Data report
The State of Public RFPs: 2026 mid-year report
Most advice about winning RFPs is anecdote. This report is measurement. We analyzed 29,591 public RFPs collected in Settle's RFP Hunter database — government, education, and non-profit solicitations posted between August 2025 and July 2026 — to answer the questions vendors actually ask: how long do you get, what is the money, when do the real deadlines fall, and where are the opportunities.
- public RFPs analyzed
- 29,591
- median response window
- 22 days
- of listings disclose a budget
- 10.7%
- disclosed contract value
- $52.8B
Key takeaways
- The median response window is 22 days. One in four RFPs (24.7%) gives vendors less than two weeks, and three in four (74.4%) close within 30 days of posting.
- Budgets are mostly hidden: only 10.7% of listings disclose an actual figure. Where they do, the median is $290,000, a third (33.8%) are $1 million or more, and the disclosed listings alone represent $52.8 billion in contract value.
- The question deadline is the deadline that kills late entrants. 46.4% of RFPs publish one, and the median falls just 12 days after posting — find an RFP two weeks late and you have usually lost the right to ask questions.
- Category economics vary by more than 13x: the median disclosed budget in Construction, Facilities & Maintenance is $2,000,000 against $150,000 in Software, Web & Mobile Development — the largest category by volume (20.7% of listings) and among the least transparent on budget (4.3% disclosure).
- California, Texas, and New York post the most RFPs, but pace varies sharply by geography: Maryland and the District of Columbia run 14-day median windows, against 22 days nationally.
- Among listings where the issuer type is classified, 75.6% come from government-affiliated organizations and 19.9% from educational institutions — and 57.9% of all listings name a specific procurement contact.
Where this data comes from
RFP Hunter is Settle's free, continuously updated database of open public RFPs and bids, collected from agency procurement portals and public feeds and refreshed hourly. This report analyzes the 29,591 listings posted between August 1, 2025 and July 2, 2026 — spanning all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, plus Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
Because the corpus is built from primary sources — the solicitations themselves — the numbers below describe what issuers actually publish, not what vendors remember. Full methodology notes are at the end of the report.
The response window: three weeks to win
The single most consequential number in public procurement is how long vendors get between a posting and its submission deadline. The answer: not long. The median response window across all 29,493 listings with valid dates is 22 days. A quarter of listings allow under two weeks. Three quarters close within a month.
That window has to absorb everything — discovering the RFP, deciding whether to bid, asking questions, gathering proof, and writing the response. A team that first learns about an opportunity from the posting spends the whole window reacting. This is the timing gap the entire pre-RFP signal motion exists to close.
| Response window | Share of listings |
|---|---|
| Under 14 days | 24.7% |
| Under 21 days | 45.9% |
| Under 30 days | 74.4% |
| 25th percentile | 14 days |
| Median | 22 days |
| 75th percentile | 30 days |
Budgets: mostly hidden, occasionally massive
Only 10.7% of listings disclose an actual budget figure. Everyone else makes vendors guess — which is exactly why budget intelligence is worth systematizing. (For another 35.7% of listings, Settle publishes an estimated budget on RFP Hunter based on the solicitation's scope; those estimates are excluded from every figure in this section.)
Where issuers do publish a number, the money is real. The median disclosed budget is $290,000, the 75th percentile is $2,000,000, and a third of disclosed budgets (33.8%) are $1 million or more. Summed, the 3,113 listings with a usable disclosed figure represent $52.8 billion in contract value over eleven months — from one corner of the market where the price tag happens to be public.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Share of all listings with a disclosed budget | 10.7% |
| 25th percentile | $90,000 |
| Median | $290,000 |
| 75th percentile | $2,000,000 |
| Disclosed budgets of $1M or more | 33.8% |
| Total disclosed contract value | $52.8 billion |
The question window closes first
Submission deadlines get all the attention, but the question deadline is the one that quietly disqualifies late entrants. 46.4% of listings publish a formal question deadline, and the median falls 12 days after posting — with a median of 12 days between the question cutoff and the submission deadline.
