DemandStar pricing in short
We read the DemandStar business pricing page in October 2026. DemandStar publishes its prices, so the numbers below are the vendor's own.
- Basic costs nothing and sends notifications from one procurement agency you choose.
- County starts at 60 USD a year per county and covers every DemandStar agency in that county.
- State costs from 100 to 1,499 USD a year per state. The price depends on how many agencies in that state are in the DemandStar network, so a state where few agencies post is cheap and a state where many post costs more.
- National is 2,699 USD a year.
- Plans can be mixed, for example two counties plus one state.
- Searching the database of open and past bids is open to every member. Downloading a bid package costs a 5 USD service fee, but every paid plan includes unlimited downloads inside its own subscription area.
- The pricing page does not publish trial, cancellation or refund terms, so ask DemandStar before you pay for a year.
DemandStar plans and prices
| Plan | Coverage | Price | Bid package downloads | Fits a cleaning company that |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Notices from one procurement agency | No cost | 5 USD each | Bids for one city or school district it already knows |
| County | Every DemandStar agency in one county | From 60 USD a year per county | Unlimited inside the county | Works one metro and wants its city, county and school bids |
| State | Every DemandStar agency in one state | 100 to 1,499 USD a year per state | Unlimited inside the state | Has crews across a state with many DemandStar agencies |
| National | Every DemandStar agency in the network | 2,699 USD a year | Unlimited | Bids national facility work or runs crews in many states |
How much does DemandStar cost?
DemandStar costs nothing on the Basic plan, which covers one agency, from 60 USD a year per county on the County plan, from 100 to 1,499 USD a year per state on the State plan and 2,699 USD a year on the National plan. Bid packages outside your subscription area cost a 5 USD service fee each.
Is DemandStar free?
Partly. Creating an account, searching open and closed bids and getting notices from one agency cost nothing. What costs money is coverage beyond that one agency and the bid documents themselves: each package you download outside a paid subscription area carries a 5 USD fee, so a company that downloads ten packages a month on Basic spends about 600 USD a year, more than most County plans.
That is the real test for a cleaning company. Count how many custodial packages you downloaded last year and from how many agencies. If it is one or two buyers and a handful of packages, Basic is enough. If you bid with several cities, towns and school districts in one county, the County plan pays for itself after twelve downloads.
What DemandStar costs per contract you win
The subscription is the smallest cost in public bidding. A custodial proposal takes 10 to 40 hours of walkthroughs, wage math, staffing plans and forms, so what matters is how many bids your company can prepare, not how cheap the notices are.
| Public bids submitted per year | Planning win rate | Contracts won | County plan cost per win (60 USD) | National plan cost per win (2,699 USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | 1 in 10 | 0 to 1 | 60 USD or more | 2,699 USD or more |
| 12 | 1 in 8 | 1 to 2 | 30 to 60 USD | 1,350 to 2,699 USD |
| 24 | 1 in 6 | 4 | about 15 USD | about 675 USD |
| 48 | 1 in 5 | 9 to 10 | about 6 USD | about 280 USD |
The win rates are planning assumptions for a company new to public work, not DemandStar data. At the County price, one won library or school building pays for decades of the plan. National only makes sense for a company that really bids in many states, because a local company pays for notices its crews will never reach.
Is DemandStar worth it for a cleaning company?
DemandStar is worth it for a cleaning company when the cities, counties and school districts it wants to clean post their bids there, which you can check for free by searching past custodial bids in your county. If those buyers post elsewhere, or most of the work you want is private offices and clinics, the money is better spent on a source that lists them.
What DemandStar does and does not do for janitorial work
DemandStar is a procurement network that public agencies use to publish solicitations, and vendors subscribe to get the notices and download the documents. Agencies post bids, addenda and award results in one place, so a subscriber sees the custodial bid, the pre-bid walkthrough date and later the winning price from the same account.
What it does not do matters just as much for a cleaning company:
- It lists public agencies on its own network only. A town or school district that posts on its own website or another platform will not appear, so check coverage for your county before you pay for a State plan.
- It does not list private office buildings, medical practices, gyms or property managers, and for most janitorial companies that private work is the bigger share of revenue.
- It does not price anything. You still read the package, find the square footage, walk the building and build the labor math yourself.
