The best free government tools, organized by what you're trying to do, with plain-English explanations of how to use them.
Type any FAR/DFARS clause number or topic and get a plain-English breakdown in seconds. No law degree required.
Powered by Acqlerate AI. Requires a free account. Results are for educational purposes only, not legal advice.
Mandatory registration for any company receiving federal contracts. Also the authoritative source for UEI lookup, debarment checks, and exclusion verification. Every contractor must be active here before award.
The official help desk for SAM.gov. Search the knowledge base or open a ticket when a registration, UEI or entity validation gets stuck. It is free, so never pay a third party to fix a SAM.gov problem.
Every federal solicitation over $25K — RFPs, RFQs, Sources Sought notices, and awards. Filter by NAICS code, agency, set-aside type, and dollar threshold. This is where capture starts.
Every awarded federal contract since 2008. Use it for competitor research, agency buying patterns, historical pricing benchmarks, and incumbent identification. The single most powerful BD research tool that most people underuse.
Subcontracting opportunities posted directly by prime contractors. If you're a small business looking to team on a large program, start here. Primes list subcontracting goals, NAICS codes, and contact info.
RFQs issued specifically to GSA Schedule holders. If your company has a GSA Multiple Award Schedule, agencies use eBuy to request quotes. Only accessible to registered Schedule contractors.
The best free tool for IGCE labor pricing. Search 230,000+ labor rates from GSA Multiple Award Schedule contracts by job title, experience level, and contract type. KOs use it to build IGCEs; contractors use it to sanity-check their rates.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics. ~830 occupations × 530 metro areas. Useful for establishing a wage baseline in IGCE development, especially for labor categories that don't appear in GSA CALC+.
Official federal travel per diem by city and county — lodging, M&IE, and incidental rates. Required for travel cost proposals and IGCEs that include travel line items. Updated annually each October.
Daily-updated electronic Code of Federal Regulations — the authoritative source for FAR, DFARS, and agency supplements. Full text search, redline comparisons, and amendment history. Bookmark this over any unofficial FAR site.
Official FAR text with linked DFARS, agency supplements, and policy updates from WarU and FAI. Good for navigating the supplement hierarchy and understanding how agency-specific rules layer onto the base FAR.
The government-wide rewrite of the FAR: plain-language text, most non-statutory rules stripped out, and part-by-part deviation guides as agencies adopt the rewritten parts. If a FAR citation looks different than you remember, check here before assuming it's a typo.
Plain-English acquisition encyclopedia with definitions, policy references, and community annotations. Look up any acronym, milestone, or process — written by practitioners for practitioners. Great first stop when you encounter unfamiliar jargon.
The old single Defense Acquisition Guidebook has been retired and replaced by 12 functional-area guidebooks under the Adaptive Acquisition Framework: cost estimating, requirements, test and evaluation, and more. Essential for PMs managing ACAT programs.
Worth repeating: the award history database is the foundation of federal market research. Find who's winning in your space, at what prices, under which contract vehicles, and how long awards last. This is how smart BD shops do their homework.
Federal Procurement Data System data, the source behind USASpending's contract records. Its reports moved to SAM.gov in 2020 and the FPDS.gov public search followed in February 2026. Use it for detailed contract-level queries and action-by-action history. The Contract Awards API is replacing the old FPDS feed for custom analysis.
SBA's replacement for the old Dynamic Small Business Search (DSBS). Search small businesses by NAICS code, socioeconomic certifications (8(a), WOSB, SDVOSB, HUBZone), and location. KOs use it for market research and small biz sourcing. Contractors use it to find teaming partners.
Comprehensive directory of all federal agencies, departments, and sub-agencies with contact info, mission statements, and website links. Useful when you're mapping out a new agency target and need to understand its structure and buying offices.
Free training for DoW civilian and military acquisition professionals, formerly the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) before the November 2025 rebrand. Mandatory DAWIA certification courses, CLPs, and continuous learning modules. If you're a government employee, WarU is your primary certification path — Acqlerate supplements it, not replaces it.
Civilian agency acquisition training and FAC-C (Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting) certification. The civilian equivalent to WarU's DAWIA. If you're a contracting officer at a non-DoD agency, your cert path runs through FAI.
Plain-English acquisition education for every role — KOs, PMs, contractors, and BD teams. Fourteen modules covering the full acquisition lifecycle. Earns CLPs (self-reportable) and PMI PDUs. Module 1 is completely free, no credit card required.
Free open-source AI tools purpose-built for acquisition professionals: MCP servers that connect AI to live SAM.gov data, USASpending.gov, FAR/DFARS, and BLS wage data. Includes a SOW/PWS builder and IGCE builder. Requires ~30 min setup. Best for tech-comfortable users.
Connect the Claude AI desktop app to live federal data using 1102tools' MCP servers. Once configured, you can ask Claude to pull real-time SAM opportunities, look up contract awards, or query BLS wage data — without leaving your chat window.
General-purpose AI drafting for SOWs, market research summaries, IGCE narratives, and evaluation criteria. Excellent at structuring acquisition documents if you give it the right context. Note: never input sensitive contract data, CUI, or source selection information.
These tools are powerful. But they assume you already know the system. An AI that queries SAM.gov for you is only useful if you understand what a Sources Sought is, why it matters, and what to do with the results. The same goes for IGCE builders, SOW generators, and pricing tools — the output is only as good as the judgment of the person reading it. That's what Acqlerate teaches: the acquisition foundation that makes every tool more effective.
Acqlerate teaches you the acquisition system in plain English, so when you pick up these tools, you know exactly what you're doing with them.