The practical consequence: a vendor who discovers an RFP two weeks after it posts has usually already lost the ability to ask clarifying questions, while competitors who found it on day one shaped their responses around the answers. On a 22-day median window, the first half is when the real positioning happens.
Category economics: a 13x spread
Public RFPs are not one market. Software, Web & Mobile Development is the largest category by volume — one in five listings — but runs short windows (20-day median), rarely discloses budgets (4.3%), and publishes question deadlines least often (24.4%). Construction, Facilities & Maintenance discloses budgets nearly four times as often, with a median disclosed budget of $2,000,000 — more than 13 times the software median.
Architecture, Engineering & Urban Planning gives vendors the most time (27-day median window), consistent with its qualifications-based selection culture. Arts, Culture & Sports is the transparency outlier: a third of its listings (33.2%) publish a budget, though the amounts are the smallest of any category with reliable data ($50,000 median).
| Category | Share of listings | Median window | Budget disclosed | Median disclosed budget | Question deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software, Web & Mobile Development | 20.7% | 20 days | 4.3% | $150,000 | 24.4% |
| Financial, Legal, HR & Staffing | 10.2% | 24 days | 8.8% | $426,000 | 65.8% |
| Construction, Facilities & Maintenance | 9.1% | 23 days | 16.2% | $2,000,000 | 49.4% |
| Architecture, Engineering & Urban Planning | 7.4% | 27 days | 18.7% | $899,000 | 56.8% |
| IT Support, Hardware & Networking | 7.3% | 19 days | 6.9% | $350,000 | 53.1% |
| Management Consulting & Admin Support | 6.7% | 23 days | 15.7% | $120,000 | 44.5% |
| Events, Printing & Promotional Goods | 5.2% | 19 days | 7.9% | $121,000 | 47.3% |
| Marketing, Advertising & Social Media | 5.1% | 23 days | 18.1% | $150,000 | 41.1% |
| Business Systems (ERP, CRM & POS) | 3.2% | 26 days | 5.1% | $375,000 | 60.6% |
| Healthcare Services, Wellness & Biotech | 3.0% | 26 days | 17.4% | $355,000 | 60.1% |
| Media, Creative Design & AV Production | 2.7% | 20 days | 13.8% | $119,000 | 46.6% |
| Hospitality, Food Service & Travel | 2.6% | 24 days | 8.9% | $200,000 | 70.1% |
| Education, Training & Libraries | 2.4% | 22 days | 14.9% | $350,000 | 52.4% |
| Environmental, Water & Energy | 2.1% | 25 days | 20.7% | $300,000 | 61.1% |
| Data Analytics, AI & Cloud Hosting | 2.1% | 21 days | 8.7% | $675,000 | 52.1% |
| Cybersecurity & Data Privacy | 1.6% | 20 days | 4.8% | — | 46.1% |
| Transportation, Fleet & Logistics | 1.3% | 24 days | 9.0% | $1,132,000 | 60.6% |
| Public Safety, Security & Fire | 1.2% | 23 days | 5.5% | — | 47.9% |
| Arts, Culture & Sports | 1.1% | 24 days | 33.2% | $50,000 | 52.9% |
| Real Estate & Property Management | 0.8% | 26 days | 14.0% | $1,293,000 | 67.9% |
| Manufacturing, Industrial Parts & Machinery | 0.5% | 15 days | 4.2% | — | 31.2% |
| Medical Equipment & Lab Supplies | 0.5% | 13 days | 4.4% | — | 40.7% |
| Retail, E-Commerce & Consumer Goods | 0.4% | 22 days | 9.3% | — | 58.5% |
| Mapping, GIS & Surveying | 0.4% | 22 days | 12.8% | — | 52.1% |
Where the RFPs are
Of the 28,767 listings with an identified location, 25,388 (88%) are in the United States, 2,417 in Canada, 338 in Ireland, and 98 in the United Kingdom. Within the US, listings span all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Volume follows population — California, Texas, and New York lead — but pace does not. Maryland and the District of Columbia both run 14-day median response windows, a week and more faster than the 22-day national median, while Florida and Georgia give vendors 27 days. If you sell in the DC area, your discovery motion has half the slack it would have in the Southeast.
