Skim vs Contracts Finder
Contracts Finder publishes the opportunities. Skim tells you which ones to chase.
In one line: Contracts Finder is the UK government's free, official portal for below-threshold public sector tender notices; Skim is an AI-native bid platform that reads Contracts Finder (plus Find a Tender, TED and 10,000+ portals), ranks notices against your win profile and drafts the response. For verifying a notice, use Contracts Finder; to find and win the few worth chasing, use Skim.
What Contracts Finder is
Contracts Finder is the UK government’s official portal for below-threshold public sector tender opportunities (typically under the EU procurement threshold). It is operated by the Cabinet Office and publishes contract notices and award notices from UK central government and many wider public sector buyers.
It is free to use and an authoritative source for the bulk of the SME-addressable UK opportunity flow. It is a publication platform, not a workflow tool: no fit scoring, no draft response writing, no buyer intelligence, no competitor analytics.
What Skim is
Skim reads Contracts Finder hourly, alongside Find a Tender Service, TED, and 10,000+ other UK and EU procurement portals. Every notice is ranked against your win profile; the bottom 90% filters out so the four notices a week worth your team’s time surface on their own.
When one of those notices is worth pursuing, Skim does the rest — reads the full pack, scores fit in three minutes, drafts the response against the published evaluation criteria, and gives you the buyer history and incumbent picture before you start writing.
How they compare, attribute by attribute
Stated from the public information each platform publishes about itself. If anything here is out of date or wrong, email justin@justskim.ai and we will fix it.
| Attribute | Contracts Finder | Skim |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Government below-threshold tender portal (official) | AI-native bid platform that reads Contracts Finder for you |
| Cost | Free | Free Skim Advisor agent (waitlist), then from £199/mo (Starter) |
| Coverage | UK below-threshold notices | Contracts Finder + FTS + TED + 10,000+ portals across UK and EU |
| Fit scoring against your win profile | None — you read every notice yourself | Every notice ranked; only the relevant few reach you |
| Bid/no-bid decision support | None | 3-minute decision from the full tender pack |
| Renewal forecasting | None — notices appear only when published | Renewal windows surfaced months ahead from 20 years of award patterns |
| Bid response drafting | None | AI drafts response against published evaluation criteria |
| Expert human layer | None | Quarterly pipeline review with a dedicated AM (Growth tier+), or dedicated bid support team (Enterprise) |
| Best for | Bidders verifying a specific UK below-threshold notice | SMEs who don't have time to read Contracts Finder daily to find the few opportunities worth pursuing |
Use Contracts Finder for what it’s for
Contracts Finder is the source of truth for below-threshold UK opportunities. Use it to verify a notice, confirm the contracting authority, or check the official wording. Skim links straight back to the Contracts Finder record on every relevant notice so you can always jump to the source.
What Skim does that reading Contracts Finder directly doesn’t
- Hundreds of below-threshold notices are published per week across UK central and wider public sector. Skim shortlists the ones that fit your business.
- Contracts Finder doesn’t tell you whether you can win the bid. Skim does — against your accreditations, your turnover bracket, your past wins, and the buyer’s award patterns.
- Contracts Finder shows the current notice. Skim models the next twelve months from twenty years of award data.
- Contracts Finder is the notice. Skim is the notice plus the bid draft alongside it.
Do you still need Contracts Finder if you use Skim?
Yes — for verification and audit. Treat it as the official record. What Skim replaces is the daily manual scan to find the opportunities worth pursuing. That is the work the agent does for you in the background, with twenty years of award data to ground the recommendations.
The Skim agents that close this gap
Each Skim agent handles a part of the bid lifecycle. These are the ones most relevant to the comparison above.
Frequently asked questions
Skim vs Contracts Finder: common questions
Is Skim or Contracts Finder better for SME bidders?
They do different jobs. Contracts Finder is the free, authoritative source for below-threshold UK notices, and every SME should know about it. Skim reads it for you, ranks every notice against your win profile so only the relevant few reach you, and then scores fit and drafts the response. For finding the opportunities worth your time, Skim removes more manual work.
Can you use Skim and Contracts Finder together?
Yes, and you should. Treat Contracts Finder as the official record for verification and audit; Skim links straight back to the Contracts Finder entry on every relevant notice so you can jump to the source. What Skim replaces is the daily manual scan to find the few below-threshold opportunities worth pursuing.
What does Skim do that Contracts Finder does not?
Contracts Finder publishes the notice and nothing more: no fit scoring, no draft response, no buyer intelligence, no competitor analytics. Skim shortlists the notices that fit your accreditations, turnover and past wins, makes a three-minute bid/no-bid call from the full pack, drafts against the evaluation criteria, and forecasts renewals from 20 years of award data.
How much does Skim cost compared with Contracts Finder?
Contracts Finder is free, because it is a government publication platform rather than a workflow tool. Skim's Skim Advisor agent is also free in beta via waitlist, then plans start from £199/mo (Starter). You are paying Skim for the work Contracts Finder does not do: finding, scoring and drafting the bids worth pursuing.
See whether Skim is the right move from Contracts Finder.
15-minute call. We run your real pipeline through Skim and you decide if the upgrade is worth it.