The word lead carries an assumption: that somebody found something scarce and is selling you a piece of it. That assumption doesn't hold in federal contracting. Every notice we show you was posted on a public government site, free, and it stays there whether you pay anyone or not. A business that sells you "leads" made from public notices is selling you your own tax dollars back, with a markup.
What a lead seller's incentives actually reward
A business that charges per lead, or prices by volume, makes more money exactly when you receive more, whether or not more is useful to you. That isn't a conspiracy. It's just the incentive built into the pricing. The seller's product improves, from their side of the ledger, every time the count goes up. Whether the count going up helps you is a separate question they have no financial reason to answer honestly. None of this makes per-lead pricing dishonest by itself; it just points the incentive somewhere other than your time, and it's worth knowing which direction you're pushing on before you pay for it.
What a flat subscription changes
Quarry charges a flat subscription for reading and judgment instead, the same amount whether the feed sends you one match this week or twenty; see plans for the current figure. That single change flips the incentive. We don't make more when you receive more notices. What we actually want is for every match we do send to be worth opening, because a feed full of noise is the fastest way to get canceled, and canceling takes one step, from your own profile. It also means the free Explorer tier isn't bait. It's a way to see the filtering before committing to anything, capped at three saved matches so you can judge the quality yourself.
Whose interest actually lines up with yours
A lead seller wins when you get more. We win when you spend less time and still catch what matters, because the subscription is the same either way. That's the whole alignment, stated plainly instead of implied. It's also why the reason attached to every verdict matters as much as the match itself: a verdict we can't defend in one sentence is a sign our filtering slipped, not a sign to send you more notices to make up for it.
Who should skip us
If you'd rather pay per opportunity and want volume over judgment, for example if someone on your team already reads every notice full time and you just want the raw firehose, a flat subscription that filters is the wrong shape for you. A straight notice feed, or SAM.gov's own saved searches, will suit you better, and both cost nothing to try.
Either way, nothing here is scarce. The notices were never ours to sell.