SAM.gov RFP volume, Q1 2025

This is the first of a quarterly research note on US federal RFP volume, drawn from SAM.gov — the federal procurement portal where contract opportunities, sources-sought notices, and pre-solicitation announcements are posted publicly.

The note describes what the portal disclosed in Q1 2025 (January through March). All claims map to public records on sam.gov or usaspending.gov. Where we don’t have a precise number, we describe the directional signal and the public source a reader can verify against. Where we have a specific public number, we cite it.

This is research, not opinion. Where we make an inference, we label it as one.

Methodology and what to read this as

SAM.gov publishes contract opportunities in real time. The portal is searchable and exportable, but counts vary based on filters (notice type, NAICS code, agency, set-aside, status). Different filter combinations produce different totals. The directional signals in this note come from filter combinations applied consistently across quarters; the absolute numbers are sensitive to filter choice.

Two structural caveats up front:

This note is not a definitive volume report. SAM.gov includes pre-solicitation, sources-sought, RFI, RFP, and combined-synopsis notices, plus modifications to each. Counting them as “RFP volume” requires filtering. Different research outfits apply different filters; their totals do not match each other. We disclose our filter choice and ask readers to apply their own when they cross-check.

Quarter-over-quarter changes can reflect calendar effects. Federal procurement patterns are seasonal. Q1 (January-March) is the period after the federal Q1 close (October-December) and before fiscal-year-end pressure (the federal year ends September 30). Year-over-year comparisons are more meaningful than quarter-over-quarter for federal data.

Filter choice for this note

We used the SAM.gov Contract Opportunities export with these filters:

Notice types: Solicitation (active and historical), Combined Synopsis/Solicitation, Pre-solicitation. Excluded: Sources Sought, RFI, Award Notice, Justification, Special Notice.
Posted date: January 1, 2025 through March 31, 2025.
Status: All (active and inactive at time of pull).
Set-aside: All.
NAICS: All.

This filter approximates “actual RFPs that vendors could have responded to in Q1.” It excludes early-signal notices (sources-sought, RFI) which would inflate the count.

Readers wanting different cuts — IT-only, set-aside-only, civilian-only — can replicate the search on sam.gov directly. The portal’s search and export tools are public.

Pull date. The SAM.gov export used for this note was taken in early May 2025, after the Q1 window had fully closed. A reader replicating the query later in 2025 or in 2026 will see different record counts because solicitations are amended, cancelled, reposted, and occasionally withdrawn on rolling schedules. The directional signals in this post are stable to that drift; precise counts are not.

Headline directional signals

Three observations, framed directionally and pinned to public-record characteristics rather than precise counts.

Volume in Q1 2025 was substantial and broadly comparable to recent prior-year Q1 periods. A casual reader of sam.gov in March 2025 would have seen a steady drumbeat of new postings every business day, with weekly cadence consistent with the historical pattern. The portal does not present a “total this quarter” headline; vendors who track volume professionally do their own counting against the portal’s exports. We did our count and observed a quarter that “felt normal” — no dramatic compression and no dramatic expansion versus the same quarter the previous year.

Civilian agency posting volume continued to outpace defense in raw notice count. This is consistent with structural facts about how DoD procures (large, multi-year vehicles versus civilian’s higher count of smaller contracts). USAspending.gov disclosures align with this directional fact when filtering on FY26 Q1 obligations.

The mix of NAICS codes shows continuing weight on IT services and professional services. NAICS 541 (Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services) and 5415 (Computer Systems Design and Related Services) remained the largest non-construction notice categories. Construction (NAICS 23) is a separate category that’s volume-heavy but procured under FAR Part 36 with different processes; we mention it for completeness.

These are framing observations, not headlines. We are deliberately not publishing a single “Q1 had N RFPs” number because the N varies by filter and a single number would be cited out of context.

What changed structurally in Q1 2025

Two structural changes worth noting, drawn from the FAR and from public agency announcements.

Continued momentum on commercial-item procurement. The trend toward FAR Part 12 commercial-item procurement — which simplifies compliance versus FAR Part 15 negotiated procurement — continued through Q1. Civilian agency notices increasingly cite commercial-item authority. The shift is incremental, not abrupt; vendors who follow the FAR will have noticed.

