Alaska bid services compared

There are a dozen ways to find public bids in Alaska, and several of them are free. This page sets out what each one covers, what it costs and who it suits. AK RFP Hub is ours, so each claim about another service links to that service's own page. Prices and counts were checked on October 1, 2026.

Which one fits

• You only bid State of Alaska work. Alaska Online Public Notices is free, it is the State's official notice system, and it will email you a saved search every day.
• You only bid federal work. SAM.gov is free and has saved searches.
• You bid one or two local owners. Register on each owner's portal. They are free, and you have to register there to submit a bid anyway.
• You are new to government work, or need help with SAM registration or certifications. The Alaska APEX Accelerator is free and you work with a person. Its Bid Match email is free for active clients.
• You are a construction firm and need drawings, specs, addenda, bidders lists and bid results. AGC of Alaska Online Plans if you are a member or want to be, The Plans Room if you would rather subscribe.
• You work in several states. BidNet Direct publishes its prices. BidPrime quotes by geography and has a 30-day trial with no card.
• You have a business development team planning pursuits a year out. GovWin IQ tracks forecasts and budgets before a notice exists.
• You bid several kinds of Alaska public owner (state, federal, boroughs, cities, utilities, school districts, tribal organizations) and nobody on staff has time to check them all. That is the job AK RFP Hub was built for.

Side by side

The paid services

BidNet Direct

A national bid network. Agencies publish through it at no charge and vendors register to see the bids. In Alaska, two agencies publish through its Alaska Purchasing Group: Fairbanks North Star Borough and Interior Gas Utility. If you bid either of them you need a free BidNet account whatever else you use, because that is where their documents and bid submission live.

On October 1, 2026 the Alaska page showed 3 bids from those member agencies and 88 statewide and federal notices that BidNet gathers from elsewhere. The free plan covers the member agencies. Seeing the gathered state and local notices for one state is the Local plan at $599 a year, and federal notices are a $149-a-year add-on. Matching is by the categories and location you choose when you register. Three states are $1,199 a year and all states are $1,999.

Alaska Bid Network (bidsalaska.com) and Bid Ocean

bidsalaska.com is the Alaska Bid Network, run by the North America Procurement Council. It is a separate company from BidNet, and it is an aggregator with a borough-by-borough directory of agencies. It publishes bid results with the low bidder and amount, which is useful if you want to know what a job went for. Its subscription link now leads to Bid Ocean, where one state costs $65 to $125 a month depending on the plan, with plan-holder contacts and bid results included.

Deltek GovWin IQ

A market-intelligence product built for business development teams. Deltek says it tracks programs "from the earliest budget signal, often months or years before a solicitation is released", and its records are kept by analysts. It carries Alaska state and local work: its public Alaska page says it tracked 2,095 Alaska bids in a year, with examples from DOT&PF, the City of Ketchikan, Anchorage School District, Kodiak Island Borough, Mat-Su Borough and Cook Inlet Housing Authority. It also has award history, incumbents and teaming information that AK RFP Hub does not.

Deltek does not publish a price. It is sold by quote on an annual contract. One Capterra reviewer wrote that "the cost is prohibitive of smaller companies".

BidPrime

A national bid-alert service based in Austin. BidPrime says it monitors "over 120,000 entities and sources", and its public Alaska list shows DOT&PF, borough, city, utility and school district bids. Alerts are matched on keywords, categories and purchasing codes, and a BidPrime analyst sets them up with you. Every plan includes an AI assistant for summaries and go/no-go, and the higher plans add expiring contracts and historical bid data.

Plans are quoted to your geography and billed yearly, and the price is not published. The trial is 30 days with no credit card, which is longer and easier than ours.

The free routes

Alaska Online Public Notices

The State's official notice system. State departments post their solicitations here, including DOT&PF. You can search without an account, and subscribe by RSS or daily email to everything or to a saved search. It does not include boroughs, cities, school districts, utilities or federal work.

SAM.gov and Grants.gov

SAM.gov lists federal contract opportunities and can be filtered to Alaska. It is also where you register to do federal work. Grants.gov lists federal grants and will email you a saved search. Both are free.

Bid Express and the borough and city portals

Local owners each use their own system, and most are free to view. Alaska DOT&PF runs construction bidding through Bid Express (bidx.com), where the advertised documents and addenda are available without logging in and paper bids are still accepted. The Municipality of Anchorage uses the other Bid Express (bidexpress.com) and pays the fees so vendors can view and bid at no cost. The Kenai Peninsula Borough is on Bid Express too. Juneau uses Public Purchase, Mat-Su Borough uses Euna Procurement, and Fairbanks North Star Borough uses BidNet. Wherever you find a bid, the owner's portal is where you download the documents and submit.

Alaska APEX Accelerator

The Alaska APEX Accelerator is part of UAA's Business Enterprise Institute and is funded in part by the Department of Defense. Its services are free: one-on-one help with SAM registration, small-business certifications and the non-technical parts of a proposal. If you are new to government work, start there.

Its Bid Match service is a daily email, free for active clients. A counselor builds a profile from your NAICS codes and keywords, and you are sent the notices that contain them. That is the difference from AK RFP Hub, which reads each notice against a description of what your firm does and labels how well it fits.

Plan rooms

AGC of Alaska Online Plans

The association's online plan room: current construction projects and supply and service RFPs with plans, specifications, addenda, bidders lists and bid results, and a daily email. It comes with membership. Dues are $1,300 a year plus quarterly volume dues for a general contractor, $1,000 plus volume dues for a specialty contractor, and $850 for an associate membership that includes Online Plans. Non-members can ask for a 30-day trial. If you are already a member, you already have it.

The Plans Room

A private plan room in Anchorage, separate from AGC, that tracks public and large private projects. A year is $595 for project news, bid dates and results, or $1,395 with plans, specifications and addenda.

AK RFP Hub

AK RFP Hub covers Alaska and nothing else. It watches more than thirty source channels, each named on the How it works page: SAM.gov, Grants.gov, Alaska Online Public Notices, DOT&PF, the authorities and utilities, boroughs and cities, school districts, tribal organizations, and BidNet's Alaska listings. You describe your shop once. Every open notice is then read against that description and given one of five fit labels. There is a map and a search that takes plain language.

It costs $49 a month or $490 a year after a 14-day trial. The trial needs a card and charges nothing until it ends. For state, local and federal notices in one state, BidNet's Local plan with the federal add-on comes to $748 a year and Bid Ocean runs $650 to $1,250. Past awards and bid tabs for comparable work are a $20-a-month add-on.

It is built and run by one person, Kai Myers, in Anchorage. If you would like help, he will set up your profile with you and tune it until the feed looks right. Write to kai@akrfp.com and he is the one who answers.

What it does not do:

• Host plans, specifications or bidders lists. Those stay on the owner's portal or in a plan room.
• Take bid submissions.
• Track forecasts, budgets or anything before a notice is posted.
• Cover work outside Alaska.
• Help with SAM registration, certifications or writing the proposal. APEX does that, for free.

The data can be incomplete, late or wrong on a detail, so read the issuing agency's notice before you bid.

Common questions