If SAM.gov is free, why would I pay for CLEATUS?

Free is the right call when you bid one or two federal opportunities a year and you can keyword-search SAM.gov on your own time. The CLEATUS subscription earns back when (1) you pursue enough opportunities that an AI ranker saves real hours of triage, (2) you bid SLED, DLA DIBBS, GSA eBuy, SeaPort NxG, or grants and want them in the same pipeline as federal contracts, (3) you write proposals and want an AI Proposal Writer that drafts multi-volume Word + PDF outputs grounded in your award history, or (4) you want forecasted opportunities and recompete predictions that surface 12–18 months before a solicitation posts to SAM.gov.

Does CLEATUS replace my SAM.gov account?

No. Every federal contractor needs an active SAM.gov entity registration and Unique Entity ID (UEI) to bid on contracts or apply for grants — that workflow only happens on SAM.gov. CLEATUS reads from SAM.gov's public data (opportunities, awards, entity records) and adds an AI productivity layer on top. You will continue to log in to SAM.gov for registration renewals, FASCSA lookups, and authoritative contract-awards data.

What sources does CLEATUS cover that SAM.gov does not?

CLEATUS covers SAM.gov federal opportunities plus 40,000+ state, local, and education (SLED) sources across all 50 states, DLA DIBBS (Defense Logistics Agency), GSA eBuy (OASIS+ and MAS RFQs), SeaPort NxG task orders, and federal grants from Grants.gov. SAM.gov's Contract Opportunities cover federal contract notices only — grants are routed to the partner site Grants.gov, and state/local/education is out of scope entirely.

Does SAM.gov have anything CLEATUS doesn't?

Yes — and most of these are non-substitutable because SAM.gov is the official system of record. SAM.gov is the only place to register your entity and get a Unique Entity ID, the authoritative source for federal contract awards data (FPDS), the federal assistance-listings catalog (formerly CFDA.gov), the wage determinations system (formerly WDOL.gov), entity exclusion and FASCSA order lookups, and the federal hierarchy directory. CLEATUS does not duplicate any of those — they remain the right tool for the job, and every CLEATUS customer keeps a SAM.gov account.

How was this comparison researched?

Every factual claim about SAM.gov on this page is sourced from publicly available pages on sam.gov captured on 2026-05-20. The numbered References section above links to the live source URL behind each cited claim, and we retain the captured HTML, screenshots, and PDFs internally. Spot something wrong? Email legal@cleat.ai and we will review and correct it.

Subject: Side-by-side comparison of CLEATUS and SAM.gov for government contractors.
CLEATUS positioning: AI-first GovCon platform — agentic opportunity discovery, AI proposal writer, visual workflow automation, and first-party Claude/ChatGPT MCP connectors, sold self-serve with published pricing.
SAM.gov positioning: The official U.S. Government System for Award Management — free, authoritative federal opportunity search, entity registration (UEI), contract awards data (FPDS), assistance listings, federal hierarchy, and wage determinations. No AI scoring, proposal writing, CRM, or SLED coverage.
When SAM.gov fits: Entity registration / UEI, occasional federal bidders who can keyword-search on their own time, and authoritative lookups (FPDS contract awards, wage determinations, federal assistance listings, exclusions/FASCSA).
When CLEATUS fits: Active federal bidders who want AI-scored daily recommendations, an AI Proposal Writer, visual AI Workflows, Claude/ChatGPT MCP connectors, forecasted opportunities and recompete prediction, and coverage beyond federal (40,000+ SLED, DLA DIBBS, GSA eBuy, SeaPort NxG, Grants.gov).
Relationship: Every CLEATUS customer also uses SAM.gov — for UEI registration and authoritative lookups. CLEATUS does not replace SAM.gov; it removes the manual triage between SAM.gov and an actual proposal.
Source: Comparison sourced from publicly available SAM.gov marketing pages captured on 2026-05-20. Corrections: legal@cleat.ai.

