Methodology
Methodology
This page exists so a reporter, a buyer, or a skeptic can check our work. Every number on this site traces back to a specific public government record. Nothing here is estimated, modeled, or scraped from a paywalled source.
Unit prices — pub.price_points
Every dot on a price chart and every row in a purchase table is one government purchase at one unit price, sourced from either a DIBBS award record or a USAspending award record. Each price point stores the underlying source URL, and the build refuses to publish a price point without one — that check runs in the data-load step of the site build, not just as a database constraint.
Contract action totals — pub.contract_actions
USAspending publishes agency-wide contract actions with obligation totals — the amount obligated on a contract action, not a per-unit price. We show these on NSN pages, clearly labeled as "contract action totals, not unit prices," and they never appear on a price chart, which is unit-price data only.
AMSC / AMC — pub.amsc_observations
The Acquisition Method Suffix Code tells you whether a part is open to competition (AMSC G) or sole-source because the government says it lacks the technical data package (AMSC C, D, H, Z). We show the most recently observed value with the date and source solicitation it was observed on.
Price spikes and "overcharges"
A purchase is flagged as a spike when its unit price is at least 3× the NSN's trailing median price at that point in time. On category pages, a row is highlighted when the most recent purchase is at least 3× the NSN's historical median. This is a mechanical threshold, not an accusation — it is a starting point for a reporter's or buyer's own follow-up questions, and every flagged purchase links to its source record.
Coverage
We currently fully index 1 Federal Supply Class ("deep" categories) covering 0 NSNs, 0 priced purchases, and 0 contract actions totaling $0.00 in indexed spend. Government-wide long-tail coverage (millions of NSNs) is on the roadmap; see /browse/ for the current list.