GuidesGovernment contracts
How to bid for UK government contracts in 2026
You can bid for UK government contracts without paying anyone. Registration is free, the notices are published as a legal duty, and the method below is the one every commercial platform automates rather than replaces. What it costs is attention, every working day, indefinitely — which is why the platforms exist, and why this guide names them rather than pretending they do not.
In one line: To bid for UK government contracts, register once on Find a Tender (the central digital platform since 24 February 2025), set free alerts there and on Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI, register on the buyer's e-procurement system named in any notice you intend to bid, and add a paid alert service or intelligence platform only once the volume outgrows what a saved search can triage.
Key takeaways
- Every above-threshold procurement, and every advertised contract worth £12,000 or more from UK central government or £30,000 or more from any other public body in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (including VAT), is published on Find a Tender. Scotland runs its own regime, so Scottish below-threshold work appears only on Public Contracts Scotland. Searching either costs nothing.
- Since 24 February 2025 a supplier registers once, on Find a Tender, and hands the same core details to every buyer with a share code. Most bidders still retype them tender by tender.
- The platforms that help fall into three kinds — official portals, alert aggregators and intelligence platforms — and they answer three different questions: what has been published, what did I miss, and what is coming.
- Finding the notice is the easy half. Deciding which contracts to bid, and which to leave to the incumbent, is where the cost sits, and no portal, alert feed or bid-writing tool does it for you.
The free method, end to end
Eight steps. The first six take an afternoon to set up once. The last two are the ongoing work, and they are the reason most bidders eventually either automate or quietly stop.
1. Define what you are actually looking for
Before touching a portal, write down four things: the CPV codes that describe what you sell, the buyer types you can credibly serve, the contract value band you can deliver and be insured for, and the geography you will travel to. Most bad search results come from skipping this and searching for a product name.
Look at three or four awards you would have wanted to win and note the CPV codes the buyers actually used. That is a better starting list than the CPV taxonomy itself, because it reflects how buyers code in practice rather than how the codes are defined.
2. Register once on the central digital platform
Find a Tender has been the central digital platform for UK public procurement since 24 February 2025. Register your organisation there, free, and enter the core information every buyer asks for: legal name and address, Companies House or charity number, VAT number, the most recent accounts, connected persons, and any exclusion grounds. Find a Tender then issues a share code, which you submit with each bid instead of retyping the same details on each buyer's system.
Do this before you look for a contract, not after you find one. Buyers running a procurement under the Procurement Act 2023 expect the share code, and the information behind it is the part of a bid that should never be written twice.
3. Set up saved searches on Find a Tender and Contracts Finder
Build one saved search per CPV cluster on each service rather than one search containing everything. Separate searches are easier to tune, and a search that returns nothing for a fortnight is a signal you can act on when it is not buried among others. Find a Tender carries procurements run under the Act; Contracts Finder carries those advertised under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, which is still most of the award history.
Set both to email you daily. Weekly digests are comfortable and they cost you clarification deadlines, which typically fall in the first third of a tender period. For 2026 the thresholds that decide whether a procurement is fully regulated are £135,018 including VAT for central government goods and services, £207,720 for other public bodies, and £5,193,000 for works.
4. Add the devolved portals
Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI each need their own registration and their own saved searches. Higher-value devolved notices also reach Find a Tender, but Scotland sits outside the Procurement Act 2023 altogether, so every Scottish below-threshold notice, from Quick Quotes upward, appears only on Public Contracts Scotland, and Welsh supplier-finder listings appear only on Sell2Wales.
If you can deliver across the UK and you have only registered on the UK-wide services, this single step usually widens the visible market more than any paid tool would.
5. Register where the documents live
The notice is an advertisement. The specification, the clarification log and the submission sit on the buyer's e-procurement system — In-tend, Proactis, Jaggaer, Atamis, Delta eSourcing or a regional equivalent. Each needs its own account, and some take a working day to verify.
Register with the buyers you want to work with before an opportunity appears, not on the day you find one. Several systems also let suppliers express interest in categories, which occasionally surfaces low-value work never advertised nationally.
6. Build the materials every buyer will ask for
Above the threshold, buyers may set conditions of participation — legal, financial and technical tests you must pass before your tender is scored — and most ask for the same things: two years of accounts, insurance certificates, a health and safety policy, an equality policy, a data protection policy, an environmental policy, and two or three references from contracts of similar size in the last three years. Central government contracts that touch personal data usually require Cyber Essentials; certified management systems such as ISO 9001 are asked for 'or equivalent', which means a documented process will often do.
