SAM.gov Registration: How to Register Your Business, Get a UEI and Stay Active

What SAM.gov registration is and who needs it

SAM.gov, the System for Award Management, is the General Services Administration’s official site for doing business with the federal government. It is where you register your business (called an “entity”), where agencies post contract opportunities, and where contracting officers look you up before they award.

As a rule, you need an active registration when you submit an offer on a federal contract, and you need to keep it active through award and until the last payment on the contract. There are narrow exceptions, such as small purchases paid with a government purchase card, but if you plan to bid as a prime contractor, plan on registering.

SAM.gov gives you three options, and picking the right one up front saves you from redoing work:

What you need before you register in SAM.gov

SAM.gov publishes an Entity Registration Checklist that lists every question you’ll answer. The registration moves much faster if you collect these items first:

• Legal business name and physical address. Use them exactly as they appear on your IRS and state records. A P.O. box can’t be your physical address.
• Date and state of incorporation or formation. For an LLC, this is the date your state accepted your articles of organization.
• Taxpayer Identification Number. Usually your EIN. A sole proprietor can use a Social Security number, though GSA encourages getting a free EIN from the IRS instead. The name and number must match IRS records, and the IRS says a new EIN can take up to two weeks before it passes the TIN matching check SAM relies on.
• Banking details for electronic funds transfer. Account type, routing number and account number for the account where the government will pay you, plus a remittance name and address.
• Business dates. When the business started and when your fiscal year ends.
• NAICS codes. The industry codes for the work you do, with one marked as primary. See how to choose NAICS codes.
• Size figures. Your average annual receipts and number of employees, counted across your whole organization, including affiliates.
• Points of contact. Names, emails and phone numbers for the three required contacts: Accounts Receivable, Electronic Business and Government Business. One person can fill more than one role in a small company.

If you haven’t formed your business or gotten an EIN yet, do that first. Our guide to starting an LLC for government contracts walks through the state filing, the EIN and the bank account in the order SAM.gov needs them.

How to register in SAM.gov, step by step

The screens change from time to time, but the order of the registration has stayed the same. Here is what to expect.

Step 1: Create your SAM.gov account through Login.gov

Go to SAM.gov and select Sign In. Your username, password and two-factor authentication are managed by Login.gov, then you return to SAM.gov to finish your user profile. Use your own email address: every person who works on the registration should have their own account, and sharing a login is against SAM.gov’s rules.

Step 2: Start the registration and choose its purpose

From your Workspace, choose Register Entity. Select All Awards if you intend to bid on contracts, then choose your entity type, such as a business or organization.

Step 3: Validate your entity and receive your UEI

Enter your legal business name, physical address, and date and state of incorporation. SAM.gov checks them against outside records. If they match, you get your UEI and continue. If they don’t, use the Create Incident button on that page and attach documents that prove your name and address, such as articles of organization, your IRS EIN letter, or a utility bill or bank statement. You’ll also choose whether your record appears in public search results; staying public lets prime contractors and state and local buyers find you.

Step 4: Complete Core Data

This section covers your business information, tax ID and IRS consent, ownership, business types, socioeconomic categories, and banking. If you don’t have a CAGE code, answer “No” and one will be assigned after you submit. The executive compensation and legal proceedings questions mostly apply to larger federal contractors, so read each one and answer what is true for you.

Step 5: Complete Assertions

Enter your NAICS codes and, optionally, product and service codes (PSCs), plus your annual receipts and employee count. SAM.gov uses those size figures to work out whether you count as small under each NAICS code you list.

Step 6: Answer the representations and certifications

Reps and certs are formal statements about your business, such as whether you’re small, whether you or your principals are debarred, and whether you owe delinquent federal taxes. They are legally binding, so answer them carefully. SAM.gov released a modernized version in March 2026 with plain-language question titles, and the Defense section now only applies if you bid on or hold Department of Defense contracts.

Step 7: Add your points of contact and SBA profile

Enter the three required contacts and any optional ones, such as a past performance contact. If you listed at least one NAICS code where you’re small, SAM.gov links you to SBA’s supplemental page to fill in your Small Business Search profile (formerly called DSBS), which contracting officers use for market research. Then go back to SAM.gov to submit.

