How to Register in SAM.gov

SAM.gov (System for Award Management) is the federal government's official database of businesses eligible to receive contracts. You must be registered and active here before you can bid on anything.

Warning

Plan for 1-3 hours to complete the form, then up to 10 business days (allow at least ten) for the government to process and activate your registration.

Worried about the cost? SAM.gov registration is free. Here's how to avoid paid middlemen. →

Before you start

Have all of this ready before you open SAM.gov. Gathering it up front is the single best way to avoid getting stuck halfway through.

Your EIN (Employer Identification Number), which must match IRS records exactly
Your legal business name must match your IRS filing exactly (even punctuation matters: “LLC” vs “L.L.C.” can cause a mismatch)
Your business physical address (P.O. boxes are not accepted)
Your business start date and fiscal year end month
Your primary NAICS code (from your GovPath quiz)
A login.gov account (free; create one at login.gov if you don't have one)

Create or log in to login.gov

login.gov is the federal government's single sign-on system. You use it to access SAM.gov (and many other government sites). If you don't have one, go to login.gov and create an account. You'll need a phone or authenticator app for two-factor authentication.

Open login.gov →

Start your entity registration

Go to SAM.gov, click “Sign In” (top right), and log in with your login.gov credentials. Once signed in, open your “Workspace,” find the “Entity Management” widget, and click “Get Started” → “Register Entity.”

Tip

SAM.gov will assign you a UEI (Unique Entity Identifier) automatically in this first step. You do not need to get one separately. Write it down when you see it.

Core Data

30-60 minutes

This is the main business information section. Work through it carefully. Errors here are the #1 reason registrations get rejected.

3a. Legal Business Name

Warning

Your legal business name must match your IRS records exactly: character for character, including punctuation and abbreviations. “Smith Construction LLC” and “Smith Construction, LLC” are different to the IRS. If there's a mismatch, your TIN validation will fail and you'll need to start over.

How to verify: compare to your EIN confirmation letter (CP 575) or check at irs.gov.

3b. Physical Address

Must be a real street address. P.O. boxes are rejected. This becomes your registered business address in the federal system.

3c. Business Information

Business start date (the date your business was legally formed)
Fiscal year end (most small businesses use December)
Country of incorporation (United States for domestic businesses)
Entity type (select the one that matches: Sole Proprietor, LLC, Partnership, Corporation, etc.)

3d. TIN (Tax Identification Number)

Enter your EIN here. SAM.gov will submit it to the IRS to validate.

Warning

TIN validation can take 3-5 business days. SAM.gov will pause your registration until it clears. This is normal. It doesn't mean anything is wrong. You'll get an email when it's approved and you can continue.

3e. NAICS Codes

Enter your primary NAICS code (the one from your GovPath quiz). You can add additional codes if your business operates in multiple industries. Your primary NAICS code determines which contracts you appear in searches for.

Assertions

15-20 minutes

This section is about what your business does and how big it is, not your finances. You'll cover the goods and services you provide (tied to your NAICS codes), your size metrics, any Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) details, and whether you do disaster-relief work.

4a. Products and Services

The goods and services you offer, organized by your NAICS codes, plus size details like your number of employees and average annual receipts. This is where the government learns what you actually sell.

4b. EDI Information

Optional Electronic Data Interchange details. Most small businesses just starting out can skip this.

4c. Disaster Relief

Whether your business provides disaster relief services. Most small businesses select “No.”

Executive compensation and proceedings are not here. They're part of Core Data, not Assertions. You only report executive compensation if, in your last fiscal year, your business received 80% or more of its annual gross revenue from federal awards andmore than $25 million in federal revenue, and even then you report only the total compensation of your five highest-paid executives (there is no $100,000-per-executive rule). Almost every small business starting out doesn't meet that test and answers “No.”

Tip

The Assertions section is shorter than it looks. Most small businesses spend 10-15 minutes here.