Write these once, date them, and keep them in one folder. Below the threshold there is normally no pre-qualification stage: section 85 of the Act stops a buyer using a suitability test to restrict who may submit a tender, though it can still weigh your capacity and track record inside the tender evaluation, and the bar does not apply to works contracts above the goods and services threshold, to call-offs under a framework, or to devolved Welsh authorities. Central government departments also weight social value at a minimum of 10% of the score, so treat it as a scored section rather than a paragraph at the end.
7. Look earlier than the tender
By the time a contract notice publishes, the requirement is written, the budget is approved and the buyer has usually spoken to somebody. The published signals that appear earlier are pipeline notices from higher-spending authorities, planned procurement notices for specific upcoming procurements, preliminary market engagement notices, and the end dates recorded on contracts already awarded.
The last of those is the largest and the least used: every contract that expires is a procurement that has to happen unless the service is stopping. Reading contract details notices across a sector gives a forward view that no alert feed provides.
8. Filter honestly, and expect to say no
A well-built set of searches on a normal sector returns far more than any SME can bid. The discipline that matters is not finding more, it is discarding faster — against incumbency, against the evaluation weighting, and against whether you have a credible story for the buyer's actual problem.
A bid you lose costs several days you cannot bill. Deciding early and honestly that a contest belongs to somebody else is the highest-return habit in public sector bidding, and it is the part no portal or alert tool will do for you.
The platforms that help with UK government contract bidding, one by one
Sixteen entries in four kinds, in the order a bidder meets them. Official portals are where notices are published, and they are free. Buyer-side e-procurement systems are where the documents and the submission live. Alert aggregators republish the notices in one feed. Intelligence platforms join the notices to award history and contract end dates, so a recompete is visible even where the buyer has published no pipeline or planned procurement notice ahead of it. Bid-writing tools start where all of these stop.
- Find a Tender
- Contracts Finder
- Public Contracts Scotland
- Sell2Wales
- eTendersNI
- Digital Marketplace
- Buyer-side e-procurement systems (In-tend, Proactis, Jaggaer, Atamis, Delta eSourcing)
- Tenders Direct
- Supply2Gov
- BidStats
- Tracker Intelligence
- PSIP
- Tussell
- Stotles
- Skim
- Bid-writing tools (AutogenAI, mytender.io, Loopio)
1.Find a Tender
What it covers: The central digital platform since 24 February 2025: every notice for a procurement run under the Procurement Act 2023, from pipeline and planned procurement notices through tender, award and contract details notices, above threshold and for advertised contracts of £12,000 or more (UK central government) or £30,000 or more (any other authority in England, Wales and Northern Ireland). Free registration, saved searches, daily alerts and the share code you submit with each bid.
Where it stops: Procurements started under the 2015 regulations are not here, and most contracts running today were awarded under those rules. Nor are Scottish below-threshold notices, which stay on Public Contracts Scotland. The notice is an advertisement; the specification and the submission live on the buyer's own system.
2.Contracts Finder
What it covers: The record of procurements advertised under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 in England and by non-devolved bodies: live opportunities still running under that regime, and the largest free archive of award notices in the UK, which makes it the best free source for who holds what today.
Where it stops: New procurements go to Find a Tender, so its live opportunities thin out each year. Nothing on it tells you whether a notice is a formality with a favoured incumbent.
3.Public Contracts Scotland
What it covers: Every Scottish public body — Scottish Government, the 32 councils, NHS Scotland, universities and colleges — at all values, including Quick Quote invitations for low-value work, which go only to suppliers registered on the portal.
Where it stops: Scotland only. Higher-value Scottish notices also reach Find a Tender; Quick Quotes never do.
4.Sell2Wales
What it covers: Welsh Government, the 22 local authorities, NHS Wales and the housing associations: contract notices, awards and prior information notices, plus a supplier finder buyers use for sub-threshold quotes.
Where it stops: Wales only, and the supplier finder only works for suppliers who have registered on it.
5.eTendersNI
What it covers: Northern Ireland Executive departments, the 11 councils and the health and social care trusts, at all values.
Where it stops: Northern Ireland only. The Housing Executive runs its own eSourcing NI system, covered in the portals guide.
6.Digital Marketplace
What it covers: The Crown Commercial Service route for cloud software and digital services: G-Cloud and Digital Outcomes. Buyers search G-Cloud listings and award directly; Digital Outcomes opportunities are published to listed suppliers only.
Where it stops: A framework, not a portal. Applications open in a window each iteration and close for years between; a listing makes you findable, it does not bring a contract.
7.Buyer-side e-procurement systems (In-tend, Proactis, Jaggaer, Atamis, Delta eSourcing)
What it covers: Where the specification, the clarification log and the submission actually live. Councils and housing associations cluster on Proactis (ProContract, YORtender, the NEPO and London Tenders portals); NHS trusts and universities on In-tend, Jaggaer and Atamis; many central bodies on Delta eSourcing. Each needs its own account.
