Free tool
SAM.gov Expiration Checker
Your SAM.gov registration expires 365 days after it activates — and the only reminders are emails to whichever Entity Administrator inbox is on file. Enter your expiration date and Sam shows your days remaining, the date to renew by, and why a lapse during an open bid can cost you the award. Free, no login.
When does my SAM.gov registration expire?
A SAM.gov entity registration is valid for 365 days from the day it activates— then it expires and you have to renew. Renewal is free. You'll find your exact expiration date on your SAM.gov entity dashboard, in the “Expiration Date” / “Registration Expiration” field. The catch: the only reminders SAM.gov sends are emails to the Entity Administrator inbox on file — easy to miss — so it's on you to renew before the deadline.
Renewal is always free at the official sam.gov entity registration page. Any letter or email demanding a “renewal fee” is marketing from a private firm — not the government.
What happens if it lapses?
Under FAR 52.204-7 (System for Award Management), you must be registered in SAM.gov when you submit your offer and at the time of award. While your registration is inactive you are not eligible to be awarded a federal contract, and you can't submit an offer that requires an active registration. The practical rule is simple: never let your registration go inactive while a bid you care about is open. This isn't theoretical — the GAO has unwound awards over SAM lapses:
- TLS Joint Venture, LLC (B-422275, 2024)
- GAO sustained a protest after the awardee's SAM registration lapsed during the procurement, and recommended the agency terminate the award.
- Maxim Healthcare Staffing Services (B-422389.2, 2024)
- Maxim submitted its quote while its own SAM registration was lapsed, and the agency threw its proposal out. GAO reinstated Maxim only because that solicitation had omitted FAR 52.204-7 — after months of litigation, and only by terminating the awarded task order and re-running the competition. A lapse at submission time put the entire procurement through the shredder.
Both protests arose under the stricter pre-2025 wording of the clause; today a lapse is fatal when it coincides with your offer or with award — so the safe rule hasn't changed.
Check your expiration date
Enter your expiration date below. Your date stays in your browser — nothing is submitted until you ask us to email you the summary.
SAM.gov expiration FAQ
- How long is a SAM.gov registration valid?
- 365 days. Your registration expires one year after it activates, and you renew yearly. Renewal is free — the only official site is sam.gov.
- What happens if my SAM.gov registration expires?
- While it's inactive you are not eligible to be awarded a federal contract, and you can't submit an offer that requires an active SAM registration. Renew at sam.gov (it's free) and wait until your status shows 'Active' again before you submit any bid.
- Can a lapsed SAM registration cost me a contract?
- Yes. Under FAR 52.204-7 you must be registered in SAM when you submit your offer and at the time of award. In TLS Joint Venture (B-422275, 2024) GAO recommended terminating an award because the awardee's registration had lapsed, and in Maxim Healthcare (B-422389.2, 2024) a bidder that submitted while lapsed was excluded and needed months of litigation to get back in. Never let your registration go inactive while a bid you care about is open.
- How early should I renew my SAM.gov registration?
- We recommend starting about 45 days ahead — earlier if your legal name or address recently changed. Renewal review can take from several business days to about two weeks (longer when entity validation is triggered). You can start your renewal at any time — SAM.gov's reminder emails to the Entity Administrator begin 60 days before expiration — and renewal is always free.
- Does SAM.gov remind me before I expire?
- SAM.gov emails the Entity Administrator at 60, 30, and 15 days before expiration — but those go to whatever inbox is on file, so they're easy to miss if that person left or the emails land in spam. Don't rely on them: this tool generates an .ics file or a Google Calendar event for your recommended renew-by date, so the reminder lives on your own calendar.
- My SAM.gov renewal is stuck on "Submitted" or "In Progress" — what should I do?
- First, don't panic and don't pay anyone. After you submit a SAM.gov renewal, the system runs your entity through background validations before it flips back to Active, and GSA tells you to allow at least ten business days for that to happen. So "Submitted" or "In Progress" usually means SAM.gov is checking your data, not that anything is broken on your end. Several separate checks run behind the scenes: an entity validation that confirms your legal business name and physical address exist and are unique, plus separate IRS (TIN) and DLA (CAGE code) validations. If any of those fail, SAM.gov emails your entity's Government Business Point of Contact with instructions to fix and resubmit — so watch that inbox (and its spam folder), because you may need to correct your info with the IRS or CAGE before the renewal can finish. If entity validation can't match your name and address automatically, you'll be asked to open a help ticket and attach documents proving them. If it's been well past ten business days with no email and no clear next step, get free official help from the Federal Service Desk at fsd.gov, the government's support desk for SAM.gov, where you can check your registration status and open a ticket. One thing to keep firmly in mind: SAM.gov registration and renewal are completely free, and no private company can push your registration through the queue any faster. Any offer to "expedite" your renewal for a fee is marketing, not a government service.
- If I renew my SAM.gov registration early, do I lose the days I have left?
- Effectively yes — renewing re-anchors your one-year clock to your renewal submission instead of extending your old expiration. SAM.gov calculates a registration's expiration as 365 days from the date it's submitted for processing (that's the exact wording SAM.gov used in its 2025 correction to affected records), so when you renew, your new Expiration Date is set about a year out from that renewal submission — not tacked on to your previous expiration. In practice, renewing a few weeks early trades a small amount of registration time for the safety of not lapsing — a trade almost always worth making, since a lapse during an open bid can cost you the award. Renewal is free, so the only real "cost" of going early is those few days. Confirm your new Expiration Date on your sam.gov entity dashboard once the renewal is approved (activation can take up to about 10 business days after you submit).
Renewal or validation giving you trouble? Free, official help is available from the Federal Service Desk and your local APEX Accelerator.
Go deeper
The terms behind this tool
Each one is defined in plain English with the FAR or SBA section it comes from, so you can check the rule rather than take our word for it.
- Government contracting glossary 50 terms a solicitation assumes you already know, each with the FAR or SBA citation it comes from.
- The free government bid list Open solicitations by state — no login, nothing blurred, each page listing the rows closing soonest.
- The open bid feed Government solicitations still open, most recently posted first, filterable by trade and state.