How InstantMarkets collects and processes procurement opportunity data from federal, state, local, and special district sources.

Where InstantMarkets data comes from

InstantMarkets aggregates procurement opportunity data from thousands of public-sector sources across the United States. Here's how that works.

Primary sources

We collect data directly from government procurement portals, including:

Federal portals — SAM.gov (the central repository for U.S. federal contracting opportunities), FBO, and agency-specific procurement sites
State procurement portals — each U.S. state maintains its own bidding system (e.g., COMMBUYS in Massachusetts, BidSync in various states, JAGGAER-powered portals, and many custom agency systems)
County and city portals — municipal procurement boards, county purchasing offices, and public works departments
School district portals — K-12 district purchasing offices, often managed through state cooperative purchasing programs
Higher education portals — university and community college procurement offices
Special districts — utilities, transit authorities, water districts, port authorities, and housing authorities

How data is collected

InstantMarkets uses automated monitoring to check source portals on a regular schedule and ingest new and updated postings. When a new opportunity is published at the source, it typically appears in InstantMarkets within a few hours.

Data processing

Once collected, opportunity listings are:

Normalized — standardized into a consistent format regardless of source
Categorized — tagged with opportunity type, NAICS codes (where inferable), and agency type
Deduplicated — cross-agency reposts of the same opportunity are merged

What we don't collect

InstantMarkets focuses on publicly posted solicitation opportunities. We do not collect:

Non-public or invitation-only bids
Internal government procurement that isn't publicly advertised
Private-sector procurement