SAM.gov Alternative

CLEATUS — the agentic AI alternative to SAM.gov

Name: CLEATUS
Brand: CLEATUS
Rating: 5 (12 reviews)

SAM.gov is the free, official U.S. Government System for Award Management — every federal contractor uses it. CLEATUS is the agentic AI productivity layer on top: scored daily recommendations, full proposal writing, capture/CRM, and workflow automation across federal, 40,000+ SLED sources, DLA DIBBS, GSA eBuy, SeaPort NxG, and Grants.gov.

At a glance

A side-by-side read on the dimensions buyers most often ask us about. Each row about SAM.gov traces back to a public source — see the disclosure below.

Dimension	CLEATUS	SAM.gov
Core positioning	AI-first GovCon platform on top of SAM.gov — agentic opportunity discovery, capture, AI proposal writing, and workflow automation in one self-serve product	The official U.S. Government System for Award Management — search and registration system of record for federal contracting, assistance listings, entity information, federal hierarchy, and wage determinations[1]
Cost	$80/mo Lite or $300/mo Essential, billed annually. 7-day free trial	100% free — there is no cost to use SAM.gov[2]
AI-scored opportunity recommendations	AI scores every new federal, SLED, and grant opportunity against your UEI award history and capability statement, then delivers ranked daily recommendations	Keyword search with saved-search alerts[3]
AI proposal writing	AI Proposal Writer drafts multi-volume proposals with compliance matrices grounded in the full solicitation and your award history — exported as Word and PDF, included on Essential	Not offered[4]
End-to-end GovCon operations automation	Automates your GovCon operations end-to-end — multi-step AI automations run capture screening, go/no-go prep, amendment monitoring, award-lead delivery, and team routing on autopilot. Force multiplier for capture and BD teams. Unlimited on Essential.	Not offered[4]
Claude and ChatGPT integration	First-party MCP connectors at /integrations/mcp/claude and /integrations/mcp/chatgpt turn CLEATUS into a tool inside Claude.ai and ChatGPT	Not offered[5]
Opportunity coverage	Federal (SAM.gov), 40,000+ SLED sources, DLA DIBBS, GSA eBuy (OASIS+ and MAS RFQs), SeaPort NxG, Grants.gov	Federal contract opportunities only — pre-solicitation, solicitation, award, and sole-source notices >$25,000. Grants are on the partner site Grants.gov; state, local, and education are out of scope[6]
Forecasts and pre-RFP signal	Forecasted opportunities plus AI pre-forecasting that scores expiring contracts for recompete likelihood 12–18 months out	Active opportunities only. Agency-published forecasts are not aggregated in SAM.gov; expiring-contract recompete prediction is not in scope[6]
Capture / CRM	Kanban, list, and calendar pipelines with live solicitation amendments, team collaboration, AI workflows, and unlimited pursuits on Essential	Save searches, follow opportunities, and join interested vendor lists. No pipeline, no team collaboration, no pursuit management[3]
Contract awards data	Awards aggregated from SAM.gov and linked to incumbents, NAICS, agencies, and contracting officers — surfaced in market intelligence and used to predict recompetes	Authoritative source for federal contract awards data via Standard, Static, Administrative, and Ad Hoc Reports — FPDS.gov "ezSearch" was retired and all contract awards searches now run in SAM.gov[7]
Entity registration	CLEATUS does not register entities. Bring your UEI; CLEATUS pulls your award history, NAICS, and entity details from SAM.gov to power recommendations	The only place to register your entity, get a Unique Entity ID (UEI), and renew or update your registration to do business with the federal government[8]
Wage determinations and assistance listings	Not offered	Hosts wage determinations (formerly WDOL.gov) and the federal assistance-listings catalog (formerly CFDA.gov) with a five-digit AL number per listing[9]
Document Hub and past performance	AI Document Hub stores capability statements, past performance, resumes, and proposals — the AI Proposal Writer cites them automatically when drafting	Not offered[4]
Entry-level annual price	$80/mo billed annually ($960/year) on the Lite plan — opportunity discovery, GovCon AI chat, market intelligence, 5-pursuit CRM	Free[2]
Full AI stack annual price	$300/mo billed annually ($3,600/year) on the Essential plan — AI Proposal Writer, AI Workflows, Claude + ChatGPT MCP, GSA eBuy, SeaPort NxG, unlimited pursuits	Not offered — no AI stack[4]

