A new entrant can submit bid after bid on real SAM.gov solicitations and still lose every one to a company that already carries a page of past performance it doesn't have yet.

Most advice on how to get a first government contract collapses into the same four steps: register on SAM.gov, pick your NAICS codes, write a capability statement, be persistent.

None of that gets at the part that actually matters. The government buys at different dollar sizes, and the rules change at each one, and the biggest of those bands is also the most crowded.

The dollar lines that decide how to get a first government contract

Two numbers run this. The micro-purchase threshold and the simplified acquisition threshold.

As of October 1, 2025, the micro-purchase threshold is $15,000 and the simplified acquisition threshold is $350,000, both raised by an inflation adjustment the government runs every five years (Federal Register final rule). A lot of the advice still sitting out there quotes $10,000 and $250,000. That's how you spot a page nobody has touched in years.

Here's why the gap between those two numbers is the whole game. Under FAR 19.502-2, a buy above the micro-purchase threshold but not over the simplified acquisition threshold has to be set aside for small business unless the contracting officer decides there's no reasonable expectation of getting offers from two or more responsible small firms at fair market prices (Acquisition.gov).

Between $15,000 and $350,000, small business is the default and going open to everybody is the exception.

That band is worth paying attention to. It's easy to miss if nobody points it out first.

The micro-purchase number that isn't the same for everyone

The $15,000 figure isn't universal, and missing that distinction is an easy way to misjudge which buys are actually reachable.

For services covered by the Service Contract Labor Standards, the micro-purchase threshold is $2,500. For construction covered by the wage rate requirements, it's $2,000. Both carve-outs sit right in the FAR 2.101 definition, under the same rule that raised the headline number.

A facilities-services business, for example, has a $2,500 ceiling, not the $15,000 figure most people quote. That sounds like bad news until you realize it means nearly everything worth bidding in that trade already sits inside the set-aside band above it.

The numbers, in one place

Micro-purchase threshold: $15,000 general, $2,500 for services under the Service Contract Labor Standards, $2,000 for construction under the wage rate requirements.

Simplified acquisition threshold: $350,000.

Required to be advertised on SAM.gov: contracts over $25,000.

Triggers a prime's small business subcontracting plan: $900,000, or $2 million for construction.

The contracts you never see on SAM.gov

This is the one that stung. Agencies are required to advertise contracts over $25,000 on SAM.gov (SBA). Under that number, no such requirement.

So there's a whole layer of small buys that never lands in any search you run. Somebody at the agency needs a building stripped and waxed, they've got a purchase card and a deadline, and they call a company they already know about. If you're not in front of them beforehand, you don't lose that job. You never find out it existed.

Two things put you in that conversation. Your profile in the Small Business Search database, which is what agencies use to go looking for small firms and which builds itself off what you entered in SAM (search.certifications.sba.gov). And the agency's own small business office, usually called an OSDBU or an OSBP, whose actual job is finding companies like yours.

How to get a first government contract as somebody else's sub

The other way in is under a prime who already won the work.

Large contractors above a certain award size have to carry a small business subcontracting plan. That trigger moved to $900,000 in the same October 2025 adjustment, and $2 million for construction. Those companies have subcontracting goals they're graded on, and they need real subs to hit them.

SBA runs SubNet, where primes post subcontracting opportunities for small businesses (subnet.sba.gov). GSA publishes its own directory of large primes carrying those plans, and SBA keeps a directory of them as well.

Subcontracting doesn't feel like winning. Thinner margin, and somebody else's name goes on the contract. What you get out of it is past performance to point at next time, often the one thing standing between a new entrant and its first prime contract.

Free help that's easy to skip

APEX Accelerators, formerly the PTACs.

They counsel businesses selling to federal, state, and local government, help with registrations, and check whether you're eligible for certifications (SBA; directory at apexaccelerators.us). It's free, and a SAM profile review is worth doing before assuming that profile is clean.

A filter worth using

Check the dollar value before reading a word of the requirement. Over $350,000 and not set aside, a small business without deep past performance is rarely the answer, and that time is better spent elsewhere.

Under that line, it pays to read carefully, and to spend at least as much time getting in front of the buyer as writing the response, because the small stuff rarely gets won on paper alone.

The first contract is usually smaller than expected, and closer to home than expected.

See your registration gaps in one check

The free Autopsy reads the public SAM.gov record for your UEI and gives you a Readiness Score. The full analysis shows the registration gaps it finds and who wins work under your NAICS codes, where records exist. No account, no card.

Run your free Autopsy →

You'll need your UEI.

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