Methodology

Where the bids come from

BidRanger reads SAM.gov (federal), state agencies (such as purchasing offices and Departments of Transportation), BidNet Direct, Public Purchase, BidLocker, Bonfire, SciQuest / Jaggaer, CivicPlus, and hundreds of city, county, and special-district portals. Each source is a public procurement site that publishes its solicitations openly. BidRanger collects each listing but not the bid documents. Plans and specifications stay on the issuing agency's portal, and each BidRanger listing links to that original posting, so you can check anything shown here at the source.

BidRanger is an independent aggregator. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated on behalf of any government agency or procurement portal.

How often the data refreshes

Each source is read every 24 hours. A newly posted bid appears on BidRanger after the next read of its source. The daily 7am Eastern email digest sends each subscriber the bids added since the previous digest that match their saved states, categories, and keywords.

If a source changes its site and a read fails, that source's bids are not updated or removed until a read succeeds again. A daily health check compares each source's bid count with its recent history and flags a sudden drop for review.

What "open" means, and when a bid is removed

A bid is open until the due date published by the agency passes. When an agency publishes no due date, the bid is shown as open for at most 60 days after it first appeared, or less where the portal shows it has been taken down. Award and sole-source notices that a portal marks as such are not listed as open bids. A closed bid stays visible for 90 days and is then deleted. BidRanger shows current and recently closed solicitations and does not keep an archive of past awards.

Trade classification

Project type and trade tags cover bids in every state. AI scope summaries, job locations and risk flags run for Wyoming plus every state with an active subscriber, and start automatically for a state when a subscriber for it appears.

An AI model assigns the project type and trades by reading the bid's title and description. The tags are there to help you filter. They are not a statement by the agency, and the original posting is the authority.

What is the difference between a source and an agency?

A source is one place BidRanger reads bids from: a procurement portal, a purchasing group on BidNet Direct, a state or city bid page, or the SAM.gov search. The source count on the home page and in the site's share image is the number of sources BidRanger currently reads, rounded down. A state page lists only the sources with at least one open bid in that state, each with its open-bid count, and shows SAM.gov once, as the federal source.

An agency is the government buyer named on a bid, as the source publishes it. The state statistics count the distinct agency names among each state's open bids, so an agency with open bids in two states counts once in each. Federal bids name the SAM.gov contracting office, so one federal department can appear under several office names.

BidNet Direct is the exception. Its listings do not show the issuing agency without a login, so BidRanger stores the purchasing group as the agency, for example "Texas Purchasing Group (BidNet Direct)". Every BidNet Direct bid in a state therefore counts as one agency, and in states where BidNet Direct carries many bids, the agency count is lower than the real number of buyers.

How the state statistics are counted

The state statistics page counts the open bids and the distinct agency names in each state, using the live database. A state's figures are published only when it has at least 20 open bids from at least 3 agencies. Below that floor, the state shows no figure, because a smaller count could mislead. The same figures are available as a CSV on that page.

How trade pages count

A trade page, such as the paving bids page, counts a bid by its title and uses the same rule in every state. The AI trade classifier is used only to leave out bids it marked supply-only, and it never adds a bid to the count. Work inside a generic title, such as "Highway Improvement", is not counted, so each figure is a minimum.

Before a count appears in a page title, 100 counted bids are drawn at random and read one by one. The page publishes its count only if at least 90% of that sample is the trade in question. For paving, 95 of 100 bids checked on 2026-09-22 were paving work (95%); the misses are excluded by name.

What BidRanger is not

BidRanger is a bid search and alert service for businesses that bid on public work. It is not an auction site and has no connection to RangerBid, BidWrangler, or any equipment or vehicle auction platform.

It does not cover private or planning-stage projects, host bid documents, or submit bids for you. It shows the public solicitation and where to get the bid documents.

Corrections

If a listing, count, or statement on this site is wrong, email rory@bidrangerai.com. Rory Watson, who built and runs BidRanger, reads each message and corrects the data or the rule. This page was last reviewed on 2026-10-03.