RFP Recon reads federal solicitations and tells you whether the bid is wired, who the real competition is, and where your proposal effort should actually go. In 60 seconds.
“Contractor shall have a minimum of 7 years supporting [Agency]'s proprietary [Internal Platform Name] in a federal operational environment.”
We know we are missing opportunities by bidding on projects we have no chance on. We believe this platform gives us the best shot.
Every small contractor faces the same two simultaneous failures.
40–70% of federal RFPs are sculpted to lock in the incumbent. Most contractors can't tell until after they've written the proposal — when the award notice names the company everyone in the room already knew would win.
The average small contractor writes 15–25 proposals per year. If even 5 are wired, that's $75K–$250K in unrecoverable bid cost — before opportunity cost.
Staying in your lane feels safe. It also means missing the bids where you'd actually win. Most BD teams are so buried in active proposals they don't have capacity for real opportunity discovery.
Win rates under 20% aren't just a proposal quality problem. They're a bid selection problem. You can't write your way to a higher win rate on the wrong opportunities.
One tool that solves both sides of the allocation problem.
Upload your solicitation documents. In 60 seconds, get a structured field report with everything you need to make a defensible pursuit decision.
Continuously scans federal opportunities and surfaces winnable RFPs your team would otherwise miss — scored by predicted fit and competitive density, not just NAICS match.
A wired RFP is a federal solicitation where requirements have been sculpted to favor a specific vendor — usually the incumbent — making the “competition” effectively a paper exercise.
RFP Recon identifies these signals automatically, quotes the exact language, and explains why each flag matters. You read the evidence and decide— we don't ask you to trust a black box.
GAO bid protest win rates are under 25%. Knowing a bid is wired beforeyou write the proposal is the only actionable intelligence — after you've submitted, your options are a protest with low odds or a sunk cost.
Requirements that name a specific platform only one vendor has operated.
“Contractor shall have a minimum of 7 years supporting [Agency]'s proprietary [Internal Platform Name] in a federal operational environment.”
Clearance levels or experience profiles so specific they describe one person.
“Program Manager shall hold active TS/SCI with CI Poly adjudicated within the last 18 months at [specific program office].”
Certifications required for work that doesn't justify them — because the incumbent already holds them.
“All personnel in a senior technical role shall hold CMMI Level 3 certification issued within the preceding 24 months.”
Three or more consecutive awards to the same incumbent with escalating scope.
“[Incumbent Vendor] — 3 consecutive awards: $3.1M → $5.4M → $9.2M over 8 years.”
Technical criteria weighted so heavily that price becomes irrelevant — designed to surface the known incumbent.
“Technical approach: 70 pts. Past performance: 25 pts. Price: 5 pts. (on a straightforward support services contract)”
Past performance, certifications, key personnel, target agencies, and contract vehicles. We build a structured fingerprint of what your company actually wins.
The analyzer runs on demand — import directly from SAM.gov or upload your own solicitation documents to get a full field report. The weekly intel digest runs continuously in the background.
Bid, walk away, or pursue with these specific teaming partners. Every recommendation cites its reasoning. Every flag quotes the exact language that triggered it.
GovWin, GovTribe, Bloomberg Government — they're subscription businesses whose revenue depends on perceived opportunity volume. They're structurally incentivized to make every alert feel like a real opportunity, because if you stop believing there's opportunity, you cancel.
RFP Recon is the opposite. Our job is to help you walk away faster from the bids you can't win, and find the ones you actually should be chasing. We make money when you make better pursuit decisions — fewer wasted bids, higher win rates on the bids you do pursue.
We're the only tool in GovCon whose interests are actually aligned with yours.
Cancel anytime.
For teams evaluating RFP Recon or running occasional analyses.
Start analyzing→For active BD operations pursuing 20+ opportunities per year.
Get started→For firms managing large BD pipelines across multiple divisions.
Talk to us→Those tools optimize for the size of the opportunity feed they show you — their business depends on it. RFP Recon optimizes for the quality of your pursuit decisions. We tell you to walk away from bids you can't win, which is the opposite incentive.
We don't ask you to trust a score in isolation. Every flag quotes the exact language from the solicitation, names the pattern it matched, and explains why it matters. You read the evidence and make the call.
Primary sources are SAM.gov and FPDS — the same federal data feeds the major procurement tools rely on. Solicitation documents you upload are analyzed locally to the engagement and never used to train anything.
Your capability library, uploaded documents, and analysis history are isolated to your account. Nothing you submit is shared, sold, or used to improve detection for other customers.
Not at launch. The signal patterns and reference data are tuned for federal. SLED is on the roadmap once federal coverage is fully validated.
No. Proposal writing is the work we want you to be doing on the right bids. Our job is upstream: tell you which bids are worth the effort before you commit a single hour of writing.
$75 per analysis. No proposal writing. Just clear, defensible intel before you commit.