Bid Opening · less friction between public buyers and the firms that serve them

Priced like an appraisal

Two ways to the number. One answer.

Appraisers value a house two ways: what comparable houses sold for, adjusted for the differences, and what it would cost to build. Bid Opening does the same for a public contract. The market approach uses closed bids on comparable jobs. The cost approach uses your own costs and margin. Then you see where your number lands.

As of October 8, 2026. Fair value and the market check are rolling out as they are built and as documents are collected, agency by agency. The worked example in this section is illustrative.

Market approach

Comparable closed jobs from the agencies' own tabulations, each read against its documents, then adjusted toward the job you are pricing.

	Your job	Comp 1	Comp 2	Comp 3
Custodial work	4 elementary schools	3 schools	5 schools	Admin and library
Size, sq ft	208,000	172,000	240,000	96,000
Bid opened	now	2025	2024	2025
Low bid, per year	?	$318,200	$468,000	$199,700
Per sq ft		$1.85	$1.95	$2.08
Size		−2%	+2%	−6%
Wage floor		0%	+5%	0%
Date		+1.5%	+3%	+1.5%
Combined adjustment		−0.5%	+10.3%	−4.6%
Adjusted, per sq ft		$1.84	$2.15	$1.98

Fair value at 208,000 sq ft$382,720 · $411,840 · $447,200low · likely · high

A smaller job carries a higher unit price, so it is adjusted down toward yours; a county with a lower wage floor is adjusted up; an older bid is brought forward for labor costs since. The adjustments multiply, each applied to the result of the one before, and each shows its source.

Cost approach

Your own build in the Bid Workshop: hours from the square footage, the county's wage floor, your supplies and insurance, then your margin.

Labor 15,451 hours at $17.85, the county living wage$275,800
Payroll burden 12%$33,096
Supplies$14,000
Equipment$6,000
Insurance and bond$4,000
Direct cost$332,896
Margin 20%, so cost ÷ 0.80+$83,224
Your bid$416,120

As a 20% markup instead, cost × 1.20, the bid would be $399,475. The Workshop prints both, so you always know which one you mean. Cushion and overhead have their own lines when you use them.

Reconcile

Build your cost first, then see where it lands. The market range never fills in your costs for you.

The answer is at the top of this page: your bid of $416,120 sits inside a fair value of $382,720 to $447,200, 1.0% above the likely figure.

Worked example with illustrative numbers. Fair value is an estimate made from public bid results and the documents behind them. It is not a quote, a formal appraisal, legal or financial advice, or a promise of award. Check each comparable against its own sheet before you rely on it.

Less friction, on both sides of the counter

Better for the firms that bid. Better for the buyers who post.

Public buying works when the right firms see the work, understand what it takes, and price it so it can be delivered. Bid Opening is built to make each of those steps shorter, for the contractor and for the agency on the other side of the sealed envelope.

For the firms that bid

Find the work that fitsNew postings matched to your trades and counties, scored with the reasons written out.
Know what it takesThe requirements pulled from the documents before you spend a day on a bid: pre-bid, bond, insurance, references, forms.
Price with confidenceFair value from adjusted comparables, with your own cost build beside it.
Learn from each resultYour gap, who won, and when the contract comes back around.

For the buyers who post

More complete bidsBidders see the mandatory pre-bid, the bond and the forms up front, so fewer bids are set aside for a missed requirement.
Better-matched biddersA posting reaches the firms that do that work, in that county, while there is still time to bid.
Prices that hold upBids built from real costs and checked against comparable results, so the low bid is more likely to be one that can be delivered.
Fewer repeat questionsAnswers come from the documents the buyer already posted.

The raw material

An appraisal is only as good as its comparables

The comparables come from the bid tabulations public buyers post, the sheet the clerk reads after the sealed bids are opened, matched to the specification that says what the work actually was. Here is one, read from a county's own PDF.

