SAM.gov Registration & UEI Guide

Getting a federal grant, cooperative agreement, or contract starts with two things: a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) and an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM.gov). Most of the friction research administrators run into is not the UEI itself — it is assigned automatically and free — but the entity-validation documentation SAM.gov requires to activate the registration behind it, and the annual renewal that keeps it active. This guide walks through the registration process step by step, the documentation that most often stalls it, the annual renewal cycle, and how to fix the most common rejection reasons.

Last verified 2026-08-16 against GSA/SAM.gov process documentation and 2 CFR Part 25. SAM.gov’s own screens and validation vendor change periodically without notice — confirm current screen-level details at sam.gov or the Federal Service Desk before relying on this for a live registration.

What the UEI Is, and How It Relates to SAM.gov Registration

The UEI is the 12-character identifier the US federal government assigns to every organization that registers in SAM.gov. It is required to apply for federal grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts. SAM.gov registration is the broader process — entity validation, core organizational data, financial information for payment, and representations & certifications — that makes an organization eligible to receive a federal award; the UEI is the persistent identifier attached to that registration.

12 characters, always alphanumeric, no hyphens or spaces, not case-sensitive.
The letters I and O are never used, to avoid confusion with the digits 1 and 0.
The first character is never 0.
The final character is a checksum digit computed from the preceding 11 characters, so systems can validate that a UEI was entered correctly.
The format is deliberately structured so a UEI cannot collide with a CAGE (Commercial and Government Entity) code, since some legacy systems store the two side by side.

An example (illustrative, not a real assigned value): ABC123DEF456. Both the UEI and SAM.gov registration are issued and maintained entirely by the US government at no cost — there is no legitimate paid path to either.

UEI vs. DUNS: The Most Common Point of Confusion

Under the old system, an institution obtained a DUNS number directly from Dun & Bradstreet, a private commercial data broker, as a step separate from and prior to SAM.gov registration. Many older institutional guides, sponsored-programs office pages, and even some funder instructions still describe this two-step process — it is no longer accurate. Effective April 4, 2022, the UEI replaced the DUNS number across every federal award system (SAM.gov, Grants.gov, eRA Commons, Research.gov); DUNS numbers are no longer used or accepted anywhere in the federal award process.

The DUNS number still exists as a Dun & Bradstreet commercial product, but it has no role in federal awards.
An institution’s legacy DUNS number was not converted into its UEI — the UEI is a distinct, newly generated value with no mathematical relationship to the old DUNS number.
Entities that already had an active SAM.gov registration before April 4, 2022 had a UEI auto-assigned at the transition; no action was required.
Any internal boilerplate, subrecipient-commitment form, or proposal template still asking for a “DUNS number” is stale and should be updated to request the UEI instead.

Getting a UEI With, or Without, Full SAM.gov Registration

There is no standalone UEI application separate from SAM.gov — but SAM.gov offers two distinct paths, and picking the right one matters:

Full entity registration. The path a prime applicant for a federal grant or contract needs. Requesting a UEI is the first step of starting a new SAM.gov entity registration; the identifier is generated automatically as soon as entity validation succeeds, well before the rest of the registration (core data, financial information, reps & certs) is complete or activated.
“Get UEI Only” (entity validation without registration). SAM.gov also lets an organization validate its identity and receive a UEI without registering for federal awards at all. This is the right option for an organization that only needs a UEI to appear as a subrecipient on someone else’s application, or that needs a UEI on a form now but is not yet ready to complete full registration. It confirms the organization is a real, distinct entity with its own legal name and physical address, but it does not make the organization eligible to receive a federal award directly — that still requires completing full registration later.

In practice, a research administrator does not request a UEI in isolation — they either complete their institution’s full SAM.gov registration, or use “Get UEI Only” for a subrecipient or vendor role that doesn’t need one.

