Terms of Service

CapitolBids ("CapitolBids", "we", "our", "us") is operated by Simon Carroll, an individual based in Spain.

You can reach us at [email protected].

These Terms of Service ("terms") are a binding agreement between you and us. By creating an account, or by using the service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

If you use the service on behalf of a company or other organization, you confirm that you are authorized to accept these terms for it, and "you" includes that organization.

These terms are versioned. This is version 3.0, effective September 29, 2026. We record which version you accepted and when.

CapitolBids is a search engine for US federal contract opportunities. We take the public Contract Opportunities data that the US government publishes on SAM.gov, together with award data from USAspending.gov, and make it searchable so businesses can find relevant opportunities. The service includes contract search, email alerts, saved searches, bookmarks, agency and supplier profiles, and (where enabled) AI analysis of a notice.

CapitolBids covers federal procurement only. It does not cover state, local or education procurement.

We are independent. We are not a government agency, and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the US General Services Administration, SAM.gov, USAspending.gov, or any federal department, agency or contracting office. Using CapitolBids is not a substitute for registering in SAM.gov, and it does not submit bids, proposals or any other response to the government for you.

The service is provided for use by businesses and other organizations looking for government contracting opportunities, and by individuals acting for those purposes. You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use it.

To use most features you need an account. You agree to:

• Provide accurate and complete registration information
• Keep your account credentials secure and confidential
• Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission
• Accept responsibility for everything done under your account

One account is for one person. Accounts must not be shared, transferred or sold. If you sign in with Google, Google’s own terms also apply to your Google account.

CapitolBids is currently free to use with a registered account. We do not ask for payment details and nothing can be charged to you by accident.

We may introduce paid plans in the future. If we do, any paid feature will be clearly marked as such, and you will never be charged without first choosing a paid plan and entering payment details, at which point the price, billing period and how to cancel will be shown to you before you pay. Features you use free today may become paid in the future; we will give you at least 30 days’ notice by email before that happens to a feature you are actively using.

You agree not to:

• Use automated systems to scrape, crawl or extract data at scale, other than through an API we provide for that purpose and within its documented limits
• Share your account credentials, or let anyone else use your account
• Resell, sublicense or redistribute the service, or bulk data from it, without our written permission
• Interfere with, overload, or disrupt the service or its infrastructure
• Circumvent access restrictions, rate limits, or security measures
• Use contact details shown in notices, or anything else from the service, to send unsolicited commercial messages, or to build a marketing list of individuals
• Reverse engineer or attempt to derive the source code of the service
• Use the service for any unlawful purpose, or in breach of any applicable sanctions or export control laws

We operate rate limits and bot protection. Repeatedly tripping them is itself a breach of this section.

Contract opportunity and award data on CapitolBids comes from SAM.gov and USAspending.gov. It is a work of the United States government and, under 17 U.S.C. § 105, is not subject to copyright in the United States. Nothing in these terms restricts anything you are free to do with that underlying public data when you obtain it from the official source.

Notices can include the names and work email addresses of contracting officers and other government staff. We show them only to signed-in users, and only so you can respond to the opportunity. Contact them about that opportunity, not for unrelated marketing.

We check for new data regularly, but we do not guarantee that any information on CapitolBids is accurate, complete, current, or free from error. The government changes, amends and cancels notices, publishes late, and occasionally publishes incorrect data, and our own processing can introduce error. Dollar values in particular can be estimates, ceilings or obligations rather than amounts actually paid.

Always check the official notice on SAM.gov, and with the contracting office named in it, before making any business decision, and before relying on any deadline. Nothing on CapitolBids is legal, financial, procurement or other professional advice.

Where AI analysis of a notice is available to you, it is generated automatically by a third-party large language model from the published notice text. It is provided as a convenience only.

AI output can be wrong, incomplete, or misleading, including in ways that are not obvious. It is not advice, it is not a substitute for reading the notice and its attachments, and you must not rely on it when deciding whether or how to bid. We are not liable for any decision you make on the basis of AI output.

The CapitolBids service — including its software, design, name and branding, database structure, derived data and analysis, agency and supplier profiles, and written content, but excluding the underlying public government data — is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark and other laws.

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the service for your own internal business purposes, in accordance with these terms. All other rights are reserved.

You keep ownership of the content you put into CapitolBids — your saved searches, alert criteria, bookmarks and notes. You grant us a license to host, store, copy and process that content only as far as is necessary to operate the service for you (for example, to run your alert against new notices and email you the results).

That license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for backups that expire on their normal cycle.

When you create an account we send you emails needed to run it, such as address verification and password resets, and notices about these terms or your account. We send alert and digest emails only because you set them up or kept them switched on, and each one contains a link to change or stop it. You can also manage your alerts from your alerts page. How we handle email is described in our Privacy Policy.

We may change, add, suspend or discontinue any feature at any time. We aim to give notice of material changes, but we do not guarantee any level of availability, and we may take the service down for maintenance.

You may stop using the service at any time, and you may delete your account from your account settings. Deleting your account permanently removes your account record, alerts, saved searches, bookmarks and search history.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these terms, if we reasonably suspect fraud or abuse, or if we are required to by law. Where it is reasonable to do so, we will tell you why and give you an opportunity to put it right.

We may also discontinue the service as a whole. If we do, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice by email so you can export your data. Sections 8 to 12 and 16 to 23 survive the end of this agreement.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service and all data and content on it are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, and because the service is provided free of charge:

• We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, business, opportunity (including any lost contract, bid or award), goodwill, or data, whether or not we were told such loss was possible
• Our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the service or these terms is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, and (b) US$100

These limits apply whatever the legal theory of the claim, but they do not limit liability that cannot be limited under applicable law, such as liability for our fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct. They reflect the allocation of risk between us, taking into account that the service is free and that the underlying data comes from government sources we do not control.

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless against any third-party claim, and any resulting loss, liability or cost (including reasonable attorneys’ fees), arising from your breach of these terms, your misuse of the service, or your infringement of anyone else’s rights through your use of the service.

You may not assign or transfer any of your rights or obligations under these terms without our prior written consent.

We may assign or transfer these terms, in whole or in part, to an affiliate or to a third party in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, change of the entity operating the service, or sale of all or part of our assets or business. We will notify you if that happens, for example by email or by a notice on the site. How personal information is handled in that situation is set out in our Privacy Policy. If you do not wish to continue with the new operator, you may delete your account at any time.

We may change these terms. When we do, we will publish the new version here with a new version number and effective date, and keep the version it replaces available from this page.

For changes that materially affect your rights or obligations, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice by email to the address on your account, or by a prominent notice in the service, before they take effect. Continuing to use the service after the effective date means you accept the new version. If you do not accept it, stop using the service and delete your account before that date.

The service links to third-party websites, including SAM.gov, agency websites and notice attachments hosted by the government, and relies on the service providers listed in our Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for the content, availability or practices of any third-party site or service.

These terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the service, are governed by the laws of Spain, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Nothing in these terms takes away protections you have under the mandatory consumer laws of the place where you live.

Before bringing a claim, please contact us at [email protected] so we can try to resolve it informally. If we cannot resolve it within 60 days, either of us may bring the dispute in the courts of Barcelona, Spain, and we both consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Either of us may bring an individual claim in a small claims court that has jurisdiction.

These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between us about the service and replace any earlier agreement or understanding.

If any provision is found to be unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted and the rest continues to apply. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we do not waive it. Nothing in these terms creates a partnership, agency, joint venture or employment relationship between us, and there are no third-party beneficiaries of these terms. We are not liable for any delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

Questions about these terms: [email protected]. Questions about your personal information: [email protected].