SamHooks vs building your own poller
You're a developer; of course you can build this. The question is what "this" actually is.
Path 1: poll the API
Free key: 10 requests/day (as of 2026-08-17, per GovConAPI). The typical contractor needs 6–15 searches/day, and each description read is another call. The 1,000/day tier needs entity registration — a 2–3 week government process (tier details).
Path 2: parse the bulk extract (the good DIY path)
Free, no quota, everything included. Your bill of work: daily download of a full snapshot, streaming CSV parse with quoted-field traps, a state store and hash index, field-level diffing, filter matching, delivery with signatures/retries/dead-lettering, and monitoring so you notice the day GSA changes a column and your cron starts silently succeeding at parsing garbage.
The comparison
| DIY (API) | DIY (extract) | SamHooks | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash cost | $0 | ~$5–20/mo infra | $19/mo |
| Rate limits | 10/day cap | None | None |
| Change events | DIY diffing | DIY diffing | Built in |
| Ongoing maintenance | Yours, forever | Yours, forever | Ours, published |
If plumbing government CSVs is the fun part for you, genuinely: enjoy, our format notes will save you an afternoon. If it isn't: quickstart.