What Find a Tender is
Find a Tender (find-tender.service.gov.uk) is the UK government’s notice platform for higher-value public sector procurement. It replaced the EU’s OJEU/TED route after Brexit, and since the Procurement Act 2023 regime went live in early 2025 it has been the central digital platform for the new regime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland runs its own rules alongside it.
If a council, NHS trust, government department or other public body in scope wants to buy above the relevant threshold, the notices must appear on Find a Tender. Anyone can search it; a free account unlocks saved searches and email alerts.
What gets published there
Under the Procurement Act the range of notices has widened. The ones suppliers care about most are:
| Notice type | What it tells you | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline notice | What an authority expects to buy over the coming period | Early warning, often a year or more ahead |
| Preliminary market engagement notice | The buyer wants to talk to the market before tendering | A chance to shape the requirement |
| Tender notice | A live opportunity with a deadline | The one you bid on |
| Transparency notice | A direct award is planned without competition | Useful for understanding the market |
| Contract award notice | Who won, and usually the value | Competitor intelligence and framework mapping |
| Contract details notice | The published contract itself | Terms and pricing you can learn from |
Lower-value opportunities in England generally go on Contracts Finder instead, although many authorities publish on both. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also have national portals: Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI. One opportunity can appear on two or three of these within a day.
Thresholds in plain terms
The thresholds are set in legislation, revised periodically, and differ between central government and other bodies and between works, services and light-touch services. Rather than memorise numbers that change, assume anything of meaningful size for an SME will be on Find a Tender, while smaller local contracts may only show up on Contracts Finder or a regional portal.
Searching and filtering
The search page lets you combine:
- Keywords, matched against the notice title and description
- CPV codes, the standard classification of goods, works and services
- Location of the contract, by UK region or nation
- Notice type, so you can look only at tender notices or only at awards
- Publication date and deadline ranges
- Buyer name
Keyword search is literal: “facilities management” will not match “hard FM services”. CPV codes are more reliable, but buyers pick them loosely, so catering software may sit under a generic IT code. Most experienced bidders run several saved searches and accept overlap.
How the built-in email alerts work
You can save any search and be emailed when new notices match it. The alerts cost nothing, but they have limits worth knowing before you rely on them:
- They are keyword and CPV driven, so they inherit every weakness of the search itself. Broad terms produce a daily flood; narrow terms miss notices that use different wording.
- They do not know anything about your company. An alert cannot tell that a contract is in the wrong region, far above your turnover, or requires a certification you do not hold.
- Duplicates are common. The same opportunity often arrives from Find a Tender and again from Contracts Finder or a devolved portal, with slightly different titles and reference numbers.
- Each alert is a list of links. Someone still has to open every notice, judge it and log the deadline.
For a small bid team that is often an hour or two a day of triage. We compare the options in more detail on tender alert emails versus TendersAutopilot.
Tips for suppliers using Find a Tender
- Register an account even before you are ready to bid, so you can save searches.
- Build your CPV list carefully and include parent codes as well as specific ones.
- Watch pipeline and preliminary market engagement notices, not just tender notices. The best time to influence a requirement is before it is written.
- Read contract award notices in your category. They tell you who is winning, at what value, and which frameworks buyers are using.
- Record every deadline the moment you see it. Clarification deadlines are usually earlier than submission deadlines and are easy to miss.
How TendersAutopilot uses Find a Tender
TendersAutopilot scans Find a Tender every day alongside Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTendersNI, and Crown Commercial Service and NHS frameworks. Where the same opportunity appears on more than one portal it is merged into a single record, so you see it once with links to every source.
Instead of keyword alerts, each notice is scored against your company profile: the services you offer, your CPV codes, the regions you can serve, the contract sizes you can deliver and the certifications you hold. You get a fit score and a win-likelihood estimate, and only the tenders above your chosen bar reach your inbox, Slack or Teams. Deadlines, including clarification dates, are tracked automatically.
When you decide to bid, the AI drafts from your own bid library of past bids, case studies and policies. It does not invent claims, and a person on your team always reviews and submits. Plans start at ÂŁ199 a month (see pricing) and the waitlist is free. If you run a small team, see TendersAutopilot for SME bid teams or the FAQ.