Index › Canonical stats › Federal concentration
Federal vendor concentration
By count, 87.2% of federal awards go to companies outside the top 100 vendors. By value, the top 100 hold 62.6%.
What this measures
By count, 87.2% of the 1,313,281 published federal award records since 2004 go to companies outside the top 100 vendors. Federal contracting reaches 183,024 distinct suppliers — a long tail of ordinary businesses, not a closed circle.
By value, the picture inverts: the top 100 vendors hold 62.6% of lifetime contract value on just 12.8% of awards. Volume is broad; value is concentrated. Both facts cite this page's denominator — all published federal awards over $10,000, 2004–2026.
Methodology
Source: Treasury Board Secretariat Proactive Publication contract records (open.canada.ca), compiled October 2026 release. Vendors are ranked by lifetime total contract value; the concentration shares use every published award record as the denominator. Vendor names are as published — no entity resolution beyond the source records.
The full vendor ranking, the top-25 table, and the value/count split are on Vendor concentration.
Frequently asked questions
What share of federal contracts go to companies outside the top 100 vendors?
87.2% of awards by count — 1,313,281 federal contract records, 2004–2026 — go to vendors outside the top 100 by lifetime value. Only 12.8% of awards by count go to the top 100.
Do the top 100 vendors take most of the money?
Yes: the top 100 capture 62.6% of lifetime contract value. Concentration is a value phenomenon, not a count phenomenon — 183,024 distinct suppliers hold federal awards, and most of the value pools at the top.
How are the top 100 defined?
Ranked by total lifetime contract value in the compiled federal award series (Treasury Board Proactive Publication, 2004–2026). The count share and value share use the same denominator: all published award records over $10,000.
Is this the same as the single-bid statistic?
No. Concentration measures who wins (vendor distribution); single-bid measures how many offers a tender draws. A market can be unconcentrated across vendors and still rarely contest any individual call.
Public Service Index (October 2026). Federal vendor concentration. Release 2026.10. https://publicserviceindex.org/stats/federal-concentration