GovCon API MCP server

GovCon API MCP

Most SAM.gov MCP servers wrap one dataset behind six to ten tools. This is six tools that reach 53 operations across five federal sources, already joined on the identifiers they share.

US federal procurement data for agents: 668K SAM.gov opportunities, 10.6M FPDS prime contract transactions, 880K SAM-registered entities, 226K FFATA subawards, 164K exclusions, 14K decided GAO protests, and ~262K GSA CALC labor rates. Cross-linked on UEI, CAGE, PIID and NAICS, so one question does not become five integrations.

Counts as of 2026-08-31, rounded. The corpus grows daily, so this file is a snapshot: current per-source totals and freshness dates are always live at /api/v1/status, no key required.

Free 14-day trial, no credit card. Get a key, then pipx install govconapi-mcp.

---

Why this, and not the next SAM.gov wrapper

Most federal-contracting MCP servers are thin proxies over the official SAM.gov API. Three concrete differences.

• Five sources, already joined. SAM.gov opportunities and entities, FPDS contract transactions, USAspending/FFATA subawards, SAM exclusions, SBA DSBS certifications and GSA CALC rates, resolved onto shared identifiers. A wrapper hands your agent one dataset and leaves the joins to it.
• No SAM.gov entity registration and no company UEI required. GSA documents 10 requests/day for a non-federal user without a SAM role, and 1,000/day with one. Access here is an email and a key.
• Six tools, each named for a job. resolve, search, get, market, price, contact reach every dataset and record: a model picks the right one more reliably from six than from fifty, and their definitions take about a sixth of the context. The 53 single-purpose tools behind them are one setting away (GOVCONAPI_TOOLS=all).

---

Connect

Claude, no install. In Claude (web, desktop or mobile), add a custom connector with the address https://mcp.govconapi.com/mcp and sign in with your email. Steps: govconapi.com/mcp/tools#claude-connector.

ChatGPT, no install. In ChatGPT on the web, add a custom MCP server with the same address, authentication OAuth, and sign in with your email. Steps: govconapi.com/mcp/tools#chatgpt.

Local install, for Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Zed, Claude Desktop config files and custom agents:

pipx install govconapi-mcp

pipx puts the binary somewhere Claude Desktop's sandbox can spawn it. On macOS, brew install pipx first. With uv, use uvx --from govconapi-mcp govconapi-mcp. Python 3.10+.

Claude Desktop (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS, %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "govconapi": {
      "command": "govconapi-mcp",
      "env": { "GOVCONAPI_KEY": "gca_your_key_here" }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude. For Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Zed and custom Python agents, see the install reference. To get the 53 single-purpose tools instead of the six, add "GOVCONAPI_TOOLS": "all" to the same env block.

---

Ask it things like

Find DoD cybersecurity solicitations posted this month over $1M.

Who are the entrenched incumbents in NAICS 541512, and how competitive is that market?

Is this contract entering recompete, and is the incumbent's set-aside certification expiring first?

Turn this UEI into a contractor profile: registration, awards, subcontracting activity, exclusions.

Has this vendor ever been excluded from federal contracts?

---

The six tools

Tool	What you ask it
resolve	Names to IDs: an agency to its filter value, title words to NAICS codes, a company to its UEI, a DUNS to a UEI
search	One of 17 datasets: opportunities, forecasts, contracts, vehicles, subawards, recompetes, companies, entities, partners, protests, exclusions, wage determinations and more
get	One record by ID: an opportunity, contract, vehicle and its holders, recompete, company profile, vendor risk report, protests on a solicitation, wage determination
market	A NAICS market: size, competition, solicitation language, small buys, leaderboards
price	Contract value benchmarks, where a bid ranks, GSA labor rates, SCA and Davis-Bacon wage rates
contact	A company's decision-maker, or a contracting officer

They call the 53 single-purpose tools below, so each capability keeps its plan.

The 53 single-purpose tools (GOVCONAPI_TOOLS=all)

Full reference with parameters: TOOLS.md.

Stage	Tools	Answers
Market research	12	where a NAICS gets bought, by whom, how contested
Opportunity discovery	3	what is live now that matches my capability
Capture and teaming	12	who is winning, who to team with, who to call
Bid, price and negotiate	9	what it should cost, labor rates, is my team clean
Award and compliance	13	who won, on what terms, was it protested
Agencies, awards, exclusions, identifiers	4	name resolution, award notices, screening, DUNS to UEI

15 tools require Pro and return HTTP 402 on Developer. 3 more work on Developer with specific fields gated, and the labor-rate benchmark needs any paid plan. The other 34 have no plan distinction. Each is marked in TOOLS.md.

---

What it is not

• Not a replacement for SAM.gov as the system of record. We normalize public federal data and preserve source provenance. For the authoritative record, or for a submission, go to SAM.gov.
• Not real-time. Opportunities refresh daily. If your use case turns on minute-level freshness, this is the wrong tool and we would rather you knew now.
• Not state or local. US federal procurement only.
• Not a proposal writer, CRM, or BD platform. It is a data layer. If you want an end-to-end capture suite, buy one of those instead and point it here.
• FPDS coverage starts 2024-10-01 (FY2025 onward). Deep multi-year historical market research is a real limitation, not an oversight.
• Source defects pass through. SAM and FPDS contain impossible dates, $0 amounts and null UEIs. We surface them as they are and document the gotchas rather than silently cleaning them, because the corruption belongs to the system of record.

---

Plans

Plan	Price	Limits
Free trial	$0, 14 days	50 requests/day
Developer	$19/mo	1,000 requests/hour
Pro	$39/mo	adds the 15 Pro tools and richer fields on 3 more

MCP access is included with every plan, including the trial. No separate tier.

---

Troubleshooting

GOVCONAPI_KEY environment variable is not set , add it to the MCP config above and restart the client.

Invalid API key , keys start with gca_. Get one at govconapi.com.

Rate limited (429) , free trial is 50 calls/day, Developer 1,000/hour.

A 402 , that tool is Pro. TOOLS.md marks which.

---

Privacy Policy

Full policy: https://govconapi.com/privacy

What this server does with your data, in short:

• Your API key is read from GOVCONAPI_KEY in your own client's config and sent to https://govconapi.com in the Authorization header. This server process does not write it to disk or transmit it anywhere else.
• Your tool calls become ordinary GovCon API requests. As with any request to the API, we log the timestamp, endpoint, query parameters, response status, response time and which key made the call, for billing, rate-limit enforcement and abuse detection. Usage logs are retained for 90 days.
• No conversation content leaves your machine. Only the tool parameters your client fills in are sent, never the surrounding chat, and we log the status a request returned, not the contents of the response.
• We do not sell your data.
• The data returned is public US federal procurement data from SAM.gov, FPDS, USAspending, SBA DSBS and GSA CALC.

---

Links

• API reference: https://govconapi.com/api-guide
• Tool reference: https://govconapi.com/mcp/tools
• Live coverage and freshness: https://govconapi.com/api/v1/status
• Machine-readable docs: https://govconapi.com/llms.txt and https://govconapi.com/openapi.json
• Privacy: https://govconapi.com/privacy · Terms: https://govconapi.com/terms
• Support: support@govconapi.com

MIT licensed. Data sourced from SAM.gov, FPDS, USAspending, SBA DSBS and GSA CALC, all public federal data.