usaspending-gov-mcp

MCP server for the USASpending.gov federal contract, award, subaward, recipient, agency, and federal account API.

No API key required. Connect through the published ChatGPT plugin below, or use the installation and configuration instructions for another compatible MCP client.

Tested and hardened through ten rounds of integration testing against the live USASpending.gov API. 2,151 regression tests (1,783 offline, 368 live-gated); round 10 fixed 25 verified findings across both tool families, including filters that could never match and a tool that had never once succeeded. See testing.md for the full testing record.

Available in ChatGPT

Install USASpending in ChatGPT

This MCP is also available as a published plugin in the ChatGPT directory. Open the listing to install and connect it; no user API key or local Python setup is required. Then try a matching prompt. Prompts that combine sources require every listed MCP to be connected.

The installation and configuration sections below cover direct setup in other compatible MCP clients.

What it does

Exposes the USASpending.gov REST API as 55 MCP tools covering:

Search and aggregation

• search_awards - Primary search for contracts, IDVs, grants, loans, direct payments
• get_award_count - Dimensional counts across award categories
• spending_over_time - Time series aggregation (fiscal year, quarter, month)
• spending_by_category - Top N breakdowns by agency, vendor, NAICS, PSC, state, etc.
• spending_by_transaction - Modification-level transaction search
• spending_by_geography - State, county, or congressional district breakdown
• new_awards_over_time - Pipeline trend for a recipient

Award detail

• get_award_detail - Full record for a single award
• get_transactions - Full modification history for an award
• get_award_funding - File C funding data (Treasury account, object class, program activity)
• get_award_funding_rollup - Single-line funding summary
• get_award_subaward_count, get_award_federal_account_count, get_award_transaction_count
• get_idv_children - Task/delivery orders under an IDV
• awards_last_updated - Data freshness check

Subawards (FFATA)

• search_subawards - Subawards under a single prime
• spending_by_subaward_grouped - Subaward search with full filter set

Recipients

• search_recipients - Search recipients by keyword
• get_recipient_profile - Full recipient record
• get_recipient_children - Subsidiaries of a parent recipient
• autocomplete_recipient - Find recipient hashes by partial name
• list_states - All states with FIPS codes

Agency depth

• list_toptier_agencies, get_agency_overview, get_agency_awards
• get_agency_budgetary_resources - Budget resources by FY
• get_agency_sub_agencies - Subordinate orgs with obligations
• get_agency_federal_accounts - Funding sources (TAS)
• get_agency_object_classes - Spending categories (OMB)
• get_agency_program_activities - Program-level breakdown
• get_agency_obligations_by_award_category - Contract vs grant mix

IDV depth

• get_idv_amounts - Top-line IDV rollup
• get_idv_funding, get_idv_funding_rollup - File C for IDV
• get_idv_activity - Child orders under an IDV

Federal accounts (Treasury)

• list_federal_accounts - Search TAS
• get_federal_account_detail, get_federal_account_object_classes, get_federal_account_program_activities, get_federal_account_fy_snapshot

Autocomplete

• autocomplete_psc, autocomplete_naics
• autocomplete_awarding_agency, autocomplete_funding_agency
• autocomplete_cfda (grants), autocomplete_glossary, autocomplete_recipient

Reference data

• get_naics_details, get_psc_filter_tree
• get_award_types_reference - All award type codes (A=BPA Call etc.)
• get_def_codes_reference - Disaster Emergency Fund codes (COVID, IIJA, IRA)
• get_glossary - Acquisition/spending vocabulary
• get_submission_periods - Agency reporting period coverage
• get_state_profile - State-level spending profile

Workflow convenience

• lookup_piid - Auto-detects contract vs IDV and returns the matching award

Installation

Via pip

pip install usaspending-gov-mcp

Via uvx (recommended, no venv needed)

uvx --from usaspending-gov-mcp usaspending-mcp

The --from is required for this server and only this server. The PyPI package is usaspending-gov-mcp but the console script it installs is usaspending-mcp, so a bare uvx usaspending-gov-mcp fails with "An executable named usaspending-gov-mcp is not provided by package usaspending-gov-mcp".

