Disclaimer

This page exists because one misunderstanding would make everything else on this site misleading, and it is an easy misunderstanding to make. Read this before quoting a number from PriceProof.

The number on an award is not the price of the software

The figures on this site come from public government contract records. The most common figure is a contract total: the value of one award — a transaction between a government agency and a contractor. It is not a licence price. It is not a price per user, per seat, per credit, per hour or per year. It is not the cost of the product.

An award total usually bundles things that have nothing to do with the software's list price: implementation and integration labour, data migration, training, support terms, reseller margin, hardware, and years of subscription across thousands of users. Two awards for the same product can differ by an order of magnitude and both be accurate, because they are not the same thing being priced.

Every figure on this site is therefore printed with its type next to it — contract total, stated unit price, derived unit price, or vendor list price — and figures of different types must not be compared with one another. If you take one thing from this page, take that: comparing a contract total to a list price is a category error, and it is the error this site is built to prevent.

What a figure here can support

A figure here can honestly support statements like:

• "Agencies have awarded at least this many contracts naming this product."
• "The recorded totals of these awards range from X to Y."
• "This vendor publishes a list price of Z per unit, and the observed contract totals in this set run higher."
• "These named agencies bought this product in these years."

What a figure here cannot support

A figure here cannot honestly support statements like:

• "This product costs X." — awards are not prices.
• "This vendor charges more than its competitor." — the sets are not comparable scopes, and many awards are resold through intermediaries.
• "The government overpaid." — an award total is not a benchmark, and the record does not contain the scope needed to judge value.
• "You will pay this much." — you will pay what you negotiate, with your scope, your volume and your term.
• "This vendor's list price is a lie." — list prices and negotiated prices legitimately differ; that gap is normal in enterprise software.

The data comes from government records, with their flaws

Everything here is derived from USAspending.gov, which republishes data reported by federal agencies. That data contains errors: mis-keyed amounts, inconsistent vendor names, vague descriptions, and awards that were later modified or de-obligated. We match against award text, so an award that names a product unclearly may be missed, and an award that names it in passing may be included where it is not really a purchase of that product.

We filter and label as carefully as we can — the methodology page sets out exactly how — but we cannot make a government record cleaner than it is. Where a figure looks wrong, the underlying award is linked on the page so you can check it yourself. We would rather you did.

No advice, no quote, no endorsement

Nothing on this site is legal, financial, procurement or professional advice, and nothing here is a quotation or an offer. PriceProof is not affiliated with any vendor mentioned, does not accept payment or sponsorship from vendors, and does not endorse any product. A product having a page here means only that public records name it often enough to be worth reporting — it says nothing about its quality, and a product not having a page says nothing either, beyond the fact that the public record was thin.

Mentioning a product, an agency, a contractor or a reseller is descriptive. It is not an allegation about any of them, and it should not be read as one.

Verify before you rely

Every award figure on this site links to its record on USAspending.gov. If you are making a decision based on a number here, follow the link and read the record. If what you find there disagrees with what we published, tell us at [email protected] — a correction is a favour, and it is the fastest way to improve the site.

For the full method, see methodology. For the terms on which this site is published, see terms of use.