Small Business Set-Aside Performance
Small-business set-aside obligations, FY2026 (provisional)
FY2026 obligations (Oct 2025–Sep 2026, provisional; DoD awards signed after July 16, 2026 are not yet public) · as of October 14, 2026
In FY2026 (provisional), transactions that report one of the 18 small-business set-aside codes carried $57.03B in federal prime-contract obligations. That is 16.2% of the $351.87B obligated on transactions with a reported business-size determination, where the set-aside code is reported. The largest program by obligations was Small Business Set-Aside — Total (code SBA), with $35.28B.
| # | Code | Program | Net obligations | Awards and orders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SBA | Small Business Set-Aside — Total | $35.28B | 378,103 |
| 2 | SDVOSBC | Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned SB Set-Aside | $8.68B | 16,725 |
| 3 | 8A | 8(a) Competed | $5.22B | 6,441 |
| 4 | 8AN | 8(a) Sole Source | $4.32B | 10,017 |
| 5 | SBP | Small Business Set-Aside — Partial | $1.10B | 2,908 |
| 6 | HZC | HUBZone Set-Aside | $1.07B | 3,319 |
| 7 | WOSB | Women-Owned Small Business | $685.85M | 2,506 |
| 8 | SDVOSBS | SDVOSB Sole Source | $272.07M | 845 |
| 9 | ISBEE | Indian Small Business Economic Enterprise | $229.46M | 1,046 |
| 10 | WOSBSS | WOSB Sole Source | $49.97M | 164 |
Set-aside figures count only the transactions whose own FPDS record reports a set-aside code. Orders placed under a set-aside contract vehicle often leave that field blank, so these totals understate set-aside obligations, and a blank code means “not reported”, not “full and open competition”.
The 23% government-wide goal (15 U.S.C. § 644(g)) applies to all prime-contract obligations to small businesses, set-aside or not, and SBA's scorecard applies its own exclusions, so this share is not the official scorecard figure.
Source: Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS-NG) prime-contract transactions distributed through USAspending.gov. Dollars are net obligations (the sum of each transaction's federalActionObligation, de-obligations included), not outlays.
Frequently asked questions
Answers are computed from FPDS-NG transactions distributed via USAspending.gov. Figures reflect the most recent SmartSync run, refreshed every six hours.
- What are federal set-aside programs?
- Federal set-asides are reservations of contracting opportunities for qualifying small or socioeconomically disadvantaged businesses, governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 19 (FAR 19). Examples include 8(a) Business Development, HUBZone, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB), and Small Business set-asides. The contracting officer designates the set-aside type at award via FAR 19.5, recorded in FPDS-NG as typeOfSetAsideCode.
- Which 18 active codes does this page track, and which legacy codes are excluded?
- The 18 active SB-eligible set-aside codes tracked are 8A, 8AN, HS3, HZC, HZS, WOSB, WOSBSS, EDWOSB, EDWOSBSS, SDVOSBC, SDVOSBS, VSA, VSS, SBA, SBP, ISBEE, IEE, and BI. Legacy codes A3 (Labor Surplus Area Firm — a U.S. Department of Labor designation, not an SBA program), ESB (Emerging Small Business, retired), VSB (Very Small Business, retired), and SDB (Small Disadvantaged Business as a code, retired) are excluded from rollups. For FY2026 (provisional), agencies obligated $57.03B across the 18 active SB-eligible set-aside codes out of $351.87B in SB-eligible obligations — 16.2% of SB-eligible obligations.
- What is the 23% statutory small-business goal?
- 15 U.S.C. § 644(g) sets a statutory government-wide small-business prime-contracting goal of 23% of eligible federal prime-contract obligations. Within that 23%, sub-goals are: HUBZone 3%, Woman-Owned Small Business 5%, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business 3%, and Small Disadvantaged Business 5%. Each agency receives a goal letter and is scored annually by SBA. The 23% is a floor, not a ceiling; agencies often exceed it on the consolidated SBA scorecard at fiscal-year close.
- Why does GovChime's achievement % differ from the SBA Procurement Scorecard?
- SBA's official Procurement Scorecard applies additional FAR 19 exclusions to its goal-eligible base — Foreign Military Sales (FMS) orders, sub-$10K micro-purchases, mandatory-source acquisitions, certain utilities, and direct 8(a) sole-source orders awarded by SBA itself. GovChime's denominator is FPDS-NG transactions where the contracting officer recorded a small-business size determination (codes 'S' or 'O'). Combined with year-to-date timing in current-FY views vs. fiscal-year-close in SBA's report, these methodology differences typically widen GovChime's denominator and lower the apparent achievement %.
- What does a "Net deobligation" badge on a program card mean?
- A net-deobligation badge means downward modifications — option non-exercises, contract de-scopes, terminations, and corrections — exceeded new obligations for that program code in the selected period, leaving total_value below zero. This is real USAspending-parity data, not a reporting bug. It is most common for low-volume codes where a single Q4 administrative cleanup or option cancellation flips the net negative. Achievement-percent computations are suppressed for net-deobligation rows because a negative numerator over a positive denominator is not meaningful.
- Why can set-aside totals be lower than the real set-aside volume?
- Set-aside figures count only the transactions whose own FPDS record reports a set-aside code. Orders placed under a set-aside contract vehicle often leave that field blank, so these totals understate set-aside obligations, and a blank code means “not reported”, not “full and open competition”. Shares on this page are therefore shares "where the set-aside code is reported". Only the Total Small Business rollup is compared with the 23% government-wide goal; individual programs are not scored against it.
- How is the group-level Year-over-Year (YoY) calculated?
- Group-level YoY for the four SBA scorecard families (Total SB, HUBZone, WOSB, SDVOSB) follows the SBA-OSDBU spend-weighting convention: sum the constituent set-aside codes' obligations for the current and prior fiscal years, then compute (current − prior) / prior × 100. This differs from an unweighted mean across codes, which would let tiny programs dominate the trend. Group YoY is null when the prior-FY total is zero. Single-FY views show no group YoY pills since there is no prior-period denominator.
- Where does the typeOfSetAsideCode field come from?
- typeOfSetAsideCode is set by the federal contracting officer at award time under FAR 19.5 and recorded on each FPDS-NG transaction. The values are the SBA-administered set-aside taxonomy (8A, 8AN, HZC, SDVOSBC, WOSB, etc.) — for example, SDVOSBC indicates an SBA-certified SDVOSB set-aside (required post-2023 VA rule). GovChime preserves these codes verbatim from the upstream feed and maps them to friendly display names; aggregations and rankings are computed off the raw codes.
About set-aside program data
How federal small-business and socioeconomic set-aside programs are actually performing, measured in obligated dollars and contract counts rather than policy statements. Coverage includes 8(a) Business Development, HUBZone, WOSB and EDWOSB, SDVOSB and VOSB, and small disadvantaged business awards, each shown against the statutory small-business contracting goal established in 15 U.S.C. § 644(g). For contractors holding one of these certifications, the practical question is which agencies genuinely route work through your program versus which fall short of their targets year after year — the gap between the two is where a certification actually converts into revenue. Note that GovChime's achievement percentages are computed from FPDS prime-award data and will not match the SBA scorecard exactly, because the scorecard applies its own exclusions and adjustments to the eligible base. Treat these figures as a directional read on agency behaviour, not as an official compliance score.