UK Find a Tender Alerts: New Public Contracts

Get new UK public contract notices by keyword, CPV code, buyer or region, as soon as they're published. Search Find a Tender (above-threshold contracts) and optionally Contracts Finder (the below-threshold SME market) — the UK government's own OCDS notice feeds. Turn on monitoring mode and run it on a schedule to get only the notices that are new since your last run, charged per notice and free on a quiet day.

Related actors: for EU/EEA above-threshold notices (TED, post-Brexit a different feed) use EU Tender Alerts. This actor is UK-only.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the keywords field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~uk-tender-alerts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"keywords":["construction"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

Input

{
  "keywords": [
    "construction"
  ]
}

One keyword or phrase per line, matched against the notice title and description. Combine with CPV codes, buyer names and regions below (optional). Leave empty to list recent UK notices without a keyword filter. Accepted formats: construction, IT services, "waste management".

One combined search runs per call. Keywords are matched against title and description; optional CPV codes are prefix-matched, buyer names are contains-matched, and regions are NUTS prefix-matched (UKI = London). Filters run after the fetch. At least the date window always applies — an empty keyword list still returns recent notices. The search run itself is free; you're billed per notice actually returned.

Output

One row per notice, for example:

query	found	status	searchSummary	noticeCount	truncated	monitorStatus	notices	source	ocid	noticeId	noticeType	title	description	buyerName	buyerRegion	cpvCodes	valueGbp	currency	publishedAt	deadline	procedureType	lotsCount	noticeUrl	isNew	firstSeenAt	scrapedAt
construction	true	OK					<all notices (full list)>							<buyer / contracting authority>	<buyer region (nuts)>		<value (gbp)>							<is this notice new?>		1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

A miss comes back as a row with "found": false and is never charged. valueGbp is null when the notice does not publish a value — never 0.

Pricing

• Tender notice returned: $3 per 1,000 notices

Plus a $0.00005 start fee per run. Each event above is billed independently, only when it actually returns data — misses (found:false) are never charged.

Example runs

Paste any of these into the Input tab and press Start. All three return rows with no key, no token and no account of your own beyond an Apify login.

UK construction tenders, last 7 days, Find a Tender. The default shape.

{
  "keywords": ["construction"],
  "noticeTypes": "tender",
  "sources": "findATender",
  "sinceDays": 7
}

London (NUTS UKI) public contracts over 100,000 GBP.

{
  "regions": ["UKI"],
  "minValueGbp": 100000,
  "sinceDays": 14,
  "noticeTypes": "tender"
}

IT and software tenders by CPV prefix, with monitoring on.

{
  "cpvCodes": ["72"],
  "noticeTypes": "tender",
  "sinceDays": 7,
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true
}

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~uk-tender-alerts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keywords":["construction"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~uk-tender-alerts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"keywords":["construction"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~uk-tender-alerts/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"keywords":["{{search}}"]}, mapping the row's search into the keywords array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "UK Find a Tender new contract alerts" — the agent will find and run this actor.