GAO Bid Protest Sustain Rate FY2025: Why 14 Percent Isn’t a 20-Year Low

GAO Bid Protest Sustain Rate FY2025: What the Number Actually Was

GAO’s bid protest sustain rate for fiscal year 2025 came in at 14 percent, in line with recent years, per the Government Accountability Office’s Bid Protest Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2025 (GAO-26-900695), published December 12, 2025. GAO issued 380 merit decisions, itself a multi-year low, and sustained 53. The sustain count hit a two-decade low instead, per Crowell & Moring’s analysis of GAO’s annual reports. Total cases filed fell to 1,688, down 6 percent from FY2024’s 1,803.

Most coverage leads with the GAO bid protest sustain rate FY2025 decline as if protests got harder to win. GAO’s own table says otherwise.

*FY2023’s rate is the outlier, not FY2025’s. Every other year in GAO’s five-year table sits between 13 and 16 percent; Crowell & Moring’s published analysis attributes the FY2023 spike to an unusually high number of protests against a single procurement. Sustain rate is calculated against merit decisions, the cases GAO actually ruled on, not against total cases filed.

Why Bid Protest Filings Themselves Declined

Fewer contractors filed with GAO at all in fiscal year 2025. Crowell & Moring ties part of the decline to venue. Protesters may increasingly choose the Court of Federal Claims as an initial forum when available, per anecdotal reports the firm cites, not a finding GAO’s report makes. GAO’s report mentions that court once, in an ATP Gov footnote, and the footnote cuts the other way: ATP Gov couldn’t get judicial review there, because a delivery-order protest is precluded from that court’s jurisdiction under 10 U.S.C. §3406(f). Whatever is pulling some protesters toward that forum, it isn’t everyone’s option.

Why GAO’s Sustain Rate and Effectiveness Rate Tell Different Stories

The sustain rate and effectiveness rate run against different denominators, which is why the two numbers move so differently. The sustain rate is 53 sustains out of 380 merit decisions, the narrow set of cases GAO actually decided on the merits. The effectiveness rate takes in every case GAO closed that year, a total GAO puts at 1,737, more than four times the merit-decision base. It counts a protester as having obtained relief if the agency took voluntary corrective action or if GAO sustained the protest outright. A contractor checking only the sustain rate is reading the smaller of the two numbers.

Effectiveness rate is the broader measure because it captures relief a formal sustain never counts:

• A GAO decision sustaining the protest outright, what the sustain rate measures on its own.
• Voluntary corrective action an agency takes after a protest is filed but before GAO decides, often because its own review of the merits leads it to fix the problem itself.
• Cases resolved through alternative dispute resolution, which counts toward the effectiveness rate only when it results in a sustain or corrective action, not as an independent third channel; ADR was used in 53 cases in fiscal year 2025, with a 91 percent success rate.

The wider measure has a catch. Corrective action counts as relief even when it amounts to reevaluating and awarding to the same competitor again. Landing inside the 52 percent means the protester got a second look, not that they won. GAO’s report doesn’t break out how often that second look flips an award.

Which Grounds Win a GAO Bid Protest?

GAO’s report names three grounds as the most prevalent bases for sustaining a protest in fiscal year 2025: unreasonable technical evaluation, unreasonable cost or price evaluation, and unreasonable rejection of proposal. That ranking shows how often each ground appears among sustained protests, not how often it wins when raised; neither GAO nor Crowell & Moring publishes a sustain rate by ground. Crowell’s ten-year comparison of GAO’s own annual reports shows how differently each ground behaves over time.

• Unreasonable technical evaluation: a top sustain ground in all ten years from FY2016 through FY2025, effectively a constant.
• Unreasonable cost or price evaluation: present in eight of those ten years.
• Unreasonable rejection of proposal: per Crowell & Moring’s ten-year comparison, FY2025 is the first year it shows up on the list at all.

What Happens When an Agency Refuses a GAO Recommendation? The ATP Gov Case

GAO’s recommendations are not legally binding. Fiscal year 2025 produced a documented case of an agency declining to follow one, then declining the deal it proposed instead. The case matters to any DIB prime or DIB sub weighing whether a favorable GAO recommendation will actually get implemented. In ATP Gov, LLC (B-422938, B-422938.2), decided December 12, 2024, GAO sustained a protest against the Air Force’s award of a military satellite terminal assemblies contract to iGov Technologies. ATP Gov’s certified terminal carried a total evaluated price of $300,219,569, over $120 million above iGov’s $180,182,031 (both evaluated proposal totals, not obligated spend). GAO rejected the Air Force’s separate argument that ATP Gov’s terminal met fewer optional requirements, finding it a consequence of the evaluation error itself, not an independent basis for the award.

1. The Air Force awarded the contract to iGov despite iGov’s terminal lacking the required WGS certification at proposal submission.
2. ATP Gov protested, having proposed a certified terminal at a higher evaluated price than iGov’s uncertified one.
3. GAO sustained the protest and recommended the Air Force either reevaluate proposals under the solicitation’s own terms and award accordingly, or amend the solicitation and resolicit, plus reimburse ATP Gov’s protest costs.
4. The Air Force instead filed a request for reconsideration, proposing to reimburse ATP Gov’s proposal preparation costs alongside its protest costs. GAO dismissed the request as untimely, filed more than 10 days after the Air Force knew the basis for it.
5. With that request dismissed, the Air Force reimbursed only the protest costs GAO had originally recommended. It didn’t reevaluate, resolicit, or reimburse the proposal preparation costs it had itself proposed. GAO responded by recommending Congress enact a private bill forcing that reimbursement anyway.

