List of government agencies: federal departments, independent agencies and local governments

This page is for anyone who needs a list of US government agencies: researchers and students, and especially B2B sellers building a list of public-sector organizations to sell to. It lists the federal departments and major independent agencies by branch, with acronyms and fiscal 2025 spending, explains why official counts disagree, counts state and local governments, and shows where to download each list. For how government buying works once you have the list (registration, thresholds, set-asides), read our guide to selling to the government.

How many government agencies there are

It depends on who's counting. Each official source answers a different question:

Counts taken from each source on 26 October 2026, except the Census Bureau figure, which is its 2026 count.

The differences are about scope. The Federal Register list still includes bodies such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was terminated at the end of 1995, because their old documents remain on file. USA.gov lists some agencies under two names (the AbilityOne Commission appears as "AbilityOne Commission" and "U.S. AbilityOne Commission"). USAspending.gov leaves out bodies that aren't part of its budget reporting, such as the Postal Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Library of Congress. If you need one number, say which source it comes from.

The 15 executive departments

The heads of these departments make up most of the Cabinet. The table follows the order in 5 U.S.C. 101, which is roughly the order they were created. Obligations are the money each department committed to spend in fiscal 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), from USAspending.gov.

Most of this money is benefits, grants, transfers and interest, not purchases. HHS is the largest agency by obligations because it runs Medicare and Medicaid, but federal contracts across all agencies came to $778.9 billion in fiscal 2025, about two thirds of it at Defense. For a seller, an agency's contract spending on what you sell matters far more than its budget.

Independent agencies and other federal bodies

USAspending.gov tracks 96 top-tier agencies outside the departments. Some are large operating agencies; many are regulators, boards and commissions with small budgets.

OPM's total is mostly federal retirement and health benefits, and SSA's is mostly Social Security payments. GSA matters more to sellers than its size suggests: it buys for other agencies and runs the Multiple Award Schedule.

Legislative and judicial branch agencies

Congress and the courts have their own agencies, and they buy for themselves:

State and local governments

The Census Bureau counted 91,729 local governments in 2026, in addition to the 50 state governments:

Illinois has the most local governments (6,933), followed by Texas (5,795), Pennsylvania (4,835), California (4,546) and Colorado (4,158). Hawaii has 21.

Most are small. Of the 38,693 counties, cities and townships, the Census Bureau's population estimates put 17,691 (46%) under 1,000 residents and only 1,930 at 50,000 or more:

Special districts are the least visible group, and each does one job. The largest functions are local fire protection (5,974 districts), water supply (3,553), housing and community development (3,292), soil and water conservation (2,450), drainage (2,411), sewerage (1,825), libraries (1,673) and parks and recreation (1,464). For schools, see our list of schools, which covers individual schools as well as districts.

Where to download each list

The Census file is the closest thing to a ready-made prospect list for local government. It gives a contact title for each government (mayor and clerk are the most common), though that's who answers the Census survey, not necessarily who buys, and 16,202 of the counties, cities and townships list a website.

Turning a list of agencies into a list of buyers

A list of agencies tells you who exists, not who buys what you sell. Narrow it in this order:

1. Pick the level and size. A product that suits a 500-person county IT team rarely suits a 3-person township. Filter the Census file by type, population, enrollment or special district function.
2. Check past buying. Search USAspending.gov for federal contracts under your industry codes; for local governments, read budgets and council agendas.
3. Find the right person and time. The department head defines the need, purchasing or the clerk runs the process, and an elected body approves large contracts. Contact them while next year's budget is being drafted.

Worked example: city clerks in Ohio

Illustrative example. The company and its plan are fictional; the counts come from the Census Bureau's 2026 Government Units list.

The seller: Docket Lane (docketlane.example) sells meeting agenda and minutes software to city clerks. The question: how many good-fit cities are there in Ohio, its home state?

What the data shows. Ohio has 2,319 counties, cities and townships. Docket Lane's product suits cities of 10,000 to 49,999 residents, big enough to hold frequent public meetings but too small for a records department. The Census file lists 159 Ohio cities in that band, and 154 of them have a website listed. The contact title in the file is mayor for 55 of them and a finance director for 21, so the clerk has to be found on each city's website.

The arithmetic. If 70% of the 159 city websites name the clerk with a direct email (an illustrative assumption), that's about 111 contacts. At an illustrative 8% reply rate to a short, specific email, that's about 9 conversations: enough to learn whether the message works before expanding to Michigan and Indiana. Visiting 159 websites to find clerks is the slow part; Bebop finds the contacts for each government in a list and researches each one.

Subject: Council packets at [city]

Hi [first name],

I saw [city]'s council agendas run to [number] pages with the packet attached, posted [how, e.g. as one PDF on the city site].

Clerks in cities your size tell us the packet is the slowest part of the week, especially when items change the day before.

We built Docket Lane for clerks in cities of 10,000 to 50,000 people. Would a 15-minute look be useful before your next budget cycle?

[Your name]
[Phone number]

Common mistakes

• Quoting one number as the count of agencies. Name the source and what it counts.
• Treating budget size as buying power. Most federal obligations are benefits and grants; check contract spending on what you sell.
• Ignoring special districts. There are more of them than cities, and each does a single job.
• Using defunct names. Check an agency still exists on USA.gov before you put it on a list.

Next step: once you've picked the agencies that buy what you sell, learn the registration steps, dollar thresholds and timing in our guide to selling to the government.