Step by Step: How to Register in SAM.gov

Create a Login.gov account. SAM.gov authentication runs through Login.gov, a separate federal identity-verification service. Use an individual’s institutional email, not a shared departmental mailbox — SAM.gov roles are tied to the individual account, not the address.
Gather entity validation documents before you start. Have your organization’s exact legal name and physical address ready in the form the IRS and your state have on file, plus supporting documentation (see the next section) — assembling this in advance is what most shortens the process.
Start a new entity registration and request a UEI. In SAM.gov, choose to register a new entity; the system requests a UEI as the first step, which triggers entity validation against your submitted legal name, physical address, and business start date.
Resolve entity validation. If your legal name and address match existing government records automatically, validation completes quickly and the UEI is issued. If they don’t match cleanly, SAM.gov will ask for supporting documentation to resolve the discrepancy before the UEI is confirmed (see “Entity Validation Documentation” below).
Complete the registration sections. Core data (organizational structure, points of contact, EIN/TIN), assertions (goods/services codes if relevant), representations & certifications (required disclosures for award eligibility), and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) banking information for payment.
Designate points of contact and roles. At minimum, an Entity Administrator who controls and can update the registration (see “Roles and Permissions” below).
Submit and wait for activation. IRS TIN/EIN matching and final review can take anywhere from a few business days to several weeks, longer if documentation has to be resubmitted. Registration is not active, and the entity cannot receive an award, until this review completes.
Calendar the renewal date immediately. The moment registration activates, note the expiration date (12 months out) and set an internal reminder well ahead of it — see the renewal section below for why this matters.

Entity Validation Documentation That Most Often Stalls Registration

This is where the largest share of registration delays happen, not the UEI assignment itself. SAM.gov validates an organization’s legal business name, physical address, and business start date against outside records, and the registration cannot activate until that validation clears.

Legal name and address must match exactly. The legal name and physical address entered in SAM.gov need to match what the IRS and your state’s business-registration records show — a common institutional-office abbreviation, a “doing business as” name, or an old address on file can each trigger a mismatch.
Address formatting. A physical address that doesn’t match standard USPS formatting is a frequent, avoidable cause of failed automatic validation; checking the address against the USPS address-standardization tool before entering it in SAM.gov can prevent this.
Supporting documents when automatic validation fails. When your legal name and address don’t auto-validate, SAM.gov requests documentary evidence — commonly cited acceptable documents include formation records (articles of incorporation/organization, or the equivalent for a public institution), an IRS determination or EIN-assignment letter, and other government-issued proof of the organization’s name and address. Because SAM.gov’s exact accepted-document list and its identity-verification vendor have changed more than once, confirm the current list directly on sam.gov or via the Federal Service Desk (fsd.gov) rather than assuming a document type is acceptable.
Additional identity-verification steps for the individual completing registration have also been part of SAM.gov’s process at various points (for example, a signed authorization letter from the entity confirming who is authorized to register on its behalf). Because this specific requirement has changed as GSA’s validation approach has evolved, treat it as something to verify against current FSD.gov guidance for your registration rather than something this guide can state as a fixed, unchanging step.
EIN/TIN not yet recognized by the IRS. A newly issued EIN can take time to appear in the IRS records SAM.gov checks against; registering too soon after incorporating is a common, avoidable source of a stalled validation.

CAGE Code and the UEI

A Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) code is a separate five-character code, assigned and maintained by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), that identifies a specific facility at a specific physical location — historically used most heavily in Department of Defense contracting. For US domestic entities, a CAGE code is automatically assigned as part of SAM.gov registration — you do not request it separately, and it is free, the same as the UEI. The two identifiers serve different purposes: the UEI identifies the legal organization government-wide across every federal award system, while the CAGE code identifies a specific physical facility and is used more heavily in defense-related procurement and logistics contexts. An organization with multiple physical locations under one legal entity may end up with one UEI but more than one CAGE code.

Roles and Permissions in SAM.gov: Where Institutional Registrations Get Stuck

SAM.gov registration is tied to individual user accounts with specific roles, not to a department or office as a whole, and this trips up institutional users more often than the documentation requirements do:

Entity Administrator. The role that actually controls a registration — able to update core data, manage other users’ roles, and submit the annual renewal. Only someone holding this role (or delegated equivalent access) can renew or make substantive changes.
Single point of failure risk. Because the role is tied to an individual’s Login.gov account, staff turnover in the sponsored-programs or grants office is a real, recurring cause of institutions being locked out of their own registration — if the person who registered the entity leaves without transferring or documenting Entity Administrator access, reclaiming control can take a lengthy identity-verification process with GSA. Assign at least one backup Entity Administrator, and document the process for transferring the role, before it becomes urgent.
Delegated access for day-to-day work. An Entity Administrator can grant other institutional staff more limited roles to view or update specific sections of the registration without handing over full control — use this rather than sharing one login across an office.
One registration per legal entity. A university or health system with many departments, centers, or campuses should generally maintain a single registered legal entity (with one UEI) unless a component genuinely operates as its own legal entity — duplicate or conflicting registrations for what is really one organization are a recurring source of confusion in award systems downstream.