Those costs and delays were available as a defense partly because ATP Gov missed the automatic stay. GAO’s report states the protester didn’t file within five days of its debriefing, so the Air Force let iGov keep performing the delivery order for months while the protest was pending. By the time GAO ruled, “substantial costs and delays” wasn’t hypothetical; it was the cost of unwinding months of ongoing performance, exactly what the stay deadline exists to prevent. This is the only instance of agency non-compliance GAO’s fiscal year 2025 report documents; one case is no basis for assuming others decline at a similar rate.

How Fast and How Often Does GAO Actually Resolve a Protest?

GAO issued final decisions within the statutory 100-day deadline for all protests resolved in fiscal year 2025, per GAO-26-900695. That 100 days is a fixed clock, not an internal target. It weighs on a contractor’s calculus as much as the sustain rate does, especially for small and mid-market contractors without an in-house litigation budget for a longer fight at the Court of Federal Claims.

• Protesters filed 1,617 protests in fiscal year 2025, fewer than the 1,688 total cases filed, a count that also includes cost claims and reconsideration requests.
• Of the 53 ADR cases, 91 percent succeeded. ADR draws its own self-selected pool of cases, so that rate isn’t a like-for-like comparison to the sustain rate.
• GAO held hearings in only 3 cases (0.5 percent, per GAO-26-900695), deciding nearly every other protest on the written record alone.

What This Means Before You Decide to Protest Your Next Lost Award

GAO’s forum trades a non-binding recommendation for speed: a decision within 100 days, without the extended docket of the Court of Federal Claims. Enforcement is where that trade bites. A documented finding of an unreasonable award only gets implemented if the agency decides to implement it, and missing the automatic-stay deadline can hand the agency the “too costly to unwind now” argument it needs to refuse, as ATP Gov shows. A BD lead, capture lead, or founder should test a lost award against GAO’s top sustain grounds and the automatic-stay deadline before concluding a protest isn’t worth it based on the GAO bid protest sustain rate FY2025 headline alone.

• Compared your lost award’s evaluation record against the three most common FY2025 sustain grounds: unreasonable technical evaluation, unreasonable cost or price evaluation, and unreasonable rejection of proposal.
• Confirmed your automatic-stay filing deadline: the later of 10 days after contract award or 5 days after the debriefing date offered (later still after a required DoD enhanced debriefing with timely follow-up questions), since ATP Gov shows what an agency can argue once performance has already continued for months.
• Checked whether ADR is available for your case, given its 91 percent success rate in fiscal year 2025.
• Confirmed whether your protest involves a delivery order, which can preclude Court of Federal Claims review under 10 U.S.C. §3406(f), leaving GAO as the only forum.

FAQ

What was GAO’s bid protest sustain rate for fiscal year 2025?

GAO’s fiscal year 2025 sustain rate was 14 percent, based on 53 sustains out of 380 merit decisions, in line with the 13 to 16 percent range GAO’s report shows for FY2021, FY2022, and FY2024; only FY2023’s 31 percent is an anomaly.

What is the difference between GAO’s sustain rate and effectiveness rate?

The sustain rate counts only protests GAO formally decided in the protester’s favor, out of the cases GAO ruled on. The effectiveness rate counts relief from a formal sustain or voluntary corrective action, against every protest closed that year. GAO’s effectiveness rate held at 52 percent in both FY2024 and FY2025.

Why did GAO bid protest filings decline in fiscal year 2025?

Total cases filed fell to 1,688, a 6 percent drop from fiscal year 2024. GAO’s report doesn’t state a cause; Crowell & Moring’s analysis ties part of the decline to anecdotal reports of protesters choosing the Court of Federal Claims as an initial forum, though that option isn’t available for every protest, such as delivery-order protests like ATP Gov’s.

What happens when an agency doesn’t follow a GAO bid protest recommendation?

GAO’s recommendations are not legally binding. In the FY2025 report’s documented case, the Air Force declined to reevaluate or resolicit as GAO recommended in ATP Gov, LLC, after its own proposed alternative, proposal-preparation-cost reimbursement, was dismissed as untimely. GAO then recommended Congress enact a private bill forcing that same reimbursement anyway.

What were the most common reasons GAO sustained bid protests in FY2025?

The three most prevalent grounds were unreasonable technical evaluation, unreasonable cost or price evaluation, and unreasonable rejection of proposal. Per Crowell & Moring’s ten-year comparison of GAO’s reports, the first has been a top ground every year and the last appeared for the first time in FY2025.

Is filing a bid protest still worth it if the sustain rate keeps falling?

The sustain rate didn’t fall out of its normal range in FY2025; GAO’s five-year table shows 13 to 16 percent every year except FY2023’s anomaly. The more useful number is the effectiveness rate, which stayed at 52 percent, meaning roughly half of closed protests still produced some relief for the protester.

Does agency corrective action mean I actually win the recompete?

Not necessarily. Corrective action counts toward the effectiveness rate once the agency takes some action, such as reevaluating proposals, but that reevaluation can still result in the same award to the same competitor; GAO doesn’t say how often it changes the outcome versus reconfirming it.