Updated April 2026 · USAspending.gov data
Compare Federal Contractors Side-by-Side
Set any two federal contractors next to each other and read off total obligations, agency relationships, and category mix from a single screen. Every number is a direct read of USAspending.gov, the official federal spending database mandated by the DATA Act. The 20 contractors on this page collectively account for $151.4B in federal obligations in FY2024.
What These Comparisons Show
A comparison page lays out four side-by-side panels for each contractor: total obligations, award mix (contracts vs grants vs other), top agencies, and top categories. The agency panel uses standardized federal agency codes; the category panel uses the Product and Service Code (PSC) hierarchy from the Federal Procurement Data System. That means Optum Public Sector Solutions, Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corporation can be lined up on the same axes even when they do very different work for the government.
We deliberately avoid ranking the two contractors in a comparison or declaring one "better." Federal procurement is a many-axis decision — performance history, clearance levels, technical capability, geographic footprint, small-business status — and most of those signals do not live in USAspending. The pages stick to what the public record can support: how much each company has been obligated, who is paying them, and what they are being paid for.
For broader context, see the full top contractor ranking, which sorts every recipient in the dataset by total obligations, or spending by industry, which groups contractors into PSC-derived categories.
How to Read a Comparison
Total obligations is the headline number. It is the sum of every binding commitment the federal government has recorded against a contractor in the fiscal year. Two contractors with similar totals can still differ wildly on what kind of work they do — one might be 90% professional services, the other 90% manufactured goods. Watch the category panel, not just the dollar number.
Top agencies reveals the customer concentration risk. A contractor whose top agency accounts for 80% of revenue is in a very different business than one with five clients evenly split. That structural difference often matters more for understanding the company than the topline number does.
Award mix separates competitive contracts from grants and other assistance. Grants typically flow to research universities, nonprofits, and state governments; contracts dominate among defense and IT firms. Mixed-mix contractors tend to be large diversified holdings.
Top categories uses the SAM.gov PSC hierarchy. PSCs starting with letters (A, B, R) are services; numeric PSCs are products. Comparing two contractors at the PSC level shows whether they actually compete for the same scopes of work or operate in different niches the procurement system happens to bracket together.
Browse Comparisons
Pick any pair of contractors below to open a side-by-side view. Want to compare names not on this list? Browse all 2,005 contractors and pick from the full set.
Methodology & Sources
All comparison data is pulled from the USAspending.gov API and reconciled against contractor registrations in SAM.gov. Industry classification follows the PSC hierarchy used by the Federal Procurement Data System. Recipient names are normalized so subsidiaries that file under different legal entities can roll up to the parent when the federal record links them. Read the full methodology.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you compare two federal contractors?
Pick any two contractors from the list below. Each comparison page shows total federal obligations side-by-side, contract vs grant counts, the agencies each contractor works with most, and the categories of work performed. All numbers come from USAspending.gov, the official source mandated by the DATA Act, so the figures match what the federal government itself publishes.
What "obligations" mean in these comparisons
An obligation is a binding commitment the U.S. government makes to pay a contractor. It is the standard unit reported on USAspending.gov and is used by Congress, the GAO, and federal inspectors general. Obligations differ from outlays — the actual cash that leaves the Treasury — and from total contract ceilings. Two contractors with the same ceiling can show very different obligations depending on how much of the work has been authorized so far.
Why do two big defense contractors look so different?
Even within defense, contractor profiles diverge sharply on agency mix and category mix. One firm may earn most of its revenue from Air Force aircraft programs while another concentrates in Navy shipbuilding or Army ground vehicles. The compare page surfaces those differences in the "Top Agencies" and "Top Categories" panels so you can see whether two contractors actually compete for the same work or operate in different lanes.
Where does the underlying data come from?
Every figure shown in a comparison is sourced from the USAspending.gov API at api.usaspending.gov, the official public database of federal spending. Vendor identity is reconciled to the federal Unique Entity ID (UEI) registered in SAM.gov, the government's contractor registration system. We refresh data each release cycle (USAspending publishes daily updates).
How recent is the data?
The current dataset covers FY2024 federal awards as published by USAspending.gov, last refreshed April 2026. Federal agencies occasionally make corrections to prior-year obligations — when those filter through USAspending, they appear in the next refresh.
Is the comparison neutral?
Yes. Comparison pages report obligations, agency relationships, and category mix directly from federal records. They do not rate, recommend, or rank one contractor as "better" than another. Decisions about which firm is a fit for a given role depend on factors — past performance evaluations, security clearances, technical capability — that are not in USAspending and are properly handled by procurement officers, not a public ranking page.
Source: U.S. federal government, USAspending.gov & SAM.gov. Data is public domain. Cite as: "TaxDollarData contractor comparison, FY2024. Data: USAspending.gov."
Last updated 2026-04-09 · covering 2,005 contractors and $529.6B in obligations.