Calvert County, MD · IFB 2025-043 · Custodial Services, 110 Main StreetOpened by the county · 9 on the sheet, 6 priced it

Where the six prices landed annual bid, from the county's own sheet

Low $10,970

You, third

$25k

$50k

$75k

LowYour rowOther bidders

Bidder	Annual bid	Off the low
GMSA Janitorial Division low	$10,970.08	—
C & M Solutions, LLC	$14,827.00	+35.2%
Spotless Glo Cleaning Services, LLC you	$15,440.00	+40.7%
P2 Cleaning Services LLC	$24,766.00	+125.8%
Sparkle Cleaning Inc.	$26,141.00	+138.3%
Islas General Cleaning Services Inc.	$71,970.60	+556.1%
Marclan, LLC · Anago of Washington, DC (Chex, Inc.) · Bybs Solutions LLC	no bid

A real bid opening, read from the county's own PDF. If you were Spotless Glo, you now know you lost by $4,470 a year, to whom, and that the low bid works out to $914 a month. Bid Opening collects these sheets from the agencies it watches that publish them, ranks the bids, and highlights your row.

Under two minutes

Watch it work on a real bid opening

The app on real public data, start to finish: a county bid opening, a scored morning, the checklist, the price history, the plan holders, the expiring contracts, a debrief.

1 min 47 s · voice, no music · captured September 2026Numbers on screen are from the county's own tabulations.

The basics, done properly

Your morning in one screen

New bids scored against your own profile with the reasons written out, the closed bids still waiting on an award, recent openings near you, and the contracts about to expire. Nothing to configure beyond telling it what you do.

app.bidopening.com/today

The Today screen: the navy sidebar with live counts, a KPI row, new solicitations scored with their reasons, and the closed bids waiting on an award

The Today screen, scored against a contractor's profileOctober 2026

A fit score with its reasons
New bids in your trades are read and scored 1 to 10 against your profile. "Why it fits" and "Watch out" are written out so you can disagree with it.
An email the moment it matters
Instant for anything that scores 8 or better. One digest a day for the rest: new fits, changes on bids you are pursuing, openings near you, contracts about to expire.
Before you bid
A checklist pulled from the documents: the mandatory pre-bid, the bond, the insurance amount, references, MBE goal, where to submit. Each item quotes the sentence it came from.
A pipeline sized for a small office
Watching, pursuing, submitted, won, lost. Enter your price when you submit; when the tab posts, the debrief shows your gap.
Search the documents we hold
Bid documents, addenda and tabulations, full text. "Living wage", "floor stripping", "green cleaning": find the agencies that ask for it.

After the deadline

The part that changes your next bid

A posting is only half the story. What happens after the deadline is where the price is decided, and where your next bid gets better.

Who picked up the documents

The field you will face, before the opening. Plan-holder lists, read from the agency's records, matched to the firms' bidding history.

County custodial bid · 19 plan holders

P2 Cleaning Services LLClow bidder before
C&M Solutions LLC
Sparkle Cleaning, Inc.
Office Care, Inc.
and 15 more, with cities

Who holds the contract, and when it ends

Active contracts with their expiry, from the agencies that publish them. The rebid clock, months ahead of the posting.

One county · active contracts in your trades

Maintenance and repair, HVAC, data closet equipmentApr 16, 2027
High dusting and cleaning, term contractMay 21, 2027
Window washing servicesMay 26, 2027

What the work goes for

The low bids we hold in your trade across the state, summarized on the bid you are looking at. Not an estimate: the actual low bids, read from the sheets.

Janitorial bid openings in one state, on file September 15, 2026

$10,970 – $156,394 low bids, median $21,966

The debrief

You lost. Bid Opening tells you by how much, to whom, and what that firm has done at other agencies, so the next number is a decision instead of a guess.

County custodial contract, Zone 1

Your bid$95,855

Low bid$93,329

Gap+2.7%

Free, public, cited

How to bid in your state, written down

One page per trade and state, for someone who has never bid public work and for someone who has bid it for years. They are written a state at a time, as each state is read; the coverage pages link the ones that are up. Each rule cites the agency page it came from and the date it was checked.