When each platform is the right choice

Two real tools. They optimize for different work. Here is where each one shines — straight, not spun.

When SAM.gov is the right choice

You need to register your entity, get a Unique Entity ID, or renew an existing SAM.gov registration — that workflow only happens on SAM.gov, never inside CLEATUS.
You are an occasional bidder pursuing one or two federal opportunities a year, you already know which solicitation you want to read, and the time you spend in keyword search is small enough that an AI productivity layer would not earn back its monthly subscription.
You need authoritative federal contract awards data (FPDS), wage determinations (formerly WDOL.gov), or the federal assistance-listings catalog (formerly CFDA.gov) — SAM.gov is the system of record, and CLEATUS does not duplicate those datasets.
You need to look up an entity's active or excluded status, or check for FASCSA orders against a vendor — those are SAM.gov-native lookups that CLEATUS does not replicate.

When CLEATUS is the right choice

You are pursuing more than a handful of federal opportunities a year and the hours your team spends in raw SAM.gov keyword search and email alerts have started to outpace what an AI ranker would cost.
You also bid SLED, DLA DIBBS, GSA eBuy, SeaPort NxG, or grants and want every source in one AI-aware pipeline — SAM.gov covers federal contracts only.
You want AI that reads each new solicitation, scores it against your UEI award history and capability statement, and surfaces the ones most likely to convert — not just keyword matches.
You want a full AI Proposal Writer that builds a compliance matrix from the solicitation and drafts multi-volume Word + PDF proposals citing your real past performance.
You want forecasted opportunities and AI pre-forecasting that flag expiring contracts and recompete likelihood 12–18 months out, well before anything posts to SAM.gov.
You want CLEATUS available as a tool inside Claude.ai and ChatGPT via first-party MCP connectors, so the AI assistant your team already uses can search opportunities, draft sections, and update your pipeline.

Feature by feature

Four places where the platforms diverge most. Each row shows what CLEATUS ships on the left and how SAM.gov addresses (or doesn't address) the same need on the right.

Opportunity discovery and AI scoring

CLEATUS

CLEATUS aggregates SAM.gov federal opportunities alongside 40,000+ state, local, and education sources, DLA DIBBS, GSA eBuy (OASIS+ and MAS RFQs), SeaPort NxG task orders, and Grants.gov. Every new opportunity is scored by AI against your UEI award history, capability statement, NAICS, and Document Hub — the result is a ranked daily recommendations feed, not a keyword inbox. Saved searches are still available, but the primary surface is "what should we go after today" rather than "what matched my keyword last night."

Learn more →

SAM.gov

SAM.gov is the authoritative federal opportunity source — every contract opportunity greater than $25,000 is posted here. The product surface is keyword search with advanced filters, saved searches, and follow-an-opportunity alerts. No AI scoring, ranking, fit-to-your-business recommendations, SLED coverage, or grant coverage are offered; grants live on Grants.gov and state/local opportunities are out of scope.[6]

Agentic AI — tool calls, reasoning, and live web research

CLEATUS

CLEATUS is built on agentic AI — the kind that reasons, plans, and takes actions, not the kind that just writes text. The agent breaks your request into steps, then calls tools to execute them: semantic search across federal and SLED contracts, awards, contractors, agencies, people, and NAICS; grep and read across your Document Hub; autonomous web search for current wage determinations, market rates, and competitor history; file and spreadsheet generation; PWIN calculation against your past performance; and pipeline mutations. The same 33-tool agent is exposed inside Claude.ai and ChatGPT via the MCP connectors. Every answer cites sources and every mutation is logged.

