@pipeworx/usaspending

Connect: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/usaspending/mcp · Install: one-click buttons

Tools: 5

The U.S. Treasury’s USAspending.gov data on federal awards: contracts, grants, loans, and direct payments. Every dollar the federal government has awarded since 2008 (with patchier coverage going back to 2001), broken down by recipient, agency, sub-agency, NAICS code, and place of performance. Free, no auth.

Why this matters for AI agents

Where SAM.gov is opportunities (what the government is buying), USAspending is awards (what was actually contracted). For competitive intelligence, lobbying-spend ROI analysis, federal vendor research, or following the money on policy areas, this is the source of truth.

Common flows:

• “How much has X received in federal contracts?” → get_federal_spending({recipient: "X"}) → award totals by year, agency.
• “Who are the top contractors for the DoD?” → spend search filtered by agency.
• “Federal investment in AI / cybersecurity / clean energy?” → keyword + NAICS / PSC code search.

Used by the govcon_contractor_profile and lobbying_activity recipes.

Auth

None. USAspending is fully public, free.

Award classes

For company-level analysis, contracts are usually what matters. Grants matter for universities and nonprofits.

Common pitfalls

• Recipient name normalization. “Lockheed Martin Corporation,” “LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP,” “Lockheed Martin” all appear in the data. Aggregate case-insensitively after stripping legal suffixes for clean totals.
• Parent vs subsidiary. A large company has many subsidiaries, each with separate UEIs. USAspending includes parent-recipient hierarchy fields — use them for true company-level totals.
• Obligated vs outlayed dollars. “Obligated” is what the government committed; “outlayed” is what’s actually been paid. The gap can be years for multi-year contracts.
• NAICS codes for “we sell IT services.” A single contractor can have dozens of NAICS designations. Filtering by NAICS gets you only the awards classified that way; cross-NAICS analysis needs careful aggregation.
• Lag. Most awards appear within 30 days of obligation. The very-most-recent quarter is incomplete and revises upward.
• Unique award IDs. Awards have stable IDs (PIIDs for contracts, FAINs for grants). Use these for citation; recipient-level totals are the rolled-up view.

Tools

• usa_spending_by_agency — Break down federal spending by agency for a fiscal year (optionally by quarter). Returns spending amounts per agency. Use when analyzing budget distribution across government.
• usa_award_search — Search federal contract awards by keywords, agency, date range, or industry code (e.g., ‘541511’ for IT consulting). Returns recipient, award amount, dates, and contract type.
• usa_spending_by_category — Analyze federal spending by industry, product/service, recipient, or agency. Returns spending totals per category. Use for market research and identifying government contracting opportunities.
• usa_recipient_profile — Get a contractor’s complete federal spending history within a date range. Returns all contract awards and total amounts. Use to research supplier relationships and contract activity.
• usa_spending_trends — Track federal spending trends over time by keywords or agency, grouped by fiscal year, quarter, or month. Returns historical spending amounts for budget forecasting.