How to Renew Your SAM.gov Registration Before It Expires

Your SAM.gov entity registration expires 365 days after you submit it, and you must actively renew it to stay eligible for federal awards. Start 45–60 days early, review every section, confirm your status returns to Active — and never pay anyone, because renewal is always free.

Check first: not sure federal registration is even the right move yet? Use our free 60-second eligibility checker to see which federal, state, and city programs your business actually qualifies for.

If you sell to the federal government, your SAM.gov registration is not a one-time task. It expires every 365 days, and an expired registration can quietly knock you out of contention for awards. This guide walks through exactly how to renew: when to start, what to review, how long it takes, and how to avoid the paid "renewal services" that charge for something the government provides for free.

Why SAM.gov registration expires every year

The System for Award Management (SAM.gov) is the federal government's central database of entities that want to do business with it. Before an agency can award you a contract or a grant, it needs to confirm who you are, where you are, and that your representations and certifications are current. That confirmation is only trustworthy if it's kept fresh, so registrations are built to expire.

According to SAM.gov's own guidance, you must renew your registration every 365 days to keep it active (SAM.gov, Entity Registration). The clock runs from the date you last submitted your registration, not from a calendar date like January 1. That means every entity has its own personal expiration date, and it moves each time you complete a renewal.

It helps to separate two things that people often confuse. Your Unique Entity ID (UEI) is the permanent number SAM.gov assigns your organization once it passes validation, and that number never expires. Your registration, by contrast, is the active status that makes you eligible to receive awards, and it does expire annually. Keeping your UEI does not keep your registration active; only renewing does.

What "expired" actually costs you

Letting a registration lapse is more than an administrative slip. Under federal acquisition rules, an offeror is required to be registered in SAM when it submits an offer or quotation and at the time of award (FAR 52.204-7, Acquisition.gov). The related maintenance clause, FAR 52.204-13, generally requires you to keep that registration active during performance and through final payment.

In practice, that means an expired registration can make you ineligible to be evaluated on a bid you would otherwise win, can hold up an award that's ready to go, and can interrupt payments on work you've already delivered. Contracting officers verify SAM status as a routine step, and "we're renewing right now" is rarely enough to keep a deadline from slipping. The safest posture is to treat your expiration date as a hard deadline that arrives well before the day the system says it does.

When to start your renewal

The single most common renewal mistake is starting too late. SAM.gov and the Federal Service Desk recommend beginning your renewal 45–60 days before your expiration date, and for good reason: renewing is not always instant.

A full registration includes two stages. First is entity validation, which confirms your entity's legal existence, physical address, and uniqueness. Second is the registration itself, where you review your core data, points of contact, and representations and certifications. If any detail no longer matches your official records, or if your Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) or CAGE Code needs to re-validate, the system can route your submission for additional review. SAM.gov advises allowing up to 10 business days for a registration to become active, and validation problems can extend that.

Starting early gives you a buffer to fix mismatches without missing a bid. Starting the week your registration expires leaves no room for a rejected TIN match or an address that no longer aligns with your incorporation documents. If you manage multiple deadlines, our deadline calendar tool can help you keep the renewal date visible alongside your open opportunities.

How to renew your SAM.gov registration, step by step

Renewal is an active process. Nothing happens automatically, so the entity administrator has to log in and drive it. Here's the sequence.

1. Sign in through Login.gov. SAM.gov uses Login.gov for authentication. Sign in with the account tied to your entity, then open SAM.gov and go to your Entity Workspace (sometimes called your Workspace or dashboard).

2. Confirm you're on the right entity. Check that the UEI and legal entity name match your organization, then look at the expiration date and current status. This tells you whether you're renewing early (registration still active) or recovering after a lapse (registration expired). Both use the same steps.

3. Choose "Update/Renew" the entity registration. Select the option to update or renew. SAM.gov will walk you through the same sections you saw at initial registration: core data, assertions (if applicable), representations and certifications, and points of contact.

4. Open and review every section, even the unchanged ones. This is where careful renewals separate themselves from rushed ones. Even when nothing has changed, open each section and confirm the details. A single stale field — an old address, a departed point of contact, an outdated banking or NAICS detail — can trigger a review that adds days to your timeline. Pay special attention to your physical address and legal name, since those drive entity validation.

5. Refresh your representations and certifications. Your reps and certs are legal attestations about your business, and they need to reflect your current situation. Read them rather than clicking through, because your circumstances (size status, ownership, compliance answers) may have shifted since last year.

6. Submit and watch your status. After you submit, your registration moves into processing. Watch for emails from SAM.gov: if validation fails on your TIN or CAGE Code, SAM.gov will email instructions on what to correct and resubmit. Under normal conditions, expect roughly 3–10 business days to return to "Active." Don't assume you're done until the status actually reads Active.

If you're renewing after a lapse, the good news is that your UEI is still yours — you're renewing the registration attached to it, not starting over from a blank slate.

Renewing is free — how to avoid the paid "renewal" trap

This deserves its own section because it costs unwary businesses real money every year. It is 100% free to register your entity, to maintain that registration, and to renew it in SAM.gov. It's also free to get help from the official Federal Service Desk.

Despite that, third-party companies market "SAM registration" and "SAM renewal" services, sometimes with official-looking government seals, and charge fees for filing that you can do yourself at no cost. Worse, outright scammers impersonate federal agencies. The government's guidance is blunt: no federal staff will call or text you to solicit business, and no one from the government will ask you to pay a fee — by gift card, cryptocurrency, wire transfer, or anything else — to renew or activate your registration (SAM.gov, Recognize and Avoid Phishing Emails).

A few practical guardrails: any email or website that asks for money to keep your SAM registration active is not the government, no matter how official it looks. If you get a suspicious message, don't click its links; instead go directly to sam.gov and use the Federal Service Desk. The desk offers live help Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, and you can submit a web form anytime. Paying a third party isn't illegal, and some firms provide legitimate managed services — but you should do it knowing the underlying task is free and you're paying only for convenience, not for access.

A simple annual cadence that prevents lapses

The businesses that never scramble are the ones that treat renewal as a recurring calendar event rather than a surprise. A workable cadence looks like this: note your exact expiration date the moment a renewal completes; set a reminder for 60 days out to begin the next one; keep a short file of the documents validation depends on (legal name exactly as incorporated, physical address, TIN, banking details, and your CAGE Code); and confirm the "Active" status yourself after each submission rather than assuming.

If you'd rather not manage the cycle in-house, WedgeBid's SAM.gov service can handle registration and renewal for you so your eligibility never lapses between bids. And if you're renewing for the first time and want a refresher on how the underlying registration is built, our companion guide, SAM.gov registration for NYC small businesses, walks through the full first-time setup.

The bottom line

Your SAM.gov registration is the switch that keeps you eligible for federal work, and it turns off every 365 days unless you renew it. Start 45–60 days early, open and verify every section rather than clicking through, refresh your representations and certifications honestly, and confirm your status returns to Active. Do that, and renewal becomes a quiet annual checkbox instead of the reason a winnable bid slips away.

Not sure whether federal registration is even the right move for your business yet? Our free eligibility checker can help you see where you stand in a few minutes.

Not legal advice — see our disclosures for full disclaimers.