How to find UK tender opportunities (free and paid sources)
· 11 min read
Finding tenders in the UK isn't difficult once you know where to look. The harder part is knowing which of the many portals and services genuinely matter for your sector, and which just add noise to an already busy inbox.
This is a practical list of where opportunities actually get published, starting with the free official sources.
Where can you find UK tenders for free?
Contracts Finder
Contracts Finder is the main portal for lower-value English public sector contracts. Central government bodies must publish contracts above £12,000 including VAT, and other public bodies — local authorities, NHS trusts, and similar — above £30,000. It also carries a significant volume of contracts published voluntarily below those figures, which makes it the best free source for smaller opportunities that never reach the higher-value platforms.
Contracts Finder also publishes contract award notices, showing who won a contract and at what value. That's useful beyond just finding live opportunities. Reviewing award notices for your sector shows you who the active buyers are, who the incumbent suppliers tend to be, and roughly what contracts in your space are actually worth.
Find a Tender Service
Find a Tender (FTS) is the mandatory publication platform for contracts above the higher regulated thresholds — currently £139,688 including VAT for central government goods and services, with higher figures for sub-central bodies and works contracts. These thresholds are reviewed roughly every two years and were last revised on 1 January 2026.
Since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force in February 2025, FTS has expanded to cover more of the contract lifecycle, including pipeline notices that give advance warning of upcoming procurements. If you're targeting higher-value contracts, FTS is the primary source and worth checking regularly rather than occasionally.
Not sure what happens after a notice is published? Our step-by-step guide walks through the eight stages of the UK tendering process, from market engagement to award. Read the tendering process guide
The Central Digital Platform
The Central Digital Platform (CDP) is the government's newer, unified system for procurement notices and supplier registration, introduced under the Procurement Act 2023. In practice, it's largely delivered through an upgraded Find a Tender Service — suppliers register once and can bid across multiple contracting authorities without re-entering the same information each time.
The rollout has been staged rather than immediate. Below-threshold suppliers only became required to register from April 2026, over a year after the Act itself took effect. During the transition, it's worth registering on the CDP and continuing to check the existing portals rather than assuming everything has already migrated across.
Public Contracts Scotland
Public Contracts Scotland is the main portal for Scottish public sector opportunities, covering Scottish Government bodies, councils, NHS Scotland boards, and universities. It operates separately from the England-focused platforms, and Scottish opportunities aren't fully mirrored on Contracts Finder or FTS, so if you can deliver in Scotland it needs monitoring in its own right.
Sell2Wales
Sell2Wales is the equivalent portal for Wales, used by Welsh Government, local authorities, NHS Wales, and other Welsh public bodies. Welsh buyers also place weight on local economic and social value outcomes, so it's worth registering directly rather than relying on UK-wide coverage from a single source.
eTendersNI
eTendersNI is Northern Ireland's procurement portal, covering Northern Ireland departments, councils, and health and social care trusts. As with Scotland and Wales, it runs separately from the England-focused platforms and needs checking independently if you can deliver there.
Local authority portals
Many councils and NHS trusts run their own procurement portals in addition to publishing on the national platforms — often built on systems like Proactis, In-Tend, or Delta. If you're targeting specific local authorities or NHS bodies regularly, registering directly on their portal is worth doing alongside the national sources, since some smaller or time-sensitive opportunities appear there first, or exclusively.
Which sector portals are worth knowing?
Beyond the general platforms, several sector-specific systems are worth knowing depending on your market.
NHS procurement often runs through trust-level systems in addition to national platforms, with many trusts using Atamis-based e-procurement systems for their own tenders.
Defence opportunities are published through the Defence Sourcing Portal (DSP), the Ministry of Defence's dedicated procurement system, alongside the national platforms.
Education and public sector buying consortia — organisations like YPO and Crown Commercial Service run framework agreements that many schools, councils, and public bodies buy through directly, rather than running individual tenders. Note that Crown Commercial Service is expected to be superseded by the newly announced Government Commercial Agency from April 2026, so it's worth checking which body is running a given framework at the time you're looking.
Housing associations often procure through consortia such as Procurement for Housing or Fusion21, which run their own framework and tender processes separate from local authority routes.
If your sector has a recognised buying consortium or framework provider, it's usually worth more of your monitoring time than the general portals, since a meaningful share of the sector's spend may run through it rather than individual open tenders.
Are paid tender aggregators worth it?
Free official sources cover everything that's legally required to be published, but they're not always easy to search well, and none of them do the work of filtering, deduplicating, or flagging opportunities against your specific criteria. That's the gap paid aggregators fill.
