UK Tender Monitor: Public Sector Contracts to Bid On, and Who Won the Rest

Find UK public sector tenders on Contracts Finder by keyword, region, value or CPV code. You get the buyer, the estimated value, the bid deadline and the days left, and whether the buyer marked it suitable for SMEs. Once a contract is awarded, you also get the winning supplier and the price. After the first run, it flags new tenders, fresh awards and moved deadlines.

Built for bid teams and small suppliers who want the right UK tenders in their inbox instead of refreshing Contracts Finder every morning.

How it works

flowchart LR
    A["What you sell,<br/>region, value"] --> B["Contracts Finder API"]
    B --> C["Open tenders:<br/>deadline, value, SME"]
    B --> D["Awarded notices:<br/>winner and price"]
    C --> E["One row per notice,<br/>soonest deadline first"]
    D --> E
    E --> F{"Since last run?"}
    F -->|not seen| G["new-notice"]
    F -->|contract let| H["awarded"]
    F -->|date moved| I["deadline-changed"]

It doesn't scrape and doesn't need an API key. It reads the UK government's own Contracts Finder API. That API returns at most 1,000 notices per call and has no paging, so the Actor splits a busy date range into smaller windows and reads each one instead of quietly stopping at 1,000.

Built for

• SME suppliers who can't afford a bid team watching portals all day
• Bid and proposal managers building a pipeline of qualified tenders
• Sales teams selling to councils, NHS trusts and schools
• Competitor analysts tracking who wins which contracts, at what price
• Consultants who find public sector work for clients

Input

{
  "keywords": ["cyber security", "penetration testing"],
  "statuses": ["Open"],
  "regions": ["London", "South East"],
  "minValue": 50000,
  "smeOnly": true,
  "onlyChanged": true
}

Setting	What it does
keywords	What you sell. Each keyword runs its own search
statuses	Open to bid now, Awarded to see winners, or both
lastDays	How far back to look, by publish or update date
regions	UK regions. Notices open to any region are always kept
minValue	Skip contracts too small to be worth bidding on
smeOnly	Drop notices the buyer marked unsuitable for SMEs
cpvPrefixes	CPV codes, for example 72 for IT services
buyers	Only buyers whose name contains, for example, NHS
closingWithinDays	Only deadlines in the next N days
onlyChanged	Return nothing on a quiet run

Output

{
  "title": "RFQ2026/37 - Specialist Consultancy Team for a new Theatre and Conference facility in Newry City",
  "buyer": "Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (NMD)",
  "status": "Open",
  "valueHigh": 29000,
  "publishedDate": "2026-09-22",
  "deadlineDate": "2026-10-07",
  "daysUntilDeadline": 14,
  "contractStart": "2026-10-28",
  "contractEnd": "2027-01-28",
  "suitableForSme": true,
  "regions": ["Any region"],
  "postcode": "BT34 2QU",
  "cpvCodes": ["79411000", "79411100", "73220000"],
  "cpvDescription": "General management consultancy services and Business development consultancy services",
  "awardedSupplier": null,
  "url": "https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/dcd45ad1-0712-46b9-a2d0-cff416b72f09",
  "changeType": "new-notice",
  "checkedAt": "2026-09-23T18:17:34.886Z"
}

An awarded notice fills in the winner:

{
  "title": "Hillingdon PS HQ - M&E Works",
  "buyer": "METROPOLITAN POLICE SERVICE",
  "status": "Awarded",
  "awardedSupplier": "Overbury PLC",
  "awardedValue": 710527.65,
  "awardedDate": "2026-08-20"
}

Two ways to use it

Find work to bid on. Keep statuses on Open, add your keywords and schedule it daily with onlyChanged on. The first run records what's already open. Every run after that returns only new tenders and moved deadlines.

Watch the competition. Set statuses to Awarded and search your service line to see who's winning, which buyers they win with and at what price. Include both Open and Awarded to follow a tender from publication through to the award. It comes back as awarded the day the winner is published.

Run it as an API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/arched_friend~uk-tender-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "keywords": ["cleaning"],
    "statuses": ["Open"],
    "closingWithinDays": 21
  }'

Pricing

You pay $0.002 for each notice returned. A quiet run with onlyChanged on costs nothing.

Watching UK tenders daily	Monthly cost
Checking Contracts Finder by hand	20 to 30 minutes every day
Tender alert subscriptions	roughly £50 to £300 per month
This Actor	under $1 per month for most searches

Common questions

Does this cover Find a Tender? No. It covers Contracts Finder, the UK government's register for public contracts, which is strongest on lower value English contracts. Some larger tenders appear only on the separate Find a Tender service, and this Actor doesn't search it.

Why is a value null? The buyer didn't publish one. Contracts Finder stores a missing value as 0 and some buyers type £1 as a placeholder, so both come back as null rather than a fake price. minValue keeps those notices rather than hiding them.

Why do some results have an old publish date? The date window matches notices published or updated in the period, so an older tender that has just been awarded shows up. That's usually the update you want.

Do I need an API key? No. Contracts Finder's API is public.

Related products

• EU Tender Monitor for public contracts across the EU on TED
• Federal Contract Finder for US federal awards
• Grant Opportunity Finder for US federal grants
• Company Hiring Monitor to see which of your competitors are hiring after a big win