SAM.gov Registration Renewal: What a Lapse Actually Blocks

A UEI itself does not expire, but the SAM.gov registration it is attached to does, and this is where most operational problems happen after initial registration:

Registration must be renewed at least once every 12 months. Under 2 CFR Part 25, a federal awarding agency may not make a new award to an entity unless it has a valid UEI and an active SAM.gov registration with current information — and that registration must be active at the time of award, not merely at the time of application.
SAM.gov sends renewal reminder emails to the registered Entity Administrator at set intervals before expiration, but tracking the date is the institution’s responsibility, not an automatic process.
Renewal is not instantaneous. It goes through the same validation as a new registration, so a renewal started at the last minute can lapse before it clears — institutions typically build in a buffer of several weeks before the 12-month deadline rather than waiting for it.
A lapse blocks every downstream system that checks SAM.gov simultaneously: a Grants.gov submission can be rejected, an eRA Commons or Research.gov proposal can be held, and a scheduled payment on an existing award can be delayed — all from the same underlying cause.

SAM.gov Registration Is Free — Third-Party “Registration Services” Are Not GSA

This is worth stating plainly because it is a genuine, widespread source of harm to applicants: registering in SAM.gov and obtaining a UEI cost nothing, directly from the government, ever. A number of commercial websites market paid “SAM.gov registration assistance,” some designed to look like an official government site, and charge institutions or individual grant applicants a fee — sometimes a recurring one — to do something that costs $0 done directly at sam.gov. Before paying anyone to “register your UEI” or “renew your SAM.gov account,” confirm you are on sam.gov itself (a .gov domain) and that no payment screen appears at any point in the actual registration or renewal flow. If a research office or individual applicant is ever asked to pay to obtain or renew a UEI or SAM.gov registration, that is a strong signal of a third-party service, not a government requirement.

For more detail, see dea form 225 — How to register with the DEA to conduct Schedule I-V research: which form applies, what a Schedule I protocol must include, what the field-office review checks, and how long it realistically takes.

How to Look Up Another Entity’s UEI

To find an organization’s UEI — your own institution’s, a subrecipient’s, or a vendor’s — use SAM.gov’s public entity search rather than asking the organization directly or guessing from an old DUNS number:

Go to sam.gov and use the public Entity Information Search (no login required for basic lookup).
Search by the organization’s legal name, or by its EIN if you have it, to reduce false matches.
The UEI shown on an active registration record is the organization’s current, authoritative identifier.

Anyone with an active SAM.gov user account tied to an institution’s own registration can also see that institution’s UEI directly in the registration record. Sponsored-programs or research administration offices typically maintain the institution’s UEI centrally so departments and individual investigators reference the one registered value rather than each looking it up separately.

Where the UEI Is Used

The UEI is the entity-level identifier threaded through every major federal research-funding system a US institution touches:

SAM.gov — the UEI is the entity’s primary identifier for registration, and the government’s exclusions/debarment screening is tied to the same registered entity record.
Grants.gov — an active SAM.gov registration and valid UEI are prerequisites for an organization to register on Grants.gov and for its Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) to submit applications; the UEI appears directly on the SF-424 application cover form.
eRA Commons — NIH’s institutional profile links to the institution’s UEI, and NIH validates it against SAM.gov as part of application processing.
Research.gov — NSF similarly ties an institution’s Research.gov organizational profile to its SAM.gov registration and UEI.

Because all of these systems check the same underlying SAM.gov record, a single lapse or data error in SAM.gov can simultaneously affect submission ability across every one of them, not just the one system where it was noticed. SAM.gov registration is also where the government’s debarment and suspension exclusion screening is anchored.

UEI and Subaward Reporting Under FFATA

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) requires prime recipients of federal awards to publicly report subaward and executive-compensation data for subaward actions of $30,000 or more, through a system now consolidated into SAM.gov (migrated from the standalone FSRS.gov reporting portal). See CASRAI’s FFATA reporting and subaward entries for the reporting mechanics in full.