Learn more →

SAM.gov

SAM.gov is a search and registration system of record — keyword search, saved searches, opportunity-follow alerts, and bulk data extracts. There is no AI scoring, no recommendations, no reasoning, no agent that takes actions on your behalf. Layering an agent on top of SAM.gov data is something the customer would have to build themselves on top of the public APIs.[3]

AI proposal writing

CLEATUS

CLEATUS AI Proposal Writer reads every page of the solicitation, extracts requirements and evaluation factors into a compliance matrix, drafts structured multi-volume proposals that cite your real award history, and exports professionally formatted Word and PDF files. Included on Essential at $300/mo billed annually — list price published, no demo required.

Learn more →

SAM.gov

Not offered.[4]

Automate your GovCon operations end-to-end

CLEATUS

CLEATUS Workflows is a force multiplier for capture and BD teams — custom AI-powered automations that handle multi-step GovCon processes on autopilot, layered directly on top of the SAM.gov feed. Screen new matches against your win criteria, prep go/no-go briefs the moment an opportunity hits your pipeline, alert the team when an amendment posts, deliver awardee names the second your next customer wins a contract, and route every change to the right person — without anyone touching a button. Triggers fire on new recommendations, pipeline changes, pursuit-phase moves, amendments, schedules, or on-demand. Chain AI Agent and AI Extract steps with If/Else and Filter branches. Actions include Slack, email, webhooks, in-app notifications, add-to-pipeline, change-phase, and assign-member. Set up once: "every time a SAM.gov RFP under your target NAICS and set-aside hits, summarize it with AI and post to #captures-channel." Unlimited on Essential.

Learn more →

SAM.gov

Not offered.[5]

Claude and ChatGPT integration

CLEATUS

CLEATUS publishes first-party MCP (Model Context Protocol) connectors for Claude.ai and ChatGPT. Once connected, your AI assistant can search opportunities, read solicitations, draft proposal sections, look up contracting officers, and update your pipeline using natural language — without leaving Claude or ChatGPT. Included on Essential.

Learn more →

SAM.gov

Not offered.[5]

Pricing comparison

SAM.gov is free — that is the honest baseline every federal contractor anchors against. CLEATUS adds a paid productivity layer on top: $80/mo Lite or $300/mo Essential, billed annually, with a 7-day free trial. Compare what each tier actually does for your team before deciding whether the upgrade earns back its monthly cost.

CLEATUS Lite

$80/mo billed annually

Annual plan ($960/year). Opportunity discovery, GovCon AI chat, market intelligence, 5-pursuit CRM. No proposal writer, no workflows, no MCP integrations.

See CLEATUS pricing →

CLEATUS Essential

$300/mo billed annually

Annual plan ($3,600/year). Adds AI Proposal Writer, unlimited AI Workflows, Claude + ChatGPT MCP connectors, GSA eBuy, SeaPort NxG, Zapier, unlimited pursuits, unlimited Document Hub.

See CLEATUS pricing →

SAM.gov (official government system)[2][4]

Free

100% free — "There is no cost to use SAM.gov." Free includes federal contract opportunity search, entity registration, contract awards data, federal assistance listings, federal hierarchy, and wage determinations. No AI scoring, no proposal writing, no CRM/pipeline, and no SLED/grants/DLA DIBBS/GSA eBuy/SeaPort NxG coverage.