Set-aside emphasis remained high. Small-business set-asides, women-owned, service-disabled-veteran-owned, HUBZone — the percentage of Q1 notices flagged as a set-aside in some form remained at recent-period levels. The exact percentage is searchable on sam.gov by applying the set-aside filter; we observed no inflection.

Neither of these is a Q1 2025 surprise. They are structural continuities. We mention them because vendors planning their Q2 pipeline should expect them to continue.

Agency-level notes

Three agencies worth specific notes, each with their public-record citation:

Department of Veterans Affairs. Continued high volume of medical and IT modernization notices. The VA is one of the most active civilian buyers on SAM.gov by notice count and Q1 was no exception. Vendors with FedRAMP or HITRUST posture have an obvious pipeline filter.

Department of Health and Human Services (and component agencies). Notable volume in research-services and IT-services categories. CMS and NIH each posted at recent-period levels. Public-health-data infrastructure remained a recurring theme in solicitations posted by HHS components.

General Services Administration. GSA’s role as a vehicle host (MAS, OASIS+, Alliant) means many vendor opportunities flow through GSA-issued solicitations against existing vehicles. Q1 saw continued task-order activity against the major vehicles. Vendors not on a vehicle should note that the path to many federal opportunities runs through onboarding to one.

What we explicitly are not claiming

To avoid contributing to the bad practice of “stat-stuffing” research notes with numbers that can’t be cleanly cited:

We are not publishing a precise “Q1 RFP count” number.
We are not publishing a year-over-year change percentage.
We are not publishing an average contract value.
We are not publishing win-rate data, because vendor win rates aren’t on SAM.gov.

Each of those numbers exists in some form for a sufficiently determined analyst with access to the right pulls. None of them survives publishing without context that’s longer than the number itself.

VisibleThread’s post on government proposal writing makes the same point operationally: vendors who chase volume metrics on federal procurement often miss the qualitative signal — agency-level priorities, vehicle mix, set-aside structure — that actually drives whether a vendor can compete. The note is what it is: directional, pinned to the public record, useful for orientation rather than for precise modeling.

What to do with this

For a vendor planning Q2:

Pull SAM.gov directly. Don’t rely on aggregators. The portal is free, searchable, and exportable. A 30-minute filter session on the agencies you care about is worth more than any third-party note.
Track the agencies, not the totals. Three agencies with consistent volume in your category are a pipeline. The federal-wide total is noise.
Note the FAR authority on each notice. Part 12 vs Part 15 vs simplified acquisition procedures (FAR Part 13) each implies a different compliance burden. The notice tells you which.
Check the set-aside flag. If you don’t qualify for the set-aside, you can’t bid. The flag is in plain sight on every notice.
Read the FAQ section of each notice. Pre-bid Q&A is where the real evaluation criteria surface. Buyers post the questions other vendors asked. The Q&A is sometimes more informative than the SOW.

Compounding the data

This is the first quarterly note. The methodology will improve. The next quarterly note (Q2 2025, dropping in early Q3) will:

Add a year-over-year comparison filtered consistently with this note.
Add agency-level notice counts for the top 10 federal buyers by notice volume.
Add a NAICS-level breakdown for the top non-construction categories.
Track the trend in commercial-item authority adoption.

Each addition will only land if the underlying public data supports it cleanly. We are not going to manufacture precision.

The research stance

The blog has a research pillar. The research pillar’s job is to publish what the public data reveals — accurately, with citations, without inventing precision. SAM.gov is the federal procurement portal of record. USAspending.gov is the obligations record. The FAR is the rulebook. These are the primary sources. Anything we publish in this pillar maps to one of them.

The temptation in research notes is to lead with a number. Numbers travel. They get cited. They get repeated, often without their context. We are not optimizing for that. We are optimizing for the reader who needs to orient themselves on federal procurement and who would be poorly served by a single number that doesn’t survive scrutiny.

Q2’s note will read similarly. Anchored to the public record, directional where the data is messy, specific where it is clean. The note’s job is to be cited because it is correct, not because it is loud.

The takeaway

Q1 2025 federal RFP volume was substantial and structurally consistent with recent quarters. Civilian agencies led notice count; IT and professional services led category mix; commercial-item authority and set-aside designations continued their established trends.

A vendor planning a federal pipeline should track agencies and vehicles, not the federal-wide total. The portal is free and the data is public; any vendor doing federal work who isn’t running a weekly SAM.gov pull is missing signal.

Q2 note in early Q3.