What Contracts Finder is
Contracts Finder is the UK government’s portal for public sector contract opportunities in England that fall below the thresholds at which a notice must go to Find a Tender. It sits at gov.uk/contracts-finder and is free to search without an account.
It carries three kinds of content: early engagement and pipeline notices (buyers signalling what they expect to procure), live opportunities with a closing date, and contract award notices showing who won and for how much. That mix is useful for research but awkward for alerts.
Who publishes there
Buyers in England are expected to publish lower-value opportunities on Contracts Finder. In practice you will see:
- Central government departments, their agencies and arm’s-length bodies
- NHS trusts, integrated care boards and other health bodies in England
- Local authorities, combined authorities and fire and police services
- Schools, academy trusts, universities and housing associations
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own portals (Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI). Some UK-wide bodies and cross-border contracts appear on Contracts Finder as well as a devolved portal, so if you sell across the UK you will meet the same notice in more than one place.
How it relates to Find a Tender
The two portals split roughly by value. Find a Tender is for higher-value procurements that must be advertised under the main procurement rules. Contracts Finder is for everything below that, though many buyers publish higher-value notices to both.
| Contracts Finder | Find a Tender | |
|---|---|---|
| Geography | England (with some UK-wide overlap) | UK-wide |
| Typical value | Lower-value contracts | Above the main thresholds |
| Pipeline notices | Yes | Yes |
| Award notices | Yes, mixed into search results | Yes |
| Account needed | Only for saved searches and alerts | Only for saved searches and alerts |
If you only watch one, you will miss opportunities.
Registering and setting up Contracts Finder alerts
Searching is open to anyone. To save a search and receive email alerts you need a free account. The flow is:
- Create an account with a business email and verify it.
- Run a search using keywords, a location, a value range, and a notice type (opportunity, pipeline or award).
- Save the search and turn on email notifications.
- Repeat for each distinct service line or region, because one search rarely covers a whole business.
Contracts Finder emails you when new notices match a saved search.
Where the alerts fall short
The alerts are free and reliable, but they are a notification feed, not a qualified pipeline. The common complaints:
Duplicates. The same contract can arrive as a pipeline notice, then an opportunity, then an award, and may also appear on Find a Tender or a devolved portal. Each lands in your inbox as a new item.
Irrelevant matches. Keyword search is literal. “Cleaning” pulls in data cleaning, drain cleaning and a cleaning contract for a depot 300 miles away. Broad terms flood the inbox; narrow terms miss things.
Award notices mixed in. Unless you filter by notice type on every saved search, closed and awarded contracts appear alongside live ones.
No fit scoring. The portal does not know your turnover, accreditations, regions or past work, so it cannot tell you whether a notice is worth opening. Every alert looks the same.
No deadline tracking. Once the email arrives, it is up to you to put the closing date somewhere and remember the clarification deadline.
We go into the general problem on tender alert emails versus a scored feed.
Practical tips for a cleaner feed
- Filter saved searches by notice type so opportunities and pipeline notices are separated from awards.
- Use CPV codes rather than words where the portal allows it. Codes are assigned by the buyer and are less ambiguous than free text.
- Set a realistic value range. A ÂŁ2m floor or a ÂŁ50k ceiling removes a lot of noise.
- Watch pipeline notices for buyers you want to work with. They tell you what is coming months before the opportunity is published, which is the right time to ask questions and prepare case studies.
- Review your saved searches every quarter. Buyers change how they describe the same service.
How TendersAutopilot handles Contracts Finder
TendersAutopilot scans Contracts Finder daily alongside Find a Tender, the three devolved portals, and Crown Commercial Service and NHS frameworks. That covers the overlap problem at source: the same notice appearing in several places is collapsed into one record, and pipeline, opportunity and award stages are linked rather than arriving as separate alerts.
Each new notice is scored for fit and win likelihood against your company profile: the services you sell, your CPV codes, regions, contract size range and certifications. Awarded notices are kept for research but do not fire alerts. What reaches Slack, Teams or email is a short list ranked by how well it matches, with the closing date already tracked.
When you decide to bid, the AI drafts from your own bid library (past bids, case studies, policies) and never invents claims. A person on your team reviews, edits and submits every bid.
Plans start at ÂŁ199 a month for one profile, with a Growth plan at ÂŁ349 for up to ten profiles and bid library import; details are on the pricing section. We are pre-launch, the waitlist is free, and there is a 14-day trial at launch. If you run a small bid function, the SME bid teams page describes a typical setup. Questions go to hello@tendersautopilot.co.uk.