SAM.gov UEI and CAGE Code Lookup: Resolving Legal Names

Executive Summary

A SAM.gov UEI and CAGE code lookup should produce a dated identity record, with the legal entity and location clearly distinguished. The Unique Entity ID (UEI) is a 12-character identifier issued by SAM.gov; ^[1] a Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) code is a separate five-character identifier. (Source: qpldocs.dla.mil) Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) language defines the domestic CAGE context by unique location and explicitly distinguishes it from the unique entity identifier. Neither code should be used as an automatic corporate-family merge key. ^{[2] [3]}

The first practical distinction is UEI-only versus full registration. SAM.gov says an entity obtaining only a UEI cannot apply directly for federal awards, ^[4] while a full registration has purpose, processing, and status information to inspect. Registration must be renewed every 365 days, ^[4] but the UEI itself does not expire. ^[5] An expired registration therefore does not establish that the business has stopped operating, and an active registration does not establish ownership, company revenue, or acquisition suitability. ^[6]

Visibility requires particular care in the 2026 source snapshot. Current Federal Service Desk (FSD) guidance says SAM.gov discontinued new public-search opt-outs. ^[7] It preserves restricted visibility for previously opted-out entities that had not renewed as of February 25, 2026, until renewal. ^[7] Older portal wording and API examples still discuss opt-outs. Analysts should preserve that discrepancy, record their access context, and treat a missing public result as unresolved evidence rather than proof of nonexistence. ^[8]

The defensible workflow is to capture the exact legal name, doing-business-as name, UEI, CAGE, address, purpose, status, and dates; corroborate the legal entity through the relevant state registry; then connect accepted identifiers to USAspending recipient and transaction records. USAspending recipient IDs have parent, child, or neither scope, and obligations represent government commitments rather than company accounting revenue. The recommended output is a field crosswalk, a reversible matching worksheet, and an exception log. Shared addresses, names, points of contact, and parent-profile labels remain leads for review. They do not independently prove a legal merger or ownership relationship. ^{[9] [10] [2]}

Introduction and Background

Federal contractor research begins with a naming problem. A deal-origination spreadsheet may contain a trading brand, a website name, a contract recipient, a plant, and a parent organization. Those records may describe different levels of the same business, or entirely different businesses. The analytical task is to identify the legal contracting entity before applying a private-equity mandate.

SAM.gov Entity Information is broader than a contractor directory: it brings together entity registrations, exclusions, disaster-response information, and responsibility or qualification data. A registration record and an exclusion record serve different purposes. Finding a name in one domain should not silently populate fields belonging to another. This report explains the record categories without assessing any named entity's eligibility or conduct. ^[8]

The identifier landscape also has a historical boundary. The federal transition from the Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number to the SAM-generated UEI occurred on April 4, 2022. ^[11] Historical exports can therefore retain a different identifier vocabulary. Grants.gov describes the replacement identifier as requested in and assigned by SAM.gov; legacy identifiers should be retained as historical aliases, rather than substituted into a current UEI field. ^[12]

The method below is designed for government-services, aerospace, defense-supply-chain, and regulated-contractor origination teams. Its unit of analysis is a legal entity with dated identifier relationships. A corporate-family view can be built subsequently, using separately supported ownership evidence. Census definitions illustrate the underlying distinction: an establishment is a physical-location unit and is not necessarily equivalent to an enterprise. That statistical definition is useful context, not proof of any particular contractor's structure. ^[13]

Recommendations and confidence categories in this report are analytical policies, not government certification standards. The research uses an October 2026 source snapshot, with pages accessed on October 15, 2026. Historical documents remain historical evidence, and the worked public example below does not claim a live authenticated SAM verification.

Additional registries can corroborate particular fields without replacing the primary join. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) company dictionary, for example, distinguishes SAM-assigned UEI, company name, address, and website fields. Treat a program listing as an additional dated observation; it does not eliminate the need to resolve the legal contracting party. ^[14]

Identity Taxonomy and Identifier Scope

Legal business name and doing business as (DBA) belong in separate columns. FSD's update workflow treats legal name, DBA, and physical address as separate details and calls for supporting documents when changes require validation. A DBA string should help discover a record, not replace its legal identity. ^[15]

Other administrative identifiers have different purposes. An Employer Identification Number (EIN) is a federal tax ID, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Census notes that a multi-unit enterprise may have several EINs. Those facts reinforce the need to retain issuing system and scope, rather than assume that every organizational identifier describes one entire corporate group. This guide does not propose collecting nonpublic tax information. ^{[16] [13]}

Table 1 is a field crosswalk. Its last column records the source and access date; analysts should add the actual record URL and observation date when completing a company file.