| State | Listings | Median response window |
|---|---|---|
| California | 2,967 | 25 days |
| Texas | 2,195 | 24 days |
| New York | 1,673 | 22 days |
| Florida | 1,302 | 27 days |
| Maryland | 941 | 14 days |
| Virginia | 928 | 22 days |
| New Jersey | 830 | 20 days |
| Colorado | 748 | 25 days |
| Ohio | 745 | 18 days |
| Georgia | 718 | 27 days |
| District of Columbia | 702 | 14 days |
| Massachusetts | 697 | 20 days |
| Michigan | 669 | 25 days |
| Washington | 622 | 22 days |
| Illinois | 576 | 21 days |
Who is issuing, and who answers the phone
Among the 18,051 listings where the issuing organization type is classified, 75.6% come from government-affiliated organizations — states, cities, counties, agencies, and authorities — 19.9% from educational institutions, 4.1% from non-profits, and 0.4% from private organizations.
Procurement is more reachable than its reputation suggests: 57.9% of all listings name a specific procurement contact, and 52.6% publish that contact's email address. The information vendors need to engage a buyer directly is public more often than not — it is simply scattered across thousands of portals.
Methodology
Corpus: 29,591 public RFP and bid listings collected by Settle RFP Hunter from agency procurement portals and public feeds, with posting dates between August 1, 2025 and July 2, 2026. Statistics were computed on July 2, 2026. RFP Hunter's collection footprint has grown over the reporting period, so this report deliberately uses distributional statistics (medians, percentiles, shares) rather than month-over-month volume trends, which would partly reflect coverage growth rather than market growth.
Response windows are calendar days from posting date to submission deadline, restricted to windows between 1 and 365 days (n = 29,493). Budget statistics use issuer-disclosed figures only — Settle's estimated budgets are excluded — restricted to values between $1,000 and $5 billion (n = 3,113), taking the upper bound where a range is published. Medians are rounded to the nearest day; budgets to the nearest $1,000. State names were normalized for abbreviation and spelling variants before aggregation. Issuer-type shares are computed over the 18,051 listings (61%) with a classified organization type. Contact figures count listings with at least one named contact; no contact details are published in this report.
Cite as: Settle, “The State of Public RFPs: 2026 mid-year report,” July 2026. When citing a figure, please link to this page.
Frequently asked questions
How long do vendors get to respond to a public RFP?
Across 29,591 public RFPs analyzed by Settle (August 2025 to July 2026), the median response window is 22 days from posting to submission deadline. One in four listings allows under 14 days, and three in four close within 30 days.
What percentage of RFPs disclose a budget?
Only 10.7% of public RFPs disclose an actual budget figure. Where a budget is disclosed, the median is $290,000 and a third of the figures are $1 million or more. Settle publishes estimated budgets for many of the rest on RFP Hunter, based on each solicitation's scope.
What is the typical budget for a public RFP?
Among listings that disclose a budget, the median is $290,000, the 25th percentile is $90,000, and the 75th percentile is $2,000,000. Category matters enormously: the median disclosed budget in Construction, Facilities & Maintenance is $2,000,000, against $150,000 in Software, Web & Mobile Development.
When do RFP question deadlines usually fall?
46.4% of public RFPs publish a formal question deadline, and the median falls 12 days after the posting date — roughly the midpoint of the median 22-day response window. Vendors who discover an RFP late usually forfeit the question period entirely.
Which category posts the most public RFPs?
Software, Web & Mobile Development is the largest category, at 20.7% of the 29,591 listings analyzed — followed by Financial, Legal, HR & Staffing (10.2%) and Construction, Facilities & Maintenance (9.1%).
Where does this data come from?
All figures come from RFP Hunter, Settle's free public database of open RFPs and bids, collected continuously from agency procurement portals and public feeds. The underlying listings are browsable at usesettle.com/rfp-hunter, and aggregate statistics are available from a public JSON API.