PrimeRFP SCOUT · Contract Vehicle · GSA

STARS III

GSA · IT Services (8(a) Small Business) contract vehicle

STARS III is a GSA it services (8(a) small business) with a $22.5B ceiling and 632 prime awardees. SCOUT tracks 3,355 task orders totaling $2.3B — work ordered under the vehicle, not the prime awards. STARS III is the primary pathway for 8(a) IT services firms to reach federal customers. Award growth is high; task order competition is robust.

GSA's Small Business IT Services vehicle for 8(a) and small business IT contractors — 632 8(a) prime awardees providing task order IT services across federal agencies.

$22.5B

Ceiling

632

Prime Awardees

3,355

Task orders

$2.3B

Task-order obligated

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Vehicle Overview

Top Agencies Using STARS III

Rank	Agency	Spend
#1	Department of Health and Human Services	$468.1M
#2	Department of Defense	$457.2M
#3	Department of the Treasury	$268.4M
#4	Department of Homeland Security	$257.3M

Top Task Order Winners

Rank	Contractor	Orders	Total
#1	ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY LEADERS, INC.	19	$153.8M
#2	Softrams	14	$108.8M
#3	Thirdpacket Technologies	21	$106.0M
#4	Attainx	44	$79.8M
#5	SPARKSOFT CORPORATION	15	$75.5M

Task Order Trends by Year

Year	Orders	Obligated
2023	784	$599.9M
2024	1,004	$776.4M
2025	1,086	$693.0M

Frequently Asked Questions — STARS III

How do I get on STARS III?

GSA regularly issues solicitations for new awardees. Register for SCOUT alerts to track STARS III solicitations and RFP releases. Once awarded, you can pursue task order competitions against other prime awardees.

Who are the dominant winners on STARS III?

Top task order winners are listed above. Patterns show which contractor capabilities and solutions are most in demand across agencies using this vehicle. Study their win strategies and proposal themes.

What is the market size for STARS III?

SCOUT has tracked $2.3B in task-order obligations across 3,355 task orders on STARS III. That is work ordered under the vehicle — not the 632 prime awards that put firms on STARS III. The official ceiling is $22.5B. Use these benchmarks for capture planning.

SCOUT Signal

August 2026

One VA health contract was 35% of civilian federal obligations in July.

Meanwhile VA's service-disabled veteran-owned contract actions fell 41.8%. The same agency, the same month, the large-vendor lane expanding while the small-business lane contracted. Figures are civilian-agency obligations through 2026-07-31; DoD FPDS for this window is labeled incomplete.

This issue is the whole civilian market. Your capture plan isn't.

Read the August 2026 issue →

Data & Methodology

Federal contract and award data sourced from government procurement systems — including FPDS-NG, SAM.gov, and related federal data repositories. PrimeRFP SCOUT ingests, normalizes, and continuously updates records as agencies publish them. Reporting timelines vary by agency; some components (particularly DoD) carry a 60–90 day lag relative to award execution.

Dataset coverage — ≥ $100K floor

All intelligence on this page and within SCOUT is filtered to federal contract awards whose current total award value is $100K or more. PrimeRFP applies this floor at the award level (on current_total_value_award), not per-transaction, so large awards split across many mid-size obligation lines are retained in full. PrimeRFP's own empirical sampling against the raw USASpending dataset shows this threshold captures 98%+ of total federal contract dollars while excluding a long tail of micro-purchases, small modifications, and administrative actions — the trade-off that makes market intelligence tractable without distorting the dollar picture. Coverage: 560,000+ active contract awards and 2.5M+ unique awardees, including small-business set-asides, task orders, and mid-market opportunities.

Award identification: Each record is keyed by federal Award ID (PIID). Task orders recorded as independent awards appear as separate rows. IDIQs and their task orders are tracked distinctly.

Why SCOUT dollar figures differ from published annual totals: Per-agency dollar figures on SCOUT intelligence pages aggregate all USASpending transaction records — including base contract awards, task orders, delivery orders, and modifications to existing contracts. Annual federal contract obligation figures cited in industry reports (e.g., FY2025: $833.8B per Bloomberg Government) count only new prime award actions in the fiscal year, excluding mods. An IDIQ vehicle (like OASIS+) carries no obligation at award — only task orders issued against it are counted. SCOUT's transaction-level aggregates are larger because they capture the full activity picture across a contract's lifecycle, making them useful for competitive analysis and pipeline sizing rather than year-over-year spending comparison.

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