The crosswalk separates identity, registration, location, and award activity. Its provider row represents the research-delivery layer, not an issuing authority. Confidence in one layer cannot be transferred automatically to another.

How to Search SAM.gov Entity Information

For SAM.gov entity search by UEI, begin with the exact identifier when available. If the task is to find a company UEI number, start with legal-name candidates, then corroborate the returned name and address. GSA's Entity Management API documents separate UEI, CAGE, legal-business-name, and DBA filters. Its legal-name search can be partial or complete, so a name hit is a candidate, not a verified join. ^[6]

Use the Entity Information route and record whether the interface requires sign-in and whether active-only controls are selected. This research observed the sign-in prompt but did not execute an authenticated entity search. Consequently, it does not claim that every possible entity record is visible to an anonymous visitor or that a particular contractor has a current registration. ^[8]

A practical capture sequence is:

• Exact input: Preserve the UEI, CAGE, or legal-name string actually searched.
• Legal identity: Copy the returned legal name verbatim, including its suffix.
• Alias: Capture a DBA separately and retain the original spelling.
• Registration: Record purpose and status as separate fields.
• Dates: Capture registration, activation, last update, and expiration fields individually.
• Provenance: Retain the result URL, collection date, access context, and unresolved questions.

These are distinct fields in the Entity Management API. Do not replace the last-update date with the registration-expiration date or treat an API example's historical values as the current record. Also distinguish registration status from identifier status. ^[6]

UEI-only requests require the legal business name and physical address. They are a narrower process than completing registration. For contract screening, inspect the registration purpose: the official checklist distinguishes All Awards from Financial Assistance Awards Only. A grant-oriented record should not be described as evidence that an entity completed the procurement-oriented registration pathway. ^{[4] [17]}

Visibility is a separate test. Current FSD guidance says new public-search opt-outs have been discontinued, while legacy opted-out entities unrenewed at the specified transition date retain restricted visibility until renewal. It also says sensitive information is not publicly displayed. A search result therefore does not authorize assumptions about hidden tax, financial, or contact fields. ^[7]

The correct negative finding is “No matching record retrieved under the recorded search conditions.” It should identify the searches, filters, access limitations, and date. It should not become “the company has no UEI” unless evidence supports that stronger conclusion. For automated use, GSA documents a registered-versus-ID-Assigned filter and a registered-entity default. A default filter can shape the result set without changing whether an identifier exists. ^[6]

A SAM registration is also different from an award recipient. The former is an administrative record; the latter connects an entity to reported federal award activity. Similarly, ID Assigned is not synonymous with active registration: FSD defines it as having an identifier without an active entity registration. Separate those states before filtering a target universe. ^[19]

CAGE Lookup and Location-Level Matching

A CAGE code company lookup should inspect the location behind the code. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) describes the code as five characters identifying a company or business organization, while FAR adds the unique-location context. That combination explains why a code can be a valuable discriminator without being a universal corporate-group identifier. (Source: qpldocs.dla.mil) ^[3]

The official CAGE search route is the validation route identified by FAR for relevant cases outside required SAM registration. During this research, the live CAGE application redirected to its usage agreement, and no company-level CAGE status record was inspected. The report therefore relies on fetched official definitions and dated documents, rather than inventing a current portal result. ^[2]

When matching UEI and CAGE codes:

• Pair evidence: Prefer a record explicitly displaying both identifiers together.
• Name evidence: Compare legal name and any documented historical name.
• Location evidence: Retain street, city, region, country, and postal code independently.
• Administrative evidence: Record the CAGE source and its own update or expiration information.
• Relationship evidence: Keep immediate-owner and highest-level-owner information distinct from the contractor.
• Exceptions: Escalate mismatched addresses or different legal suffixes for documentary reconciliation.

