Coverage

There is no single database of UK public contracts

This is the thing suppliers discover late, usually after losing work they never saw advertised. UK public procurement is published across four national portals, divided by nation and by contract value. Each has its own thresholds, its own search behaviour and its own blind spots. Watching one of them well still leaves most of the market invisible.

Below is what each portal actually carries, and just as importantly, what it does not.

The split changed when the Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025: new procurements are now published on Find a Tender at every notifiable value, and Contracts Finder carries those begun under the old rules. See GOV.UK's guidance on below-threshold contracts and PPN 019 on Contracts Finder.

Find a Tender Service

FTS

Geography: United Kingdom, all four nations
Value threshold: Every notifiable contract under the Procurement Act 2023: above threshold from £135,018 for central government and £207,720 for councils and other sub-central bodies (both including VAT), and since 24 February 2025 below threshold from £12,000 for central government and £30,000 for other public bodies

What it covers

The central digital platform for UK public procurement. Since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, new procurements under the Act are advertised here at every notifiable value, below the thresholds as well as above, so a council buying £60,000 of consultancy now appears here. It replaced the EU's OJEU and TED notices for UK procurement from January 2021.

What it misses

Contracts below £12,000 (central government) or £30,000 (other public bodies); procurements begun under the old 2015 regulations before 24 February 2025, which stay on Contracts Finder; and lower value Scottish contracts, which are on Public Contracts Scotland.

Contracts Finder

Geography: England, plus UK wide central government
Value threshold: £12,000 upward for central government, £30,000 for wider public sector

What it covers

Procurements begun under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 before 24 February 2025, and the awards and later notices that belong to them. Until the Procurement Act came in, this was where most lower value English contracts were published, and some buyers still post here.

What it misses

New procurements under the Procurement Act 2023, which are published on Find a Tender instead: there is no requirement to duplicate them here. Also devolved public bodies in Scotland and Wales, which publish to their own portals.

Public Contracts Scotland

PCS

Geography: Scotland
Value threshold: Regulated procurements, with lower value quick quotes as well

What it covers

Scottish councils, NHS Scotland, Scottish Government and its agencies, universities and colleges. If you sell into Scotland, this portal carries opportunities that appear nowhere else.

What it misses

Everything outside Scotland. It is a national portal, not a UK one, and it is easy to assume Find a Tender covers Scotland fully when it only covers the higher value tier.

Sell2Wales

S2WDown at source since June 2026Sell2Wales's own data service has returned an error on every request since at least June 2026. We reported it and Sell2Wales has acknowledged the fault, but has no date for a fix. We still check it every weekday morning. Welsh tenders above the procurement thresholds still reach us through Find a Tender; smaller Welsh opportunities are missing until it is fixed. Live status

Geography: Wales
Value threshold: Regulated procurements and lower value opportunities

What it covers

Welsh local authorities, NHS Wales, Welsh Government, universities and housing associations, including smaller contracts aimed at Welsh suppliers.

What it misses

Everything outside Wales. Like PCS, it is frequently overlooked by suppliers who assume the UK wide portal is comprehensive.

Planned procurements and funding competitions

Two kinds of opportunity sit outside the tender notices themselves. Both are read every weekday and can go in the same morning email.

Planned procurements

Pipeline notices on Find a Tender: a public body saying what it plans to buy, roughly when the tender will be published, and by which procedure. Under the Procurement Act 2023, bodies expecting to spend more than £100 million a year publish their pipelines this way. They appear in the digest as “coming up”, separate from open tenders.

We also read the pipeline spreadsheets that Network Rail, HMRC, the Department for Transport, NHS Business Services Authority and the Government Commercial Agency publish on their own websites. Not covered: pipelines that other bodies publish only as spreadsheets.

Funding competitions and grants

Innovation Funding Service: Innovate UK's competitions and others it hosts
UK Defence Innovation: defence and security innovation competitions
Sovereign AI Fund: R&D procurement challenges, outside Find a Tender
GOV.UK: funding calls published by 13 government departments
Find a Grant: the government's list of open grant schemes
UKRI Funding Finder: research council and Innovate UK opportunities
EU Funding & Tenders Portal: Horizon Europe and other EU calls

See every open call on the funding hub

Not covered

What Tender Radar cannot see

No service sees everything. These are the gaps we know of.

