UK Find a Tender Scraper: High-Value Public Contracts

Returns UK high-value public tenders, contract awards and planning notices from the official Find a Tender API as flat JSON, with lots, buyer contacts, CPV codes, values, deadlines and winning suppliers, for bid teams, B2B sales and analysts who track large public contracts.

Use cases

• Bid teams: get a daily list of new above-threshold tenders that match your services by keyword, CPV code and value band, with lot counts and deadlines.
• B2B sales: find public buyers that spend in your category, using buyer name, locality and CPV code, then contact them through the procurement contact published on the notice.
• Competitor intelligence: track which suppliers win large contracts in your sector, with award dates and, where published, award values.
• Merged public-contract feeds: load this Actor together with the UK Contracts Finder Scraper into one table, since the two use the same field names.
• Market analysts: count lots and legal basis (lotCount, legalBasis) to see how large contracts are split and under which procurement rules.

Sample output

Title	Buyer	Value (GBP)	CPV code	Lots	Deadline
The Provision of Investment Management Services for the Scottish Universities Fund Ignition Strategy	Scottish National Investment Bank	6500000	66100000	1	2026-11-10
Experts at Hand: Occupational Therapy, Inclusion and Participation Services	Norfolk County Council	not published	85323000	1	2026-11-13
Out of Home Advertising for Bus Stations and Shelters	Strathclyde Partnership for Transport	10000000	79340000	1	2026-11-13

One item as JSON, from a live run (the description is shortened here):

{
    "id": "ocds-h6vhtk-0784ff",
    "noticeId": "095775-2026",
    "releaseId": "095775-2026",
    "stage": "tender",
    "title": "The Provision of Investment Management Services for the Scottish Universities Fund Ignition Strategy",
    "description": "The Bank is seeking proposals from suitably qualified and authorised investment management firms to establish and manage a 15 million GBP segregated investment …",
    "status": "active",
    "buyerName": "Scottish National Investment Bank",
    "buyerId": "GB-FTS-12628",
    "buyerLocality": "Edinburgh",
    "buyerPostalCode": "EH1 3EG",
    "buyerCountry": "United Kingdom",
    "contactName": null,
    "contactEmail": "procurement@thebank.scot",
    "contactPhone": null,
    "procurementMethod": "Open procedure",
    "mainCategory": "services",
    "cpvCode": "66100000",
    "cpvDescription": "Banking and investment services",
    "additionalCpvCodes": ["66100000"],
    "valueAmount": 6500000,
    "valueCurrency": "GBP",
    "publishedAt": "2026-10-09T14:37:16.000Z",
    "deadline": "2026-11-10T12:00:00.000Z",
    "contractStart": null,
    "contractEnd": null,
    "smeSuitable": null,
    "vcseSuitable": null,
    "deliveryPostalCode": null,
    "awardedSuppliers": [],
    "awardValue": null,
    "awardDate": null,
    "noticeUrl": "https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/095775-2026",
    "sourceUrl": "https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/095775-2026",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-11T01:08:23.742Z",
    "lotCount": 1,
    "legalBasis": "32014L0024",
    "submissionUrl": "http://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/"
}

Pricing

$2.80 per 1,000 results. A 500-result run costs about $1.40. You pay only for results saved to your dataset, plus Apify's standard start fee of $0.00005 per run. Apify Silver and Gold plan users get lower per-result prices automatically.

Set Max results to cap what a run can cost. The Actor stops cleanly when it reaches your spending limit.

