Federal contract recompetes: how to find them before the solicitation
There is no published list of future recompetes, and anyone selling you one is selling you a guess. What exists is public and specific: the date every federal prime contract’s current period of performance ends, in the government’s own spending record, years ahead of the notice. This page is about how to read that, and what it does not tell you.
246,900 contracts end within 365 days in the data as of September 20, 2026.
The timeline, as the record shows it
- Award. The contract is signed with a period of performance and, usually, option years. Both are in the USAspending record from that day.
- Option exercised, or not. An exercised option extends the contract without a competition and moves the end date. This is why an end date is a date, not a verdict: it can move.
- The agency decides. Recompete, extend, consolidate into a larger vehicle, insource, or stop buying. Nothing in the award record says which, and the decision is taken before anything is published.
- Market research, then the notice. Sources sought and RFI notices come first, then the solicitation, on SAM.gov. By then the requirement is written, and the incumbent has been part of the conversation.
The gap between step one and step four is where capture work happens, and it is the only part of the sequence that is public from the start. That is the whole thesis of this site.
The five signals, and what they are worth
Each expiring contract collects points from fixed rules applied to fields in its award record. The arithmetic is public, the total is capped at 100, and every alert and every row shows which rules fired, in words.
- +40the same vendor has held at least two consecutive awards with this agency and NAICS
- +20at least one option has already been exercised
- +15competition was limited, or two or fewer offers were received
- +15a set-aside applies
- +10the current end date is also the potential end date, so no option periods are left
A high score means those signals are present. It is not a probability, it is not a forecast, and it is not generated by a language model — the AI disclosure says exactly what runs where.
Recompetes: common questions
What is a federal contract recompete?
A recompete is a new competition for work an agency is already buying, held when the current contract reaches the end of its period of performance. The incumbent has to win it again; everyone else is bidding against somebody who has been doing the job and talking to the customer. It is not the same as a new requirement, and it is not the same as an option year, which extends the existing contract without a competition.
How early can you see a recompete coming?
The end date is in the award record from the day the contract is signed, so it is visible years ahead in USAspending. What is not visible is the agency’s decision: whether to recompete, extend, consolidate the requirement into a larger vehicle, or stop buying it. That decision is normally taken and the requirement written well before a solicitation appears on SAM.gov, which is why the end date is the earlier signal.
How many contracts are coming up for recompete?
Nobody can say, and a service that quotes you a number is quoting you the wrong one. What can be counted is what ends: 246,900 prime contracts reach the end of their current period of performance within 365 days, 101,051 of them within 90. Some fraction of those will be recompeted. The award record does not say which.
Does Findingbase predict which contracts will be recompeted?
No. It scores each expiring contract with five fixed, published rules applied to fields in the award record, and shows which rules fired on every row. There is no model and no machine learning in the scoring. A high score means the signals of a renewal are present, not that a recompete is certain, and a contract that has not been through scoring is shown as not yet scored rather than as a zero.
Where do the solicitations appear?
On SAM.gov, which is the government’s own system and free. Findingbase does not publish solicitations, does not sell contracts and is not affiliated with any agency: it watches the end dates in USAspending so that you are looking at the right agency before the notice is posted.
Watch your own codes
Pick your NAICS codes and states once and get a weekly email of what has entered your window: the incumbent, the agency, the end date, the amount, and the score with its reasons. No sales call, and one-click unsubscribe on every message.
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