FAR says active SAM registrations have had associated CAGE codes verified. That is evidence about the registration process, not an independent current ownership determination. FAR's immediate-owner definition is based on direct control; its highest-level-owner definition addresses the top of that control chain. A shared address or point of contact does not, by itself, satisfy those definitions. ^[2]

The code lifecycle also differs from the registration lifecycle. A DoD doing-business guide states that CAGE expiration is five years from the last update. SAM registration follows the annual renewal rule described earlier. These clocks should remain separate, and the domestic CAGE rule should not be generalized to NCAGE without checking the relevant issuing guidance. (Source: www.acq.osd.mil) ^[4]

For non-U.S. records, the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) describes NCAGE as a codification identifier carrying organization name, address, and contact details. Its guidance calls for matching SAM and NCAGE name/address records character for character and states that NCAGE assignment and updates are free. Resolve differences with the issuing systems before accepting the pair; an analyst's normalized display name is not a substitute for corrected administrative records. (Source: eportal.nspa.nato.int)

Joining State Registries and USAspending

State corroboration should follow the entity's jurisdiction, rather than whichever state appears in an operating address. The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) provides routes to corporate-registration resources. California's information-request guidance illustrates available legal names, entity numbers, jurisdictions, addresses, and filed officer or management information. Field availability and meaning vary by registry. ^{[20] [18]}

A foreign qualification is especially important: an entity can be registered to transact business in one state while formed elsewhere. The public example below retains both the Florida registration number and the record's Maryland jurisdiction. The Florida number is not relabeled as a Maryland formation identifier. ^[21]

Table 2 provides the matching worksheet. Each row represents a field to populate for one candidate entity; a separate relationship table should connect parent and subsidiary candidates.

The worksheet is a recommended research schema, not a government form. Accepted means the specified identity relationship is supported for the stated period. Provisional means a plausible candidate still lacks a material link. Unresolved means conflicting or incomplete evidence prevents acceptance. These labels should not be marketed as measured match probabilities.

For USAspending matching, retain the UEI and the profile's own recipient ID. The official API contract defines recipient IDs at parent, child, or neither level and provides the UEI separately. Its date selection also distinguishes all-time data from a latest-twelve-month view. A parent-profile total should not be assigned to one subsidiary simply because a familiar name appears in the profile. ^[9]

Location fields require similar discipline. USAspending documents recipient business address and place of performance separately. An award performed at one site does not establish that the recipient's legal headquarters or formation jurisdiction is that site. Transactions and award-summary results also have different date behavior, so save the exact export type and filter. ^[22]

Name Changes, Joint Ventures, and Predecessors

A name change is an event to document, not a reason to merge every historical name into one current entity. FSD requires supporting evidence for relevant legal-name, DBA, and address updates. Department of Education guidance advises its grantees to update an existing UEI record after a name or address change rather than create a new UEI. That advice is scoped to maintaining the record, not proof that any similarly named company has legal continuity. ^{[15] [23]}

FAR distinguishes contractual name changes from novation, the government's recognition of a successor in relevant transfers. Where only the contractor's name changes and contractual rights and obligations are unaffected, it provides for a name-change agreement. Its successor provisions address transfers involving all assets or the portion involved in contract performance. Record the event, effective date, parties, and affected contracts separately. ^[24]

A stock purchase is another distinct scenario. FAR says novation is unnecessary when there is no legal change in the contracting party and the stated conditions concerning assets and continued performance are satisfied. Therefore, “same UEI before and after” is not evidence that ownership stayed the same. Conversely, a different contracting party should not be treated as continuous merely because its website or brand looks familiar. ^[24]

Maintain an event ledger containing:

• Event type: Name amendment, ownership transaction, asset transfer, relocation, or new entity.
• Parties: Exact predecessor and successor legal names, with identifiers.
• Effective date: The date supported by the relevant document.
• Federal effect: Name-change agreement, novation evidence, or an unresolved question.
• Historical scope: Awards and identifiers attributed only for supported periods.
• Review action: Accept continuity, preserve separate entities, or request specialist assessment.

The FAR predecessor representation looks back three years for a predecessor's federal contracts or grants and asks for predecessor legal name and CAGE information. Its successor definition excludes new offices or divisions of the same company and a company that only changes its name. Those distinctions should guide questions, not mechanically decide corporate continuity. ^[25]

Joint ventures deserve their own records. SBA guidance says a joint venture must be separately identified in SAM with its own name, UEI, and CAGE, with individual partners listed as immediate owners. Awards to the venture should therefore not be automatically reassigned to a partner or included twice in a family view. Preserve the venture-to-partner relationship independently from each partner's operating-entity record. ^[26]

For mandate decisions involving contractual succession, ownership changes, or eligibility terminology, consult a government-contracting specialist. This report applies official guidance but does not claim professional review.