The market has grown considerably, including a wave of newer AI-assisted tools whose own comparison pages are worth reading with some scepticism, since many are marketing their own product against competitors. The more established, independently recognisable names include the three below.
| Provider | What it's built for | Best for | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tussell | Market intelligence and public sector spend data; its SME Procurement Tracker is treated as a reference dataset in the sector | Research, competitor tracking, understanding buyer spending patterns | Typically negotiated directly rather than published |
| Tracker Intelligence (BiP Solutions) | One of the longest-established alert and intelligence services in UK public procurement | Suppliers wanting broad alert coverage, historically popular with smaller firms | Usually requires a direct conversation rather than a self-serve rate |
| Tenders Direct (Millstream) | Alert accuracy, using a mix of automated and human classification to reduce false positives | Smaller teams that want fewer irrelevant alerts | Positioned as more accessible than the larger intelligence platforms; quoted directly |
Across most of these tools, the same pattern holds. They're genuinely useful for cutting through noise once you know your sector and criteria well, but pricing is rarely transparent upfront, and it's worth trialling before committing to an annual contract. None of them help with writing the response itself — that's a separate problem, and one they're not built to solve.
Weighing up what to spend on bidding overall? Our breakdown of UK bid writing costs sets out realistic day rates, per-bid fees, and when paying for help is worth it. See what bid writing costs
How do you set up alerts that don't drown you?
The most common mistake with any alert system, free or paid, is setting the filters too broadly and then ignoring the flood of results that follows. A few practical adjustments make alerts genuinely usable.
Use CPV codes, not just keywords. Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) codes classify contracts by type far more precisely than keyword matching. A keyword search for "training" will catch everything from staff development contracts to gym equipment; the right CPV code narrows that considerably.
Set a realistic value range. If you can't realistically deliver a £5 million contract, filtering it out immediately saves time you'd otherwise spend scanning and dismissing.
Separate your alerts by sector or region if you operate across more than one. A single combined feed for a business bidding across multiple sectors becomes noise quickly. Splitting alerts lets you review each on its own terms.
Review and prune your filters every few months. What counted as relevant when you set the alert up may not match where your business has moved to since.
Before you respond — bid or no-bid
Finding an opportunity is the easy part. Not every tender that lands in your alerts is worth pursuing, and deciding that properly before you commit real time to a response is one of the more valuable habits in bidding well. Our plain-English guide to tendering covers the bid/no-bid decision and the questions worth asking before you start writing.
Not sure whether an opportunity is worth your time? Start with the bid/no-bid questions in our plain-English guide to UK tenders. Read the bid/no-bid guidance
Once you've decided an opportunity is genuinely worth pursuing, the next problem is different from the one this post covers. Finding the tender and writing a strong response are two separate skills, and a good process for the second one matters just as much as good discovery for the first. This is where a bid management tool like BidMate is built to help — turning a found opportunity into a structured, evidenced response rather than a blank document and a deadline.
Once you've found the opportunity worth pursuing, BidMate helps you turn it into a structured response. See how it works
FAQ
Is there one single place to find all UK public sector tenders?
Not yet. Contracts Finder and Find a Tender Service between them cover most English public sector contracts by value, but Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland run separate portals, and many buyers also publish on their own local systems. The Central Digital Platform is intended to eventually consolidate more of this, but the rollout is still in progress.
What's the difference between Contracts Finder and Find a Tender?
Contracts Finder covers contracts above £12,000 with central government and above £30,000 with other public bodies, including a large volume of lower-value opportunities. Find a Tender covers contracts above the higher regulated thresholds, which are revised periodically and currently sit at £139,688 including VAT for central government goods and services, following the January 2026 revision.
Are paid tender alert services worth it?
It depends on your volume and sector. If you're bidding occasionally in one clear sector, the free portals with well-configured alerts are usually sufficient. If you're monitoring multiple sectors, regions, or a high volume of opportunities, a paid aggregator can save meaningful time by filtering and deduplicating what the free sources present separately. Most require a direct conversation with the vendor for pricing, so it's worth trialling before committing to an annual contract.
Do I need to register on the Central Digital Platform now?
If you're bidding for below-threshold public sector contracts, registration became a requirement from April 2026. It's worth registering regardless of your current bidding activity, since it's likely to become the primary registration point over time as the rollout continues.
How do I avoid missing opportunities in my sector?
Combine the relevant national portal, any devolved nation portal relevant to where you can deliver, and any sector-specific system that applies to your market — NHS, defence, education, or housing, for example. A single general keyword alert on one portal is rarely enough coverage on its own.