The Defence Sourcing Portal: The Ministry of Defence's own tendering portal, where defence and security suppliers register and bid. Opportunities the MOD also publishes on Find a Tender or Contracts Finder are covered; anything advertised only on the portal is not.
Framework call-offs and mini-competitions: Work awarded under a framework or dynamic market is competed among the suppliers already on it, so it is rarely advertised. Where the award is published it reaches the award history and the renewal radar; the competition itself cannot be seen.
Exempt procurements: Contracts outside the Procurement Act 2023, such as research and development bought under the R&D exemption, are not advertised on the national portals. Tender Radar reads the R&D challenges it knows of (the Sovereign AI Fund's) but cannot see the rest.
Private sector and charity tenders: Only public bodies must publish their tenders. Work bought by companies and charities with their own money is out of scope.

Beyond live notices

The award history is where the forward view comes from

Live notices tell you what is open today. Award notices tell you what was bought, by whom, from whom, for how much, and until when. That last field is the valuable one, because a contract with a recorded end date is a re-tender with a date on it.

Tender Radar keeps that history rather than discarding it once a deadline passes. It is the difference between an alert service and an intelligence one.

What that history adds up to is published on the research page: how much work comes back to market in the next 18 months, by sector and by buyer, with the counting method and free downloads.

Award records held

487,000

Awarded by 11,000 buying organisations to 226,000 named suppliers. Almost every one carries an end date, and 61,000 of them fall within the next 18 months, which is what the renewal radar reads.

Award history is drawn from the portals that publish structured award data. Live notice monitoring covers all four portals.

Optional extras

Four more sources, switched on per radar

Beyond UK procurement, Tender Radar can also watch new company incorporations, EU and US public tenders, and research and grant funding. Each is off by default, because each is essential to one kind of organisation and noise to the rest.

What each extra feed covers →

Companies House: New incorporations by area and SIC
TED: EU and EEA public tenders
SAM.gov: US federal opportunities
Funding: Competitions, grants and research calls

Common questions

Which database should you actually watch

Is Find a Tender enough on its own?

For new procurements under the Procurement Act 2023 it now covers most of what you need: since 24 February 2025, contracts from £12,000 (central government) or £30,000 (other public bodies) are advertised there, not only the large ones. It is still not everything. Lower value Scottish contracts are on Public Contracts Scotland, Welsh opportunities on Sell2Wales, and procurements started under the old 2015 rules on Contracts Finder.

What is the difference between Find a Tender and Contracts Finder?

Find a Tender is the central digital platform where new UK procurements under the Procurement Act 2023 are published, at every notifiable value. Contracts Finder is the older service for England and central government: it carries procurements begun under the 2015 regulations before 24 February 2025, and there is no requirement to duplicate new notices on it.

Is Contracts Finder still used?

Yes, but less. Government guidance (PPN 019) keeps Contracts Finder for procurements begun under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 before 24 February 2025, including awards made under them, so notices still appear there. New procurements under the Procurement Act 2023 are published on Find a Tender. Tender Radar reads both, so you see either.

Do the portals duplicate each other?

Partly, and inconsistently. A high value Scottish contract may appear on both Public Contracts Scotland and Find a Tender, while a smaller one appears only on the former. Tender Radar de-duplicates across sources so the same opportunity does not reach you twice under two different reference numbers.

What about contracts that are never advertised?

Direct awards and call-offs from existing frameworks often involve no open competition at all. You cannot bid for those, but you can see them: they appear as award notices, which is how the renewal radar identifies who holds what and when it ends.

Do you cover EU and US opportunities?

They are available as optional extra feeds. Tenders Electronic Daily covers EU and EEA public procurement, and SAM.gov covers US federal opportunities. Both are switched off by default so they do not dilute a UK focused digest, and can be enabled per radar.

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