Pakistan EPADS & PPRA Tender Notices Scraper

An Apify Actor for collecting public procurement opportunities across Pakistan into one normalized dataset. It covers Federal EPADS/PPRA, all four provinces, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, while isolating portal failures so one unavailable authority does not stop the run.

This project is independent and is not affiliated with PPRA, EPADS, or any government authority. It reads public pages only; it does not log in, save notices, express interest, or submit bids.

Coverage

Jurisdiction	Public source	Adapter
Federal	EPADS 2.0 open opportunities	Dedicated EPADS table and embedded SBD-document extraction
Federal	PPRA EPMS active tenders	Dedicated paginated table extractor
Punjab	Punjab active tenders	Header-mapped legacy portal extractor
Sindh	Sindh PPMS notices	Header-mapped PPMS extractor
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa	KP PPRA active tenders	Header-mapped active-tender extractor
Balochistan	BPPRA tender search linked by the provincial gateway, legacy BPPRA, and Government tender fallback	Primary/fallback generic adapters
Gilgit-Baltistan	GB PPRA procurements	Dedicated card and document extractor
Azad Jammu and Kashmir	AJK PPRA advertisements	Header-mapped advertisement extractor

Punjab, Sindh, and KP also have newer EPADS sign-in frontends. The Actor deliberately uses their public tender listings because authenticated pages are outside its scope. Provincial sites are sometimes slow or return 5xx/406 responses to cloud traffic; retries, optional Apify proxy configuration, and per-source status reporting are built in.

What it extracts

• Tender ID and buyer reference
• Title, description, buyer, jurisdiction, source, and city
• Notice type, procurement category, sector, procedure, and status
• Publication date, deadline, normalized ISO timestamps, and remaining hours/days
• Bid security and bid validity when shown
• Public contact name, email, and phone
• Public advertisements, bidding documents, corrigenda, PDFs, and embedded EPADS SBD links
• Detail and supplier/submission portal links
• Matched keywords, relevance score, and new/updated state for monitoring runs

Example input

{
  "sources": ["federal", "punjab", "sindh", "khyber_pakhtunkhwa", "balochistan", "gilgit_baltistan", "ajk"],
  "keywords": ["tool kit", "livelihood kit", "NFI", "furniture", "printing", "stationery", "Pakistan Army", "Ministry of Defence"],
  "reference": "",
  "description": "",
  "cities": ["Lahore", "Rawalpindi", "Islamabad", "Peshawar", "Karachi", "Quetta"],
  "activeOnly": true,
  "minimumRemainingHours": 48,
  "includeDetails": true,
  "includeDocumentLinks": true,
  "onlyNew": true,
  "stateStoreName": "pakistan-daily-bid-monitor",
  "maxItems": 200,
  "maxPagesPerSource": 50,
  "maxDetailPages": 300,
  "sortField": "Relevance",
  "sortAscending": false
}

minimumRemainingHours: 48 implements an automatic no-bid screen for opportunities with less than two days left, when a deadline is available. Unknown deadlines are retained rather than silently discarded.

Example output

{
  "noticeId": "TS0000010847E",
  "reference": "4615/IT-7860/26-27/MTI/FOR-B/SCM",
  "title": "Procurement of Tools and Store Items for MTI",
  "buyer": "Ministry of Defence Production",
  "jurisdiction": "Federal",
  "source": "federal_ppra_epms",
  "sources": ["federal_ppra_epms"],
  "noticeType": "Tender Notice",
  "category": "Equipments",
  "status": "Published",
  "publishedDateIso": "2026-08-04T00:00:00.000+05:00",
  "deadlineIso": "2026-09-01T10:30:00.000+05:00",
  "remainingHours": 645.5,
  "remainingDays": 26.9,
  "documentLinks": [],
  "detailUrl": "https://epms.ppra.gov.pk/public/tenders/tender-details/TS0000010847E",
  "matchedKeywords": ["tool kit"],
  "matchScore": 31,
  "changeType": "new",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-05T07:00:00.000Z"
}

How the crawl works

1. Listing pages are read first across every selected jurisdiction.
2. Dates are normalized in Asia/Karachi; obviously inactive or out-of-window notices are removed.
3. Records are deduplicated within a portal and across overlapping Federal sources.
4. The best candidates are opened for public documents and detail fields, within maxDetailPages.
5. Full text/buyer/type/category filters are applied, records are scored, and maxItems is enforced.
6. With onlyNew: true, a named key-value store emits a record again only if it is new or its title, deadline, status, publication date, or document set changed.