- It does not sort bids by building type or size. A 200,000 sq ft courthouse and a 3,000 sq ft fire station arrive in the same feed.
A full custodial bid package can run to a hundred pages of specifications, wage determinations and forms. A tool that lets you ask questions about a long PDF bid package and get answers with the page cited saves an hour before the walkthrough, and our commercial cleaning proposal page shows what a custodial buyer expects to read in your response.
DemandStar against other ways to find cleaning bids
Prices come from each vendor's own page or from our earlier pricing reviews, read in October 2026.
| Source | What it covers | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| DemandStar | Bids from public agencies on the DemandStar network | Basic at no cost; County from 60 USD a year; State 100 to 1,499 USD a year; National 2,699 USD a year | Companies whose local agencies post on DemandStar |
| FindRFP | Federal, state and local bids in all industries, filtered by keyword | 19.95 USD a month regional, 29.95 USD national; 199.50 or 299.50 USD a year | Small companies watching public bids on a tight budget |
| BidNet Direct | State and local bids from member agencies and others | Basic tier at no cost, paid plans from about 100 USD a month for one state | Companies that bid in one or two states |
| BidPrime | Federal, state and local bid alerts with search inside bid documents | Quoted, reported about 399 to 3,000 USD a year | Companies that want document search across several states |
| Periscope S2G | Public agency bids, strongest where agencies use Periscope software | Limited no charge; Premium 779 to 1,571 USD a month, billed yearly | Companies that bid public custodial work every month |
| SAM.gov | Every federal solicitation, including custodial work under NAICS 561720 | No cost | Every company that wants federal work |
| Janitorial | Cleaning requests from buildings in your area, each priced, plus public-sector requests on Growth | Starter 79 USD a month, Growth 199 USD a month | Companies that want private accounts and local public bids, priced and ready to propose |
Each paid service has its own breakdown: FindRFP pricing, BidNet Direct pricing, BidPrime pricing and Periscope S2G pricing. The full comparison of where to look is in our guide to commercial cleaning bidding websites.
Where Janitorial fits next to DemandStar
DemandStar is the cheaper tool if all you want is the public notices from the agencies in your county, and we would not tell a company bidding only town and school work to pay more than a County plan. Janitorial does a different job. It brings a cleaning company the requests that buyers post in its service area, from offices, clinics, schools, retail sites and property managers, each one with labor hours, crew size and a monthly price range already calculated.
- You see the job and the price together, so you decide in a minute whether a walkthrough is worth it.
- Growth adds the public-sector feed of city, county, school district, state and federal custodial requests matched to your areas, whatever platform the agency posts on.
- A proposal goes out from the same screen, as a PDF with your logo, the evening the request arrives.
- Plans are flat monthly or yearly prices with no per-lead or per-download fee. Starter is 79 USD a month, Growth 199 USD and Pro 499 USD, and yearly billing halves those prices.
Many companies run both: a DemandStar County plan for the agencies that post there, Janitorial for priced private and local public requests. See every plan on the pricing page, or start with government cleaning contracts to see what the public feed covers.
DemandStar pricing, common questions
Is DemandStar legit?
Yes. DemandStar is an established public procurement network that cities, counties, school districts and other agencies use to publish their own solicitations, addenda and awards. It publishes its vendor prices. Before paying, search past custodial bids in your county to confirm the buyers you want actually post there.
Is DemandStar free for vendors?
The Basic plan is free and covers notices from one agency, and searching bids costs nothing. Coverage of a whole county, state or the country is paid, and each bid package downloaded outside a paid subscription area costs a 5 USD service fee.
How much is a DemandStar subscription per year?
County plans start at 60 USD a year per county, State plans cost 100 to 1,499 USD a year per state depending on how many agencies in that state use DemandStar, and the National plan is 2,699 USD a year. You can combine county and state plans in one subscription.
Do I have to pay to download DemandStar bid documents?
Only outside your subscription area. Each bid package costs a 5 USD service fee, and every paid plan includes unlimited downloads for bids inside the counties or states it covers.
What is a better alternative to DemandStar for cleaning companies?
For public bids alone, DemandStar's County plan is already one of the cheapest options where local agencies use it. If you also want private office, medical and retail accounts, or want every request to arrive with a bid price, Janitorial lists priced cleaning requests in your area from 79 USD a month, with public-sector requests on Growth.