Where it stops: None of them finds contracts for you. Register with the buyers you want before an opportunity appears; verification can take a working day, and the deadline will not wait.
8.Tenders Direct
What it covers: A paid alert service from the BiP group: UK and Irish notices categorised by its own team, one daily email filtered to your profile, and advance alerts for framework and dynamic market renewals ahead of the notice.
Where it stops: Alert-shaped: it tells you a notice has published, not whether it is worth your week or what the buyer will do next quarter.
9.Supply2Gov
What it covers: A low-cost alert tool for smaller suppliers: a free tier limited to one local authority area, paid tiers priced by geography, and the local council and housing association notices that national searches bury.
Where it stops: It republishes what the official portals already carry. The value is one login and one email instead of five; the notices are the same.
10.BidStats
What it covers: A searchable index of Contracts Finder and Find a Tender notices and awards, free to use, and the quickest free answer to who won what, when, and for how much.
Where it stops: Search-shaped. It reformats the public record and stops there; the judgement about which contracts are winnable is yours.
11.Tracker Intelligence
What it covers: Live tenders, frameworks, award data, spend analytics and buyer profiles in one subscription, with re-tender alerts. Strongest on central government, where it claims the widest coverage of any UK service.
Where it stops: Priced for bid teams. A founder bidding four times a year will pay for a database and read a fraction of it.
12.PSIP
What it covers: The five national portals aggregated daily from the official APIs into one database, with a contract expiry tracker and a qualification score against each notice. A 14-day trial without a card.
Where it stops: UK only, and the score is a filter, not a strategy: it ranks the notices, it does not tell you how to beat the incumbent on the one you pick.
13.Tussell
What it covers: Market intelligence on UK public spend: who buys what from whom, awards and frameworks, buyer and competitor profiles, and an early-opportunities feed that reads council minutes and policy papers for buying signals before any notice exists.
Where it stops: Intelligence-first and priced for it. It describes the market with more precision than anyone; it does not read your tender pack or tell you whether the bid is worth writing.
14.Stotles
What it covers: Every UK portal in one feed, contract expiry tracking with a stated 18-month horizon, decision-maker contacts, AI bid qualification and first-draft writing, with a free tier to start on.
Where it stops: General-purpose across every sector and buyer type. The forward view is there; the call on which of the fifty matches is yours to win still sits with you.
15.Skim
What it covers: Every UK and EU portal read hourly, each notice scored against what you have won and lost before, and contract end dates and pipeline notices turned into a forward view of recompetes months ahead of the notice. Weekly 1-on-1 strategy from a bid team that has won £3bn+ of public contracts sits on top of the software. From £199 a month.
Where it stops: Paid, and built for SMEs that bid often enough to need triage. If your whole market is one sector in one region, the free method above is sufficient and Skim will say so.
16.Bid-writing tools (AutogenAI, mytender.io, Loopio)
What it covers: Draft the response from a content library once the bid/no-bid call is made: AutogenAI and Loopio for enterprise bid teams, mytender.io for smaller UK bid functions. Useful at volume, where the same policies and case studies are rewritten for every submission.
Where it stops: They start where this guide ends. None finds the contract, none tells you whether to bid it, and a fluent draft of the wrong bid loses as surely as a poor one.
Three kinds of platform, and the question each one answers
The underlying notices are identical in every case. What differs is which question the platform answers: what has been published, what did I miss, or what is coming.
| Approach | What it does well | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Official portalsFind a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTendersNI, Digital Marketplace | Free, complete for what each one covers, and authoritative. For a single sector in a single region, this is genuinely sufficient. | Five accounts, five taxonomies, and no view of the contracts already in place. Nothing warns you that a notice is a formality with a favoured incumbent. |
| Alert aggregatorsTenders Direct, Supply2Gov, BidStats | One feed across every portal, filtered by keyword and CPV. Some add human checking, which catches notices the buyer mis-coded. | Alert-shaped. They tell you something published; they do not tell you whether it is worth your week, or what is coming next quarter. |
| Intelligence platformsTussell, Stotles, Tracker Intelligence, PSIP, Skim | Join notices to award history, contract end dates and buyer behaviour, so triage happens against evidence rather than a title and a CPV code, and a recompete appears before its notice does. | Paid. If you bid rarely, against buyers you know well, the free method plus your own judgement will outperform a subscription you do not read. |
Where Skim fits
Skim runs the whole of the method above continuously: every UK and EU portal read hourly, every notice matched against what you have won and lost before, and each opportunity scored for fit rather than listed by date.
It also covers step seven, which is the one bidders skip. Contract end dates, pipeline notices and buyer award patterns feed a forward view, so a recompete appears months before its notice does — and the bid team on the other end of the weekly call tells you whether it is yours to win.