Ready when you are

Add an AI layer on top of your SAM.gov workflow

True agentic AI — plans, reasons, calls 33+ tools, searches the web, and executes multi-step GovCon tasks end-to-end

Keep using SAM.gov for registration and authoritative lookups; let CLEATUS handle discovery, capture, and proposals

AI Proposal Writer, AI Workflows, and Claude + ChatGPT MCP — none of which SAM.gov ships

Coverage beyond federal: 40,000+ SLED sources, DLA DIBBS, GSA eBuy, SeaPort NxG, and Grants.gov

Join 500+ contractors already using CLEATUS

What Our Clients are Saying

See what our customers saying about CLEATUS.

CLEATUS vs SAM.gov FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

SAM.gov is the official U.S. Government System for Award Management — free, authoritative, and required for federal contractor registration and federal awards reporting. CLEATUS is an AI productivity layer that sits on top of SAM.gov: it pulls every federal opportunity from SAM.gov and adds AI scoring against your UEI award history, plus full coverage of 40,000+ SLED sources, DLA DIBBS, GSA eBuy, SeaPort NxG, and Grants.gov, plus an AI Proposal Writer, visual AI Workflows, and Claude + ChatGPT MCP connectors. Every CLEATUS customer also uses SAM.gov — for UEI registration, FPDS-style awards lookups, wage determinations, and assistance listings. CLEATUS does not replace SAM.gov; it removes the manual keyword-search and pipeline-spreadsheet work that sits between SAM.gov and an actual proposal.

References

Numbered citations above link here. All sources are publicly available SAM.gov marketing pages captured on 2026-05-20.

[1]
https://sam.gov/content/about· captured 2026-05-20
SAM.gov is the official U.S. Government System for Award Management, operated by GSA's Federal Acquisition Service as part of the Integrated Award Environment (IAE).
[2]
https://sam.gov/content/about· captured 2026-05-20
SAM.gov is free to use — the homepage labels itself "100% Free" and the About page states "There is no cost to use SAM.gov."
[3]
https://sam.gov/content/opportunities· captured 2026-05-20
A SAM.gov user account lets you save searches, follow changes to opportunities, and join interested vendor lists — no AI scoring, recommendations, ranking, or capture/CRM features are offered.
[4]
https://sam.gov/· captured 2026-05-20
SAM.gov's published scope is Contracting, Entity Information, Federal Hierarchy, Federal Assistance, Entity Reporting, and Wage Determinations. No AI proposal generation, CRM/pipeline management, workflow automation, or SLED coverage is advertised.
[5]
https://sam.gov/· captured 2026-05-20
SAM.gov provides publicly available award data via data extracts and system accounts; a Federal Assistance Listings API was released February 2026 for bulk consumption of assistance-listings data.
[6]
https://sam.gov/content/opportunities· captured 2026-05-20
SAM.gov's Contract Opportunities are "procurement notices from federal contracting offices" — federal pre-solicitation, solicitation, award, and sole-source notices only. Grants are routed to the partner site Grants.gov; state/local/education is out of scope.
[7]
https://sam.gov/· captured 2026-05-20
Contract awards data and searching now run in SAM.gov — the FPDS.gov "ezSearch" feature has been retired and the FPDS.gov ATOM Feed will retire later in FY 2026.
[8]
https://sam.gov/content/about· captured 2026-05-20
"Active registration in SAM.gov provides your entity the ability to apply for federal grants or loans or bid on government contracts." Registration is mandatory to win — SAM.gov is the system of record, not optional.
[9]
https://sam.gov/content/about· captured 2026-05-20
SAM.gov hosts wage determinations — "legally mandated wage rates and fringe benefits that must be paid by federal contractors to their employees based on the county where the work is performed" (formerly WDOL.gov).

Source disclosure

Information about SAM.gov is accurate as of 2026-05-20, sourced from publicly available marketing materials. Spot something wrong? Email legal@cleat.ai and we'll review and correct it.

SAM.gov is operated by the U.S. General Services Administration as part of the Integrated Award Environment and is referenced here for nominative comparison only. CLEATUS is a private commercial product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SAM.gov, GSA, or any U.S. government agency.