How to Find Your NAICS Code (Government Contracting Guide)

Every government solicitation is issued under a NAICS code, and that code decides two things: whether the opportunity appears in your searches, and whether you count as a 'small business' for set-asides. Picking the right codes is one of the first — and most consequential — registration decisions a contractor makes.

What a NAICS code actually does in contracting

The North American Industry Classification System assigns a six-digit code to every line of business. In government contracting it's not just statistics: the contracting officer assigns one NAICS code to each solicitation, and that code's SBA size standard (a revenue cap or employee cap) determines who qualifies as small for that buy. The same company can be 'small' under one code and 'large' under another.

Three ways to find your codes

• Search by what you do: use a keyword search (our free NAICS Code Finder covers the codes most common in government work) and read the official definitions at census.gov/naics
• Reverse-engineer from real solicitations: search SAM.gov for the work you want and note which NAICS codes agencies actually use for it — this beats theory every time
• Check your competitors: look up similar companies in SAM.gov's entity search and see which codes they registered

Primary vs. secondary codes in SAM.gov

SAM.gov asks for one primary NAICS code and lets you list as many secondaries as apply. Your primary should be the work you most want to win. Secondaries cost nothing and make you visible in market research — but only list codes you can credibly perform; agencies do look.

A practical rule: register the 3–6 codes you'd actually bid under. An entity profile with forty codes signals a company that does nothing in particular.

Size standards: the part everyone gets wrong

Each code carries an SBA size standard — for example, roughly $34M average annual receipts for IT services codes, $22M for janitorial, $9.5M for landscaping, and employee-based caps for wholesale and manufacturing codes. Your size is measured per code, per solicitation, using a 5-year receipts average (or employee count).

Before certifying as small on any bid, verify against the current SBA size standards table — misrepresentation has severe penalties, and standards are adjusted for inflation every few years.

The bottom line

Pick codes from real solicitations, not abstract definitions. Register a focused set in SAM.gov, know your size status under each, and set SAM.gov saved searches on those codes — that's your opportunity pipeline from day one.