Insights · Published October 30, 2026

How many companies bid on Illinois cleaning contracts? 46 public bids by region and agency type

Chicago-area custodial contracts drew about 7 bids each. Central Illinois averaged under 3. What 46 public cleaning bids show about the competition.

Before you spend a week on a public cleaning bid, it helps to know how many other companies will be pricing the same buildings. In Illinois, that number depends heavily on where the agency is and what kind of agency it is.

We counted the bids received on 46 Illinois public custodial contracts in our records, from 2015 to 2026. Across all of them, the typical contract drew 6 bids. But the range runs from a single bid to 14, and the pattern is not random.

Chicago and its suburbs: expect a crowd

The 26 contracts in Chicago and its suburbs averaged about 7 bids each.

• 14 of the 26 drew 7 or more bids.
• All 5 contracts with 10 or more bids were in the Chicago area: a village contract with 14, two city and village contracts with 12 each, a park district with 11 and a library district with 10.
• Only 2 of the 26 drew 3 bids or fewer.

If you bid in the suburbs, plan on being one of six to eight companies, and sometimes one of a dozen.

Outside the Chicago area: smaller fields

Outside the Chicago area, the 20 contracts we have averaged fewer than 4 bids.

• Central Illinois (10 contracts): an average of under 3 bids, and no contract drew more than 5. Eight of the 10 had 3 bids or fewer. These include contracts in Champaign-Urbana, Decatur, Effingham and East Peoria.
• Other northern Illinois (8 contracts): 3 to 7 bids each, about 6 on average. This group includes Rockford, Rock Island and LaSalle County.
• Southern Illinois (2 contracts): both were university turnover cleaning bids, one with a single bidder and one with two priced bids. That is too few to call a pattern, but it fits the downstate trend.

Of the 4 contracts in our records that drew only one bid, 3 were outside the Chicago area.

Agency type matters too

• School districts (9 contracts): 4 to 9 bids each, about 6 on average. No school district contract in our records drew fewer than 4.
• Cities, villages and counties (20 contracts): about 6 or 7 bids on average, with the widest range, from 1 to 14.
• Park districts (6 contracts): anywhere from 1 to 11 bids.
• Library districts (2 contracts): 7 and 10 bids.
• Colleges and universities (5 contracts): 1 to 3 bids each. All five are downstate.
• Sanitary districts and other special districts (4 contracts): 1 to 7 bids.

Some of the agency-type difference is really geography. Most of the school, municipal and library contracts in our records are in the suburbs, and all of the college contracts are downstate.

The same agency, the next cycle

Bidder counts can also move a lot from one bid to the next at the same agency:

• City of Wheaton: 7 proposals in 2025, then 12 in 2026.
• Village of Willowbrook: 7 bids in 2022, then 12 in 2025.
• Lake Land College, Effingham center: 3 bids in 2024, then 2 in both 2025 and 2026.

So last cycle's field is a starting point, not a guarantee. A suburban contract that drew seven bids last time can draw a dozen the next time it goes out.

How to size up the field before you bid

• Know who's looking. Who downloaded the documents or signed in at the pre-bid meeting is the best early read on how crowded a bid will be, though more companies look than actually bid. When an agency posts that list, it's in our bid alerts. Bidding one yourself? Bid Desk pulls the sign-in sheet when it isn't public and shows what each of those companies has bid on similar work.
• Know last cycle's field. Every past bid at the same agency, with who bid, how they ranked and what won, is already in our results, so you start with the last tabulation instead of digging for it.
• Know what's coming. Our rebid calendar flags contracts before they're posted, including the smaller downstate bids where two or three bidders is normal and the competition looks very different from a suburban bid with twelve.

Where these numbers come from

Counts come from each agency's own bid tabulation, board packet, award memo or records-request response for 46 Illinois public custodial contracts bid between 2015 and 2026. Where an agency listed companies that submitted no price, we counted only priced bids. A December 2025 joint bid covering three north-suburban communities is counted once. Contracts where the number of bids received is not on record, and one case where staff asked a single company for a quote without a formal bid, are left out. Regions follow our own groupings.

Figures are from public records available as of October 30, 2026. Newer bids may have been awarded since; subscribers get every new result.