Step 8: Submit and watch your email

After you submit, SAM.gov checks your tax ID with the IRS and your CAGE information with the Defense Logistics Agency. If either check fails, an email with instructions goes to your Government Business point of contact, so watch that inbox and its spam folder.

UEI number and CAGE code: what each one is

A registered business ends up with two identifiers. You’ll put both on proposals, and agencies use them to find your record.

The UEI replaced the old nine-digit DUNS number on April 4, 2022, when SAM.gov began generating its own identifiers instead of relying on an outside company. If you see a form or guide asking for a DUNS number, it is out of date.

To find your UEI, sign in to SAM.gov and open your Workspace, where each entity you manage is listed with its UEI and CAGE code. You can also search for a CAGE code on the DLA CAGE website. Changes to CAGE details for a registered business are made by updating your SAM.gov registration, not by contacting DLA separately.

How long SAM registration takes, and what slows it down

SAM.gov’s own checklist says to allow at least ten business days after you submit for a registration to become active. Many go through in that window. When one takes longer, it is usually for one of these reasons:

• Entity validation fails. Your name or address doesn’t match the records SAM.gov checks against. Small differences, such as a missing “LLC” or an abbreviated street name, can be enough to cause a mismatch.
• The tax ID doesn’t match. The name and EIN must match the IRS exactly. A brand-new EIN may not be in the IRS matching system yet.
• CAGE validation needs follow-up. DLA may ask questions before it assigns or updates a code.
• Nobody sees the email. Fix-it notices go to the Government Business contact, often into a spam folder.

If you have to open a validation ticket, attach your documents the first time; GSA closes tickets that arrive without them. Don’t open duplicate tickets or call to speed things up, because tickets are worked in the order received. You can check where things stand from the Check Entity Status page on SAM.gov.

SAM.gov renewal: keeping your registration active

A registration stays active for 365 days. If you don’t renew in time it becomes inactive, and an inactive registration can cost you an award or hold up payment on a contract you already have. The UEI itself doesn’t expire, so renewing never changes it.

How to renew

Sign in, open your entity in the Workspace, and choose to update or renew. You’ll review every section, re-confirm your reps and certs, and submit, and the renewal goes through validation again. Start at least a month or two before the expiration date so a validation problem doesn’t cause a lapse.

Update it when your business changes

You can update your registration at any time, not only at renewal. Do it when you move, change banks, add a service line and its NAICS code, change ownership, or grow past a size standard. SBA also notes that if size standards change, your SAM.gov small business status doesn’t reflect the new standards until you update your registration.

Is SAM.gov registration free? How to avoid registration scams

Yes. There is no charge to get a UEI, register your business or keep your registration current, and GSA states plainly that you don’t need to pay a third party to register. Some companies sell registration help, and a few are legitimate, but many sell something you can do yourself for free, and some impersonate the government.

When a message claims there is a problem with your registration, don’t click its links. Go to sam.gov yourself, sign in, and check your status. For free help, use the Federal Service Desk at FSD.gov or your local APEX Accelerator (formerly a PTAC); our guide to free government contracting help explains where to find one.

What to do after your registration is active

An active registration makes you eligible. These steps make you competitive:

• Polish your Small Business Search profile. Add a clear capabilities narrative, keywords and past projects. Contracting officers search these profiles when deciding whether to set work aside for small businesses.
• Look at SBA certifications. 8(a), WOSB, HUBZone and VetCert each open their own set-aside contracts. See SBA certifications and how set-asides work.
• Start watching opportunities. Search SAM.gov Contract Opportunities by your NAICS codes and keywords. Our guide on how to find government contracts shows how to read a notice and decide which bids are worth your time.

If you’d rather not run those searches by hand, a matching tool such as BidForge monitors SAM.gov opportunities and scores them against your NAICS codes, certifications and past performance. It doesn’t register businesses in SAM.gov; that part stays with you.

Frequently asked questions