Data Analysis and Evidence

The quantitative core is a set of administrative clocks and measurement boundaries, not a company-revenue estimate. Registration renewal, CAGE expiration, award action dates, and source publication delays answer different questions. They should appear as separate fields in the analyst's file.

SAM's renewal rule is 365 days, ^[4] while the domestic CAGE guide gives five years from its last update. (Source: www.acq.osd.mil) Neither period is a measured survival rate for operating companies. USAspending's October 6, 2026 documentation says Advanced Search begins with fiscal year 2008, while Custom Award Data Download offers data beginning in fiscal year 2001. An older contract absent from one interface may need a different retrieval route. ^[22]

That documentation also describes general publication within five days for procurement actions and a 90-day delay for Department of Defense and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers data. These are disclosed timing rules, not assurances that every record is complete on a particular day. It notes that required monthly award-outlay reporting began in fiscal year 2022. ^[22]

For period comparisons, the federal fiscal year begins October 1 and ends September 30 of the following year. State the dates rather than relying only on an ambiguous “annual” label. Treasury explains that obligations do not always result in payments; USAspending separately defines an outlay as money paid. Neither definition supplies a private contractor's accounting revenue. ^{[27] [28] [10]}

Table 3 is a hypothetical calculation, not a finding about any company. It assumes accepted recipient identifiers, deduplicated prime-award transactions, and a defined action-date period.

The 60% result is a concentration statistic within that hypothetical public-record set. It is not federal revenue share, customer concentration in financial statements, or a forecast. If the selected net-obligation denominator is nonpositive, do not publish a percentage; investigate the adjustments and choose a defensible presentation.

A reproducible calculation should:

• Freeze the join: List every accepted UEI and the reason it belongs in scope.
• Freeze the period: Specify start/end dates and transaction action-date logic.
• Freeze the measure: Use net obligations consistently, preserving negative adjustments.
• Deduplicate: Avoid combining award-summary totals with their underlying transactions.
• Separate levels: Keep prime awards, subawards, and corporate-family views distinct.
• Name the limitation: Label the result observed federal awards or obligations, never revenue share.

Transaction descriptions need similar care. GAO documents separate base-transaction and transaction-description headers used to distinguish original award purposes from subsequent modifications. Read the action history before interpreting a changed amount or description as a new contract. ^{[29] [10]}

Case Studies and Real-World Examples

A dated corporate record and identifier pair

A neutral public example uses Lockheed Martin Corporation solely to illustrate source reconciliation. Florida's Division of Corporations record identifies a foreign profit corporation, document number F95000002746, jurisdiction Maryland, status ACTIVE, and principal address 6801 Rockledge Drive, Bethesda, Maryland 20817. The status belongs to that Florida registry record; it is not a statement about SAM registration. ^[21]

A separate company-hosted government contract-modification document, signed November 7, 2022, pairs UEI NMHFLDYJJ4C5 with CAGE 52088 for Lockheed Martin Corporation at 9500 Godwin Drive, Manassas, Virginia 20110-4166. That is explicit historical identifier-pair evidence. It is not a current authenticated SAM record, and this report does not assert that either identifier is the corporation's only identifier. ^[30]

The addresses serve different source contexts: a corporate principal address in the Florida registration and an address in the dated contract document. The legal-name match supports investigating the connection, while the document directly supports its own UEI/CAGE pair. The address difference should be retained, not erased by choosing whichever location appears more familiar. FAR's location-based CAGE definition explains why that distinction matters. ^[3]

A defensible analyst file would retain:

• Registry observation: Florida qualification number, Maryland jurisdiction, principal address, status, and access date.
• Historical federal evidence: Document date, named contractor, UEI, CAGE, and contract-document address.
• Accepted relationship: The explicit historical UEI-to-CAGE pair in that document.
• Open question: Current SAM purpose/status and any later name, address, or identifier changes.

The example deliberately stops before current registration verification, ownership research, award aggregation, or mandate recommendation. A genuine public record can support a narrower conclusion than a complete contractor profile. The practical lesson is to distinguish a verified historical pair from a fully refreshed entity crosswalk.

The exact state record can be reopened by its document number, and the contract document should be retained with its signature date. Future updates should add a new observation rather than retroactively turning a dated document into current evidence.