Do not run uvx usaspending-mcp either. usaspending-mcp is an unrelated third-party package on PyPI, not this project.

From source

git clone https://github.com/1102tools-dev/federal-contracting-mcps.git
cd federal-contracting-mcps/servers/usaspending-gov-mcp
pip install -e .

Configuration

Use the configuration below as the server definition and adapt its placement to your compatible MCP client. For practical requests using this source, see the prompt library.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "usaspending": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--refresh-package", "usaspending-gov-mcp", "--from", "usaspending-gov-mcp", "usaspending-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

The --refresh-package flag tells uv to check PyPI for a newer release each time your client launches the server, so fixes arrive automatically; without it, uv keeps serving whatever version it first cached. It adds a moment of network time at startup, so raise your platform's MCP startup timeout if it enforces a short one.

If you installed via pip install -e . or a regular pip install:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "usaspending": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "usaspending_gov_mcp.server"]
    }
  }
}

Restart the client and the tools appear.

Tool profiles

Standalone use defaults to USASPENDING_TOOL_PROFILE=full, which exposes all 55 tools. Packaged acquisition agents set USASPENDING_TOOL_PROFILE=acquisition-agent to expose a stable 20-tool subset covering core award search, spending, agency, recipient, NAICS, PSC, transaction, and subaward operations. An unknown profile stops startup with a clear error instead of silently changing the catalog.

Example prompts

Once configured, try:

• "Show me the top 10 NAVSEA contracts awarded in FY2025 by dollar value."
• "Find all software development contracts at NASA with sole-source justifications in the last year."
• "How much has Leidos received in federal awards since 2020? Group by fiscal year."
• "What are the top 15 recipients of HUBZone set-aside contracts at DoD?"
• "Pull the full modification history for PIID N00024-24-C-0085."
• "Compare FFP vs T&M award counts for IT services at Air Force in FY2024."

Design notes

• No authentication required. USASpending.gov is a free, public API.
• Award type groups cannot be mixed. The award_type parameter takes one of: contracts, idvs, grants, loans, direct_payments, other. Use separate calls for separate categories.
• Actionable error messages. Common API errors (422 mixed award types, 400 sort field missing, 400 empty keywords) are translated into guidance for the calling LLM.
• Sort field auto-handling. The USASpending API requires the sort field to appear in the fields array; this server adds it automatically.
• Sensible defaults. Search limits default to 25 (API max 100). Default fields cover the most common columns for each award category.
• Flat filter parameters. Most common filters are surfaced as named parameters (keywords, awarding_agency, naics_codes, etc.) rather than a nested filter dict, for better LLM tool discovery.

Data source

All data is sourced from USASpending.gov, which aggregates FPDS-NG contract data, FAADC assistance data, and agency DATA Act submissions. Data freshness varies by agency: non-DoD contract data is typically available within 5 business days, DoD and USACE procurement data has a 90-day reporting delay in FPDS, and financial assistance data is available within 2 days of submission.

Request pacing

USAspending uses a shared rolling budget of 500 upstream attempts per 300 seconds, at least 0.6 seconds between starts, and at most four requests in flight. Slow requests can overlap instead of holding up every other call. Failures and retries consume the budget; a provider Retry-After cooldown is shared. These are tested 1102tools safeguards, not an official USAspending quota or a guarantee that every workload will sustain the maximum rate.

Local processes share the budget when they use the same pacing directory. FEDERAL_API_PACING_DIR relocates that state. A positive FEDERAL_API_MIN_INTERVAL_SECONDS override can slow starts (minimum 0.6); 0 explicitly disables pacing for tests or externally managed clients. The hosted service uses 0.6, one backend container, and the same budget across users. Its separate entrance guard allows approximately 120 HTTP requests per minute per IP per Cloudflare location; this includes MCP protocol traffic and is not an upstream API allowance. Busy requests may receive HTTP 429; request lifetimes remain bounded at 55 seconds.

State survives ordinary process restarts while the pacing directory remains. Replacing a container or deleting that directory resets its local history; independent machines do not share the local budget. Do not run old and new package versions concurrently against the same pacing directory during upgrade.

License

MIT