A set-aside is the federal government restricting competition for a contract to a category of small business. For anybody holding one of those designations it is the single most useful filter in the dataset — and it is present on fewer than half of notices, which is information rather than a gap.
What a set-aside is
A rule that says only businesses of a certain kind may compete. The contracting officer sets it, SAM.gov records it, and it changes who is eligible rather than what is being bought.
Two fields carry it: set_aside_code for machine use and set_aside for the human-readable label.
The codes you will see
| Code | Reserves the contract for |
|---|---|
SBA | Total small business set-aside |
8A | Participants in the 8(a) business development programme |
WOSB | Women-owned small business |
SDVOSBC | Service-disabled veteran-owned small business |
HZC | HUBZone small business |
There are more, and the list changes with policy. Use set_aside — the label — when displaying to a person, and the code when filtering, because labels get reworded and codes tend not to.
Present on fewer than half of notices
46.1% of notices carry a set-aside code, measured across 13,434. So filtering on it removes more than half the index by design — and the removed half is not missing data, it is open competition.
Filtering, and why it is server-side
setAsideCodes filters before delivery, so notices it excludes are never returned and never charged. That matters more here than on most filters: if you hold one designation, you are interested in a small slice of a very large index, and paying per row for the rest would dominate the cost of the run.
{
"maxResults": 500,
"activeOnly": true,
"publishedWithinDays": 7,
"setAsideCodes": ["8A", "SBA"],
"naicsCodes": ["541511", "541512"],
"noticeTypes": ["o", "k"]
}Combining with agency and classification
Set-aside plus classification plus agency is the combination that produces a list you can act on. The set-aside says you are eligible, the NAICS or PSC code says it is your kind of work, and the agency tells you something about how they buy — including whether they will publish the documents you need to bid.
That last point is worth repeating: a Veterans Affairs solicitation almost always carries a statement of work, and a Department of Defense one often carries a link to a portal instead. Same set-aside, very different amount of work to respond.
What the data does not tell you
Whether you qualify. A set-aside code records a restriction; it says nothing about whether your business holds the designation, and holding one is a registration and certification matter rather than a data one.
The dataset is good for finding opportunities your designation would let you compete for. It is not an eligibility check, and this site is not the place to get one.