Implications and Future Directions

For origination teams, the value of identifier research is clearer attribution. A federal activity signal can be attached to the correct legal entity and period before it enters a mandate screen. The signal remains separate from questions about current ownership, operating scale, financial performance, or willingness to transact.

Registry roles have limits. Florida distinguishes a fictitious name from the entity's legal name; California explains its available filed entity information; Texas warns that its office does not maintain LLC ownership information. Those boundaries argue for preserving roles such as registered agent, officer, manager, and owner as different fields. ^{[31] [18] [32]}

For public-company families, a subsidiary exhibit can help corroborate names and jurisdictions, but the federal exhibit rule permits specified subsidiary omissions. Absence from such an exhibit is therefore not sufficient evidence that a candidate subsidiary does not exist. A corporate-family map should describe the evidence supporting each edge and record the reporting period. ^[33]

Refresh should be driven by field meaning and decision timing:

• Before handoff: Recheck the identifiers and registration fields used in the screening conclusion.
• After an event: Revisit legal name, address, successor, or parent relationships when documentary changes appear.
• At expiration: Recheck registration status without translating expiry into business closure.
• After a discrepancy: Preserve both observations and assign a concrete reconciliation question.
• After an export: Record query, filters, retrieval time, and known publication delays.
• Before aggregation: Reconfirm the accepted entity set and the reporting measure.

These are recommended operating controls, not official refresh mandates. FAR separately requires relevant CAGE changes to be communicated to the contracting officer within 30 days; an internal research refresh policy should not be represented as that contractual obligation. ^[3]

Docket describes Triage as checking identity and fit, Scout as collecting answers, and Audit as reviewing evidence. Applied to this workflow, the useful separation is between collecting a record and deciding whether its contents support a merge. Provider tooling does not replace official records, and unresolved relationships should remain visible.

The likely next improvement is better evidence handling rather than more aggressive name matching: explicit scope, durable source references, event dates, accepted identifier sets, and reversible relationship decisions.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the difference between UEI and CAGE?

UEI identifies the SAM entity record. Domestic CAGE has a distinct DLA and unique-location context. Retain both when available, but require an explicit supported link rather than assuming either describes an entire corporate family. ^{[1] [3]}

Can a company have a UEI without active SAM registration?

Yes. SAM distinguishes obtaining only a UEI from completing registration, and FSD says the UEI does not expire. Check registration status and purpose separately before making a statement about direct federal-award participation. ^{[4] [5]}

Is a DBA enough to verify federal contractor identity?

A DBA is an alias to corroborate. Compare the legal business name, identifiers, address context, and registry evidence. FSD treats DBA and legal-name changes as separate details requiring the appropriate update process. ^[15]

Does an award amount show company revenue?

An obligation is a government commitment, while an outlay is money paid. Neither supplies a company's recognized revenue or its total-sales denominator. Public-award concentration should remain a statistic about the accepted public-record set. ^{[10] [28]}

What if a legal-name search finds no result?

Preserve a dated not-found observation with filters and access conditions. Check whether the search included nonregistered or ID-Assigned records and whether legacy visibility restrictions apply. Do not infer that the legal business ceased operating. ^{[6] [7]}

Conclusion

A useful SAM.gov UEI and CAGE lookup ends with a reviewable identity decision. It identifies the legal party, records the source context for each identifier, preserves location differences, and states which relationships are accepted for which dates. It also leaves a readable account of the work still required.

The strongest workflow starts with exact identifiers where available, uses legal names and DBAs for discovery, corroborates the entity through a jurisdiction-specific registry, and joins only supported recipients to award records. Parent candidates, joint ventures, predecessors, and differently located establishments remain separate until the relevant evidence supports their relationships.

The resulting file can support a narrower but more reliable mandate screen: a dated registration observation, an explicit historical identifier pair, or observed award activity attributed to an accepted entity. It cannot independently establish ownership, accounting revenue, current operating status, or acquisition fit.

Confidence should be attached to the specific claim, rather than to a company record as a whole. A well-supported legal name may coexist with an unresolved parent relationship or an unverified current SAM status. Preserving those distinctions makes subsequent specialist review and research handoff more useful.

For private-equity teams, the durable asset is the crosswalk plus its evidence history. Keep the original names, identifiers, jurisdictions, addresses, dates, and contradictions, and let later evidence change the current view without deleting the path that produced it.