The two-stage design avoids opening hundreds of detail pages that cannot pass date or status rules. When a keyword exists only in a long detail description, set a sufficiently high maxDetailPages to search it.

Input reference

Option	Purpose
sources	Any of federal, punjab, sindh, khyber_pakhtunkhwa, balochistan, gilgit_baltistan, ajk
keywords / matchAllKeywords	Phrase matching across normalized tender text
reference	Partial or exact portal ID, tender number, inquiry number, or buyer reference
description	Required phrase in the long description; use with includeDetails: true
excludeKeywords	Reject notices containing any excluded phrase
organizations	Partial buyer/organization names
cities	Partial city or location names
noticeTypes / categories	Partial normalized type/category filters
activeOnly	Remove explicit closed/cancelled/archived/withdrawn notices and past deadlines
publishedWithinHours	Relative new-notice window; 24 is useful for daily runs
publishedFrom, publishedTo	Inclusive YYYY-MM-DD publication window
deadlineFrom, deadlineTo	Inclusive YYYY-MM-DD deadline window
minimumRemainingHours	Deadline feasibility guardrail; use 48 for a two-day cutoff
includeDetails	Extract long descriptions, contacts, security, validity, and procedure
includeDocumentLinks	Collect public documents and embedded SBD links
maxItems	Maximum records saved after filtering
maxPagesPerSource	Listing pagination safety limit per portal
maxDetailPages	Cross-portal detail request/cost guardrail
sortField / sortAscending	Sort by relevance, deadline, publication date, title, or reference
onlyNew / stateStoreName	Stateful scheduled monitoring and independent monitor identity
proxyConfiguration	Optional Apify proxy configuration for difficult provincial portals

Deploy to Apify

From the project directory:

npm install
npm test
apify login
apify push

The Actor uses the official Playwright/Chrome base image declared in .actor/Dockerfile. The input, dataset views, and output summary are defined under .actor/ and appear automatically in the Apify Console.

For local fixture verification:

$npm test

For a non-browser check against the stable, publicly reachable Federal, GB, and Balochistan-fallback layouts:

$npm run smoke

API usage

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('YOUR_USERNAME/pakistan-epad-tender-notices-scraper').call({
    keywords: ['tool kit', 'furniture', 'printing'],
    activeOnly: true,
    minimumRemainingHours: 48,
    includeDetails: true,
    includeDocumentLinks: true,
    maxItems: 100,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('YOUR_USERNAME/pakistan-epad-tender-notices-scraper').call(run_input={
    'keywords': ['tool kit', 'furniture', 'printing'],
    'activeOnly': True,
    'minimumRemainingHours': 48,
    'includeDetails': True,
    'maxItems': 100,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

cURL

curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~pakistan-epad-tender-notices-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"keywords":["tool kit","furniture"],"activeOnly":true,"minimumRemainingHours":48,"maxItems":100}'

Scheduling and integrations

Create a daily Apify schedule with onlyNew: true, a stable stateStoreName, and a focused keyword list. Dataset items can then feed Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, email/Slack alerts, a CRM, a bid-triage dashboard, or a webhook. Keep separate state-store names for independent teams or search profiles.

Data quality and maintenance

• Dates are retained in their original portal text and also normalized. Relative EPADS deadlines are resolved at run time in Pakistan Standard Time.
• A missing public field is returned as null; the Actor does not invent bid requirements.
• Some authorities publish only a scanned PDF. The Actor returns the document link but does not OCR the document in version 0.1.0.
• Legacy portals occasionally reject data-center traffic or go offline. Review the OUTPUT summary: each source is marked ok, empty, partial, or failed, with warnings and counts.
• Government portals can change without notice. Run npm run smoke after deployment updates and keep the fixture suite when adjusting selectors.

Responsible use

Use a modest schedule, narrow searches where possible, and respect portal terms, robots instructions, copyright, and applicable procurement rules. Download public document batches only when needed. This Actor does not bypass authentication, CAPTCHA, or access controls.