Because FFATA subaward reporting identifies entities by their federal entity identifier, a subrecipient generally needs its own UEI (obtained the same way as a prime recipient, via its own SAM.gov registration or a “Get UEI Only” validation) before a prime recipient can complete FFATA reporting for that subaward — many pass-through entities now require proof of an active UEI/SAM.gov registration from a subrecipient as a condition of issuing a subaward agreement, for exactly this reason.

Troubleshooting: Common SAM.gov Registration Rejection and Delay Reasons

Legal name/address mismatch. The single most common cause — entered information doesn’t match IRS or state records exactly. Fix by matching the exact legal name and address on file with the IRS, formatted per USPS standards, and resubmitting requested documentation.
EIN too new to verify. A freshly issued EIN may not yet be reflected in the records SAM.gov checks. If registration stalls immediately after incorporating, this is a likely cause; allow more lead time before the intended submission deadline.
Missing or incomplete identity/authorization documentation. When automatic validation fails, SAM.gov requests supporting paperwork; an incomplete or incorrectly formatted submission restarts the review clock. Confirm the current required document list on sam.gov or via the Federal Service Desk before submitting rather than guessing.
Registering the wrong entity, or a duplicate of an existing one. Large institutions sometimes have an existing registration under a slightly different legal name that a new registrant doesn’t find first. Search SAM.gov’s public entity search for your organization’s name and EIN before starting a new registration, to avoid creating a conflicting duplicate.
Lapsed registration blocking a live application. If registration has expired, submission of new applications and payment on existing awards can be held until it’s renewed and revalidated — renewal takes real processing time, so start it as soon as the expiration reminder arrives rather than at the deadline.
Locked out because the Entity Administrator left. If the individual holding Entity Administrator access is no longer with the institution and access wasn’t transferred, regaining control requires a separate identity-verification process with GSA/FSD.gov rather than a simple password reset — this is why assigning a backup Entity Administrator in advance matters.
Paying a third party that isn’t GSA. Registration and UEI issuance are free; a “processing fee” charged by a non-government site does not speed up or guarantee GSA’s own validation, and pays for a service you could complete yourself at no cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the UEI the same thing as a DUNS number?

No. They serve the same basic purpose — a unique identifier for an organization doing business with the federal government — but the DUNS number was a 9-digit, numeric-only identifier issued by the private company Dun & Bradstreet, while the UEI is a 12-character alphanumeric identifier generated entirely within SAM.gov by GSA. As of April 4, 2022, DUNS numbers are no longer used or accepted in any federal award system.

How much does it cost to register in SAM.gov or get a UEI?

Nothing. Both are free, done directly through sam.gov. Any site charging a fee to “process” a SAM.gov registration or “obtain” a UEI is a third-party service, not GSA or SAM.gov itself.

How long does SAM.gov registration take?

The UEI itself is typically assigned quickly once entity validation succeeds. Completing and activating the full registration is the slower part — commonly one to several weeks for a first-time registration, longer if documentation has to be resubmitted after a validation mismatch.

Do individual researchers need their own UEI?

No. The UEI identifies the awardee organization (a university, hospital, company, or other legal entity), not an individual investigator. Individual researchers are identified in federal systems by other means, such as an eRA Commons ID or an ORCID iD, not a UEI.

Can I get a UEI without registering my organization for federal awards?

Yes. SAM.gov’s “Get UEI Only” option validates an organization’s identity and issues a UEI without registering it as an award-eligible entity — useful for a subrecipient or vendor that needs a UEI on a form but isn’t applying for a federal award directly.

What is a CAGE code, and is it different from a UEI?

Yes, they’re different identifiers. A CAGE code is a five-character code assigned by the Defense Logistics Agency identifying a specific physical facility; a UEI identifies the legal organization government-wide. US domestic entities get a CAGE code automatically as part of SAM.gov registration, at no separate cost.

Where do I find my institution’s UEI, or another organization’s?

Search by legal name or EIN in SAM.gov’s public Entity Information Search. Anyone with an active SAM.gov account tied to an institution’s own registration can also see it directly in the registration record.

For related registration and submission mechanics, see CASRAI’s guides comparing eRA Commons vs. Grants.gov and eRA Commons vs. Research.gov, and the Grants Management hub for the full pre-award and post-award lifecycle.

Related reading: era commons id — How to find an eRA Commons ID: where logged-in users see their own username and Person ID, and how a Signing Official or Account Administrator searches for a colleague’s existing account.