The honest position: steps one to six are free and take an afternoon. If that is your whole market, do that. Skim is worth paying for when the volume is past triage by hand, or when you need the earlier view that alerts structurally cannot give you.
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
Common questions
Which platforms help businesses bid for government contracts in the UK?
Three kinds. The official portals — Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI — are where notices are published, and they are free. Alert aggregators such as Tenders Direct, Supply2Gov and BidStats republish those notices in one feed. Intelligence platforms such as Tussell, Stotles, Tracker Intelligence, PSIP and Skim join the notices to award history and contract end dates, so you see a procurement before it is advertised. The bid itself is submitted on the buyer's own e-procurement system — In-tend, Proactis, Jaggaer, Atamis or Delta eSourcing — which no supplier platform replaces.
How do I find UK government contracts for free?
Register on Find a Tender and Contracts Finder, plus Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI if you can serve the devolved nations. Build saved searches by CPV code and set them to email daily. All of it is free, because contracting authorities publish these notices as a legal duty.
How do I register as a government supplier in the UK?
Register on Find a Tender, the central digital platform, which is free. Enter your organisation's core information once — legal name and address, Companies House or charity number, VAT number, recent accounts, connected persons and any exclusion grounds — and Find a Tender issues a share code. You submit that code with each bid under the Procurement Act 2023 instead of retyping the details on every buyer's system. The devolved portals and each buyer's e-procurement system still need their own accounts.
What is the difference between Find a Tender and Contracts Finder?
Find a Tender is where notices for procurements started under the Procurement Act 2023 are published, via the central digital platform. Contracts Finder holds the record of procurements advertised under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, including below-threshold opportunities under that regime. Since most contracts running today were awarded under the older rules, Contracts Finder remains the richer source for award history.
How big does a contract have to be before it is advertised?
For 2026 the thresholds above which a procurement is fully regulated under the Procurement Act 2023 are £135,018 including VAT for central government goods and services, £207,720 for other public bodies, and £5,193,000 for works; Wales applies the same figures to its devolved bodies. Below those, a contract worth £12,000 or more from UK central government, or £30,000 or more from any other authority in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, must be advertised on Find a Tender if the buyer advertises it at all, and its award must be published. Below those floors the buyer can simply pick a supplier. Scotland is outside the Act: Scottish public bodies publish on Public Contracts Scotland at every value, and only their above-threshold notices also reach Find a Tender.
Which CPV codes should I use?
Start from evidence rather than the taxonomy. Find three or four contracts you would have wanted to win, look at the CPV codes the buyers actually applied, and search on those. Buyers code loosely, so keep the codes deliberately broad and do the narrowing yourself — a precise code silently hides mis-coded notices.
Can I see UK government contracts before they are advertised?
Partly. Pipeline notices from higher-spending authorities set out contracts expected over the coming 18 months, planned procurement notices flag specific upcoming procurements, and preliminary market engagement notices announce that a buyer is talking to the market. Beyond those, the end dates on contracts already awarded show which procurements must happen, even where nothing forward-looking has been published.
Do I need a paid platform to win government contracts?
Not to find them — every national portal offers free alerts covering its own notices, and registration is free. A paid platform earns its cost in three situations: you are monitoring more portals than you can read, mis-coded notices are costing you opportunities, or you need award history and contract end dates joined up so a recompete is visible before it is advertised. If you bid a handful of times a year against buyers you know, the free method will outperform a subscription you do not read.
What is the difference between Tussell, Stotles and Tracker Intelligence?
All three are paid intelligence platforms built on the same public notices. Tussell is market intelligence first — spend, awards, buyer and competitor profiles, and early buying signals from council and policy papers — and is priced for that. Stotles is a full-lifecycle tool — one feed across every UK portal, contract expiry tracking, buyer contacts, AI qualification and drafting — with a free tier. Tracker Intelligence combines live tenders, frameworks, award data and spend analytics, is strongest on central government, and is priced for bid teams. Skim sits in the same tier and adds the part none of them sells: weekly 1-on-1 strategy from a bid team, so the software's forward view comes with a judgement about which contracts are yours to win.
Sources
- Find a Tender
- Contracts Finder
- Central digital platform — factsheet (Procurement Act 2023 short guides)
- The Procurement Act 2023: a short guide for suppliers
- Thresholds — Procurement Act 2023 guidance
- Below-threshold contracts — Procurement Act 2023 guidance
- WPPN 017: new thresholds — Welsh Government
- Public Contracts Scotland
- Sell2Wales
- eTendersNI
- Digital Marketplace
Thresholds, notice requirements and portal addresses change. Check the primary sources above before relying on a figure. Last reviewed 22 September 2026.
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