Do small businesses charge less than large businesses on GSA Schedules?

Yes, slightly: the median published GSA Schedule rate is $123 per hour from small businesses and $128 from other-than-small vendors, a $5 (3.9%) discount at the median, across 376,283 published rates.

Source: The GSA Labor Rate Lookup (full CALC+ export), BidSparq

Data as of: October 19, 2026 (refreshed weekly)

Sample: 376,283 published rates with a stated business size, as of 2026-10-19

License: free to cite with attribution to BidSparq

Verify this yourself: GSA CALC+ (the Contract-Awarded Labor Category tool that publishes every GSA Schedule labor rate).

Essential statistics

  • Small business: 277,845 published rates, median $123, 25th to 75th percentile $89 to $164.
  • Other than small: 98,438 published rates, median $128, 25th to 75th percentile $91 to $175.
  • Small businesses hold 73.8% of all published Schedule rates.

Median hourly rate by vendor size

Vendor sizeMedian25th percentile75th percentilePublished rates
Small business$123$89$164277,845
Other than small$128$91$17598,438

What this means

Business size comes from the vendor's size status on the contract. The medians are close because Schedule rates are ceilings negotiated per labor category; the real pricing difference shows up in task-order discounts, which CALC+ does not capture.

For a set-aside pursuit, compare the category's small-business percentiles in the labor rate lookup rather than the all-vendor median.

See our data in your Google results

This page updates weekly. Add BidSparq as a preferred source and Google will surface our fresh procurement data more prominently in your Search and AI results.

Add BidSparq as a preferred source on Google

Put this data to work

BidSparq tracks these numbers live and matches them to your business: expiring contracts in your industry, wired-bid warnings on live solicitations, and rate benchmarks for your pricing. See your matches free, no credit card needed.

Explore BidSparq free

Related statistics