The Data Branch app

Ask what other agencies actually paid.

The Data Branch app is a chat interface on our national record of government purchasing, drawn from public records, government websites, published budgets, procurement portals, and records requests. Check prices, compare vendor quotes, find contracts and grants, and see what peers decided.

We're finishing the product now. This page is live early so agencies can see what's coming and join the waitlist.

Built from thousands of public sources and updated weekly.

District size	Product	Annual cost
7,200 students	Vendor A	$68,400
6,100 students	Vendor B	$51,900
8,900 students	Vendor A	$74,250

District size

Product

Annual cost

7,200 students

Vendor A

$68,400

6,100 students

Vendor B

$51,900

8,900 students

Vendor A

$74,250

What you can ask

Prices and contracts, straight from the records.

We search an ever-growing database of public purchasing records. As we find more public information, we bring it together for districts, cities, counties, colleges, and police agencies alike. Fill in the blanks below to compare against agencies like you. Leave any blank as any.

Answers draw from public documents: open portals, agency sites, published records, and records requests.

Before you buy

💰

What agencies actually paid

The real per-unit price an agency your size paid a supplier, and when. Not the list price.

Example What did our type: districts serving size: 5,000-10,000 pay per item: Chromebook, and when? Another example What has our type: police agencies in state: any paid vendor: Axon per unit since date: 2024?

Ask about one product or vendor at a time. Broad either/or searches time out; adding a date range makes them fast.

📄

Contracts

Check a vendor's quote against their contracts elsewhere, see per-unit prices and quantities, and find contracts you can buy off directly.

Example Does vendor: Enterprise Fleet Management have an active contract for product: fleet leasing we could piggyback on, expiring after date: today? Another example What did our type: cities your size pay per product: body-worn camera dock, with vendor and quantity?

🧾

What the vendor offered someone else

The pricing a vendor put in front of a peer agency, including the proposals they won with. The clearest read on where their number can actually go.

Example Show me what vendor: any proposed to our type: cities for product: fleet telematics, and whether they won it.

A proposal is the vendor's offer, not a settled price. Compare it against the contract that followed.

📋

RFPs & bids

See how peers scoped the same purchase: their RFP language and timeline. Pair with Contracts to see who won.

Example Show me RFPs our type: cities in states: CA, FL issued for category: managed print / copiers in the last window: 2 years.

Winner and price come from the matching contract. Budget context is a separate agency lookup.

Timing & context

⏳

Renewal and price check

Catch expiring agreements before they auto-renew, then check whether what you were billed matched what you signed.

Example Which contracts for category: any held by peers: our type, our size expire in the next window: 6 months? Another example For vendor: any, what did the contract say and what did the invoices actually total?

We compare signed value against billed amount wherever we hold both sides. Where we hold only one, we say so.

🗓️

Meeting minutes

The discussion behind a purchase. Search any board's published minutes for a vendor or topic and read what they said.

Example Find where peer set: districts mention vendor/topic: our vendor in board minutes around event: renewal, switch, or complaint.

Returns the passage from the published minutes. You read it to judge.

🤝

Who to talk to

The procurement office or program lead an agency publishes, so you can ask a peer directly.

Example Who does agency: Austin ISD publish for role: procurement director, IT lead?

Current role-holder, not a project owner. We pull one live if the agency isn't loaded yet.

How peers buy it

📜

Procurement guidelines

How a peer runs the purchase: bid thresholds, cooperative-purchasing rules, emergency-purchase waivers.

Example How do agency type: cities handle keyword: cooperative purchasing / bid thresholds / emergency purchases?

Keyword search across published policies. Not yet filterable by agency size or type. Pass a state or agency to narrow.

🏛️

Federal funding

Which agencies won federal funding, for what, and how much is left undrawn.

Example What federal grants funded purpose: any for our type: any in state: any, and how much is still undrawn?

Strongest for federal awards (USAspending-sourced). Local-program grant coverage is still filling in.

What's coming at you

⚖️

New laws and mandates

State bills that name your type of agency, including the ones that quietly create a purchase, and what that purchase has cost peers who already made it.

Example What passed in state: TX this session that affects our type: districts and requires us to buy something? Another example What money did state: any appropriate for purpose: school safety, and who can draw on it?

Scoped by state and session. We show you the bill and the requirement; connecting a requirement to a specific product is still improving.

📚

Who an agency pays

A peer's published payment records, so you can see their whole supplier list at once instead of one contract at a time.

Example Show every supplier agency: any paid for category: any during window: last fiscal year.

Coverage is deepest for districts and cities. Smaller agencies may have only part of a year on file.

Direct questions, clear answers.

No dashboards to learn and no query language. Ask the way you'd ask a colleague in the next county over.

Ask a direct question

Describe the product, service, vendor, or funding you're looking at. The app understands agency context: your type, size, and state.

The app searches the record

Purchase orders, contracts, grants, RFPs, budgets, minutes, and public web records, gathered nationwide into an ever-growing database and searched together.

Get a clear answer

Prices, vendors, and dates drawn from the public information we have brought together so far.

And when our coverage is thin, the app says so. It tells you how much data sits behind an answer, falls back to clearly labeled public-web research, and lets you ask us to go find the records that would fill the gap. Where an agency files little on its own, as police departments and small special districts often do, the app surfaces their purchasing through the city or county that funds them: the contract, the board packet, the meeting where it was decided.

A record like this has never existed. Help it grow.

No single agency could gather the public record this widely. That's the point. We find what we can on our own, but the record gets better faster when agencies share directly. Every contribution sharpens the next agency's answer, including yours.

📬

Respond to our request

Your records office may already have a public-records request from The Data Branch. Fulfilling it adds your agency's purchasing data for your peers, and theirs for you.

📤

Contribute directly

Skip the paperwork: send us a purchasing export straight from your finance system. Less staff time than processing a records request, same result. Your records join the national set everyone searches.

contribute@thedatabranch.com

📣

Pass it along

Know a procurement officer, clerk, or business official who'd use this? Forward the app to them. Every agency that signs up tells us where to collect next.

Check your next quote before you sign.

The app isn't open to the public yet. Get early access updates, or contribute your agency's purchasing records so they're ready on day one.

Live now for public agencies and their staff: schools, colleges, cities, counties, states, and police departments. The collection expands as agencies join and share.

Ask what other agencies actually paid.

See what a new law will cost

Find a contract you can use

Check the quote against peers

See if the price held

No single agency could build this. So we're building it for all of them.