Registrationsthe vendor accounts buyers check before they award

Licenceswhat the law requires for the trade, and who issues it

Certificationsthe ones that change who can win, and how to get them

Wage floorsliving and prevailing wage rules, by jurisdiction

Thresholdswhen a buyer must bid formally, and how openings work

What buyers ask forthe requirements that keep showing up in that trade

What the work went forreal low bids, from the tabulations

A 90-day start planfrom first registration to first bid

Coverage

State by state, county by county

Public buyers post where they post: the county purchasing page, the school district's PDF, an authority's own site, the state board, the procurement portal. Bid Opening reads them where they are and dedupes them into one record per bid, so a change to a due date or a new addendum shows up as a change, not a new bid.

Counties and citiesPurchasing pages, bid boards and the PDFs they post, including the small towns that publish on their own site.

School districtsFacilities and custodial work, usually posted as PDF packages with their own forms.

Authorities and agenciesTransit, airport and other public authorities, each with its own way of posting.

State boards and portalsStatewide procurement systems, read alongside the local sources rather than instead of them.

The buyers we read are listed state by state and county by county on the coverage pages.

How it works

Find, qualify, price, learn

Four steps. The tool is built around the last two, pricing and learning, because that is where a bid is won.

Find

Agency by agency, trade by trade

Bids are collected where each agency posts them and deduplicated into one record per bid.

Qualify

Score, reasons, checklist

Scored against your profile with reasons you can argue with. The checklist tells you what could disqualify you before you spend a day on it.

Price

Two approaches, one number

Comparable closed jobs adjusted the way an appraiser adjusts comparable sales, and your own cost build with your margin. Then see where your bid lands against the range.

Learn

Each loss sharpens the next bid

The tabulation posts, your gap is computed, the winner's record is one click away, and the contract's expiry goes on your calendar.

Pricing

Month to month, no contract

Unlimited seats. The county bid above was worth $11,000 a year to the firm that won it.

Crew

$99 / month · one state

The agencies we watch in your state, five trades
Fit score with reasons, instant and daily email
Before-you-bid checklist
Bid Workshop: your costs and margin, built up to a price
Pipeline and lost-bid debrief
Full-text search of the documents we hold

Ask for access

Company

$249 / month · up to five states

Everything in Crew
Fair value from adjusted comparables, with each step shown
Your bid against the market range, before you submit
Award history and who-wins-here per agency
Plan-holder lists before the opening
Contract expirations and rebid alerts

Ask for access

How is fair value worked out?

The way an appraiser values a house from comparable sales. Closed bids on jobs like yours are read against their documents, adjusted for the differences that move price (size, wage floor, date, term), and reconciled into a low, likely and high figure. The code does the arithmetic, and each step shows its source. With fewer than three comparable jobs, it says there is not enough to go on.

Is fair value a quote or a guarantee?

No. It is an estimate made from public bid results. It is not a quote, a formal appraisal, legal or financial advice, or a promise of award, and the terms of service will say so. Your own costs and your own judgment decide the bid.

Where do the prices come from?

From the agency's own bid tabulation: the sheet the clerk posts after the sealed bids are opened. We download it, read each bidder and total on it, and link the page back to the PDF. When a sheet is a copier scan, its prices are transcribed from the image before they are used, and the page says so.

Does it write proposals or submit bids?

No. It finds the bid, tells you what the agency will check, what the work is worth and what it costs you to do it. The proposal and the price are yours.

What does it cost, and is there a contract?

Crew is $99 a month for one state; Company is $249 a month for up to five states. Month to month, unlimited seats. It is invite-only while it is new: write to hello@bidopening.com.

What if my state is not covered yet?

States are added one at a time, county by county. Tell us which one and which trades; the next state is chosen from those requests.

Less friction between public buyers and the firms that serve them.