How to Check Your SBA Small Business Size Standard

Your size standard depends on the NAICS code attached to a specific contract, and it's expressed either as a cap on average annual receipts or a cap on employees. Look it up in SBA's Size Standards Tool, calculate receipts over five years and employees over 24 months, and always add in your affiliates.

Check first: not sure which programs you qualify for yet? Use our free 60-second eligibility checker to see which federal, state, and city set-asides your business actually fits.

If you want to win federal contracts set aside for small businesses, you have to prove you actually are small — and "small" is not a feeling, it's a number tied to the industry code on the contract. This guide shows you exactly how to find your SBA size standard, how to calculate your own size the way SBA does it, and what a sweeping proposed rule published on August 20, 2026 could change for tens of thousands of firms.

What a size standard actually is

A size standard is the largest a business — together with its affiliates — can be while still counting as "small" for a given industry. SBA assigns a size standard to every North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, and those standards are expressed in one of two units: average annual receipts in dollars, or average number of employees. As a rough baseline, SBA notes that most manufacturers with 500 employees or fewer, and most non-manufacturing businesses with average annual receipts under $7.5 million, will qualify as small (SBA, Size Standards) — but there are many industry-specific exceptions, so the baseline is a starting point, not an answer.

The reason this matters is mechanical. When a contracting officer posts a small-business set-aside, they attach a single NAICS code to it. Whether you're "small" for that opportunity is judged entirely against that code's size standard — not against your general sense of being a small company. You can be small for one contract and other-than-small for the next one the same week, because the codes differ.

Step 1: Find the NAICS code, then the standard

Start with the code. Every set-aside solicitation names a NAICS code, and your own business should already have a primary code (and often several secondary ones). If you're still working out which codes fit your business, our guide on how to choose NAICS codes for government contracting walks through the selection logic.

Once you have the code, look up its standard two ways. The fastest is SBA's Size Standards Tool, where you enter a NAICS code and the tool returns the receipts or employee ceiling. The authoritative source is the full table in 13 CFR 121.201, which lists a standard for every NAICS industry. According to SBA's regulatory framework there are currently 102 different size levels spread across 978 NAICS industries plus 18 subindustry exceptions — 73 of those levels are receipts-based and 27 are employee-based, with a couple of unusual standards for specific industries.

Read the unit carefully. If the standard reads "$X million," it's a receipts test. If it reads a number like "1,000" or "500," it's an employee test. Mixing these up is one of the most common self-certification errors.

Step 2: Calculate average annual receipts (the five-year rule)

For receipts-based codes, SBA defines annual receipts as your "total income" plus "cost of goods sold," figures you can generally pull straight from your federal tax returns. The averaging window is what trips people up: for federal contracting purposes, receipts are averaged over your latest five completed fiscal years, following the Small Business Runway Extension Act of 2018. SBA calculates receipts under 13 CFR 121.104.

A few specifics worth internalizing:

• The five-year window applies to federal contracting. Applicants to SBA's Business Loan, Disaster Loan, Surety Bond, and Small Business Investment Company programs may use either a three-year or a five-year period.
• If your business hasn't been operating for five years yet, you take your average weekly revenue and multiply by 52 to estimate annual receipts.
• Receipts are your gross figure — you generally do not net out most expenses beyond cost of goods sold, so don't confuse "receipts" with profit.

The practical effect of the five-year rule is that a strong recent year is diluted by earlier, smaller years. That can keep a fast-growing firm "small" longer than a three-year window would — often described as extending a company's runway before it graduates out of set-aside eligibility.

Step 3: Calculate number of employees (the 24-month rule)

For employee-based codes, SBA counts the average number of people employed for each pay period over your latest 24 calendar months, per 13 CFR 121.106. Two rules matter most here. First, everyone on the payroll counts as one employee regardless of hours — part-time, temporary, and seasonal workers are counted the same as full-time staff. Second, if you've been in business less than 24 months, you average across the pay periods you do have.

There's no partial credit for a 10-hour-a-week contractor on payroll; they're one head. Firms that lean heavily on part-time labor sometimes assume they're smaller than SBA will find them to be.

Step 4: Add your affiliates — this is where people get caught

This is the step that turns a "small" company into an "other-than-small" one during a size protest. When you measure your size, you must add the receipts (or employees) of every affiliate to your own. Affiliation is based on control — the power to control another business, whether or not that power is ever used. SBA generally finds control when an outside party holds 50% or more ownership, but affiliation can also exist with far less ownership through contractual arrangements, or when one party holds a large share relative to everyone else. Affiliation is determined under 13 CFR 121.103.

In plain terms: a parent company, commonly owned sister companies, and businesses tied together by control relationships can all be aggregated. If you calculate only your own company's receipts and ignore an affiliate, your self-certification may be wrong even if you meant well. Because affiliation is fact-specific and consequential, reviewing SBA's affiliation guidance before you certify is time well spent, and complex ownership structures are worth a professional look.

Why this matters right now: the 2026 proposed rule

On August 20, 2026, SBA published a proposed rule (RIN 3245-AI67; Docket No. SBA-2026-0199) in the Federal Register that would be the most sweeping rewrite of size standards in a generation. It's part of SBA's third five-year review under the Small Business Jobs Act, and the headline changes include:

• Consolidation: replacing roughly 1,000 industry-specific standards with 338 standards set at the 4- and 5-digit NAICS level, and eliminating subindustry exceptions.
• Unit switches: converting construction and several other sectors from receipts-based to employee-based standards.
• Removing the ceiling that currently caps how high a size standard can go, plus adding a productivity adjustment on top of the usual inflation adjustment.

According to SBA's own analysis, the proposal would newly classify about 114,541 businesses as small — including roughly 37,002 firms that held fiscal year 2025 federal contracts worth approximately $71 billion. In other words, a meaningful number of companies currently sitting just over the line could find themselves back inside small-business eligibility if the rule is finalized as written.

Two things to do with this information. First, if your firm is near a threshold, model your size under both the current standard and the proposed one so you're not surprised either way. Second, if the change would help or hurt you, you can weigh in: SBA is accepting public comments, which are due by September 21, 2026. To comment, search Docket No. SBA-2026-0199 or RIN 3245-AI67 at regulations.gov. A proposed rule is not final — the standards described above could shift before anything takes effect, so treat the numbers as a planning signal rather than a settled fact.

Common mistakes that show up in size protests

A few errors recur often enough to name. Certifying against your own primary NAICS code instead of the code on the actual solicitation is a frequent one — the contract's code governs. Using a three-year receipts average out of habit understates the window and can produce the wrong answer. Undercounting part-time employees, or ignoring affiliates entirely, are the classic ways a self-certification falls apart under scrutiny.

The stakes are real. Any interested party can protest a winning bidder's size status by writing to the contracting officer, and SBA warns that there are severe criminal penalties for knowingly misrepresenting size on a federal contract. Getting the calculation right before you certify is far cheaper than defending a protest — or facing penalties — after an award.

Checking your SBA size standard ultimately comes down to four moves: identify the NAICS code on the opportunity, look up that code's standard, calculate your receipts over five years or your employees over 24 months, and add in your affiliates. Do that honestly and you can self-certify in SAM.gov with confidence; skip a step and you invite a protest. If you're setting up or renewing your federal registration so you can certify and bid, our SAM.gov registration service can handle the mechanics.

This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Size standards, calculation rules, and proposed regulations change; confirm current requirements against SBA's official resources and consult a qualified professional about your specific situation before certifying your business size. See our disclosures for full disclaimers.