page, selecting the Source filter and choosing Federal Schedule, and then typing in the awardee name as a Keyword.