Input

See the input tab for the full configuration. The fields are:

Field	Type	Description
stages	array	Notice stages: tender (open opportunities, default), award (contract awards) or planning (early market engagement).
updatedFrom	string	First update date, YYYY-MM-DD. The API filters on when a notice was last updated. Dates are interpreted in UTC. Empty means 7 days before the run.
updatedTo	string	Last update date, YYYY-MM-DD, included in full. Dates are interpreted in UTC. Empty means the time of the run.
keywords	array	Keep notices whose title or description contains any of these words, case-insensitive.
cpvPrefixes	array	Keep notices whose main or additional CPV code starts with any of these digits, for example 72 for IT services.
minValue	integer	Keep notices worth at least this many pounds. Notices with no published value are dropped when a value filter is set.
maxValue	integer	Keep notices worth at most this many pounds. Notices with no published value are dropped when a value filter is set.
onlyOpen	boolean	Tender notices only: keep status active with a deadline in the future.
maxItems	integer	Maximum number of results to return, from 1 to 100,000. Default 100.
proxyConfiguration	object	Off by default. The API is open, so you normally do not need a proxy.

Filters run after the data is read. Notices that a filter removes are not saved and not charged.

Example input (the daily test):

{
    "stages": ["tender"],
    "maxItems": 20
}

Example input for open software tenders worth at least £50,000 updated since 1 September 2026:

{
    "stages": ["tender"],
    "keywords": ["software"],
    "minValue": 50000,
    "onlyOpen": true,
    "updatedFrom": "2026-09-01",
    "maxItems": 100
}

Integrations

• API: run the Actor and fetch results with the Apify API or the JavaScript and Python clients.
• AI agents: call it as a tool through the Apify MCP server.
• No-code: connect it to Make, Zapier or n8n, or export results straight to Google Sheets.
• Scheduling: run it daily with Apify Schedules. Each run reads the last 7 days by default, so you get only recent notices.

FAQ

What are the limits? Each API page holds up to 100 notices, and a run reads pages until it reaches Max results or runs out of notices. In a 1,000-result test the Actor made 10 requests with no failures. The Find a Tender developer page does not publish a rate limit. If the API returns HTTP 429, the Actor waits for the time the API gives and then retries. Filters are applied after the read, so a narrow filter over a long date range reads more pages and takes longer.

Why does a procurement appear more than once? One procurement (id, the OCDS ID) can have more than one notice, for example a tender and its later update. In a 1,000-result test there were 989 distinct procurements, and every releaseId was unique. Use releaseId or noticeId to count notices once each.

Why are the SME and VCSE flags empty? The Find a Tender feed in this Actor does not carry the buyer's SME or VCSE suitability flags. In a 1,000-result test none of the notices had them, so smeSuitable and vcseSuitable are null. They stay in the output so rows line up with our UK Contracts Finder Actor when you merge both feeds.

Why is some value empty, and why might a value look low? valueAmount comes from the notice, or from its first lot when the notice has no total. Many notices have no published value. For a multi-lot notice where only lot 1 has a value, valueAmount is that lot's value, not the total. Use lotCount to see whether this applies.

How are award values and dates filled? On the award stage, awardedSuppliers lists the suppliers from the award. awardValue comes from the award, or from the single contract that has a value. It stays null when several contracts carry values. awardDate is the award date when the feed gives one; otherwise it is the signing date of the first contract.

Why does a planning-and-tender notice show stage "planning"? The API tags some notices with two stages. stage is the first tag, so a notice tagged planning+tender shows planning. In a tender-stage 1,000-result test, 21 items came back with stage planning.

Is this legal? The Actor collects public data only, from the official Find a Tender open-data API. It needs no login, no account cookies and no CAPTCHA solving, and it crawls politely. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Find a Tender, the Cabinet Office or the UK Government. Notice data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. You are responsible for how you use it.

Buyer contact names, emails and phone numbers are personal data when they belong to a person. They come from what the buyer published on the notice, and the Actor does not look them up or enrich them. Check your UK GDPR and PECR obligations before you use them for outreach.

Something broke or a field is missing? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. We answer within one business day and usually ship a fix within 48 hours.

Related Actors

• UK Contracts Finder Scraper: Public Tenders & Awards: the same field names for lower-value notices from Contracts Finder, so you can merge both feeds.

Changelog

• 0.1 (2026-10-10): First release. Tender, award and planning stages; keyword, CPV, value and open-tender filters; lots, legal basis and submission link.