Representations & Certifications

45-90 minutes

This is the longest section: dozens of federal acquisition regulation (FAR) clauses that you're certifying your business complies with.

Warning

Do not start this section unless you have 45-90 uninterrupted minutes. SAM.gov may time out if left idle, and this section cannot be saved mid-way in some versions of the interface.

What you're actually certifying, in plain English:

Most of the R&C section covers standard rules that apply to all federal contractors, things like: you won't discriminate in hiring, you comply with wage laws, you haven't been debarred from federal contracting, your company isn't owned by a foreign adversary government. For the vast majority of small businesses, the answer to most of these is simply “Yes, we comply” or “No, this doesn't apply to us.”

The important part: your size and socioeconomic certifications

This is where you represent your business size and any set-aside certifications you already hold:

Annual Representations: certify your business size for each NAICS code (are you a small business under the SBA's size standard?)
Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB): only claim this if you already hold a WOSB or EDWOSB certification. Checking the box here does not by itself make you eligible for WOSB set-asides. You get certified for free through SBA's MySBA Certifications (certifications.sba.gov) or an SBA-approved third-party certifier
Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned (SDVOSB): only claim this if you already hold SBA's SDVOSB certification (VetCert). Since 2023 there is no self-certification, and SDVOSB set-asides at every agency, including the VA, require that certification
HUBZone: only certify this if you have an active HUBZone certification from the SBA. Do not self-certify HUBZone here
8(a): only certify if you have an active 8(a) certification from the SBA

Tip

Your GovPath results page told you which programs you qualify for. Use that as your guide for which certifications to select here.

Points of Contact

5 minutes

You need to enter three required points of contact (they can all be the same person):

Government Business POC: the person the government should contact about contracts (usually you)
Electronic Business POC: the person who manages your SAM.gov account
Accounts Receivable POC: the person to contact about payments

Each needs a name, phone number, and email address; a title isn't required.

Review and Submit

SAM.gov will show you a summary of everything you've entered. Review it carefully, especially your legal name and EIN. After you submit, you can still make changes later by starting an update from your Workspace, which sends your registration back through validation.

Click Submit. You'll see a “Registration Submitted” message on screen, confirming it went through.

What happens after you submit

Your registration is submitted but NOT yet active. You'll see a “Registration Submitted” message on screen. Until your registration is active you can't bid on contracts, but you can start researching opportunities on your contract feed. Here's what's happening behind the scenes, none of it needing anything from you:

1. Your entity is validated

SAM.gov checks that your legal business name and physical address match your documents exactly. If it can't confirm them automatically, a person reviews them by hand, and this manual review averages about 4 business days (longer when they're busy). Being asked for a document is normal; it doesn't mean you did anything wrong.

2. You get a CAGE code

A Department of Defense system (the Defense Logistics Agency) automatically assigns you a CAGE code (a 5-character ID you'll see in your SAM.gov emails). You don't have to do anything with it.

3. Your registration goes active

This can take up to 10 business days from submission. SAM.gov emails you when you're active. Check your spam folder, since it can land there. If it's been more than 14 business days, contact the Federal Service Desk at fsd.gov →

Want to watch where your registration is? SAM.gov has a status tracker: Check your entity status →

Warning

After you register, you may get calls, letters, or emails demanding a fee to “renew” or “activate” your registration. Ignore them. SAM.gov is always free. Real government messages come from .gov or .mil addresses and will never ask you to pay to register.

Key things to know after submission:

Your UEI on its own only covers limited uses like subaward reporting. To apply for federal grants you need an active SAM.gov registration, not just a UEI (2 CFR 25.200; you apply at grants.gov)
Your full registration activates up to 10 business days after you submit
You must renew your registration every 365 days or it will expire (SAM.gov sends reminder emails, so don't ignore them)
Keep your SAM.gov registration current and review it at least once a year (FAR 52.204-13); the only hard 30-day deadline is reporting a change in your UEI to your contracting officer

Continue to My Journey →← Back to My Journey View contracts while you wait →