# UK Contracts Finder Tenders Scraper (`devilscrapes/uk-contracts-finder-tenders-scraper`) Actor Export UK Contracts Finder public-sector tenders as flat lead-ready rows: buyer, title, value, CPV code, deadline, and award/supplier info. Keyless UK government OCDS API — filter by keyword, date range, notice type, and value. - **URL**: https://apify.com/devilscrapes/uk-contracts-finder-tenders-scraper.md - **Developed by:** [DevilScrapes](https://apify.com/devilscrapes) (community) - **Categories:** Lead generation - **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks - **User rating**: No ratings yet ## Pricing Pay per event This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events. Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event ## What's an Apify Actor? Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows. In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours, and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store. In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server. Actors are written with capital "A". ## How to integrate an Actor? If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects. You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready. The best way to integrate Actors is as follows. - **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use). - **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`. - **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`. - **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`. - **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md). For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below. For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt). # README
Devil Scrapes mark ## UK Contracts Finder Tenders Scraper **💰 $4.20 / 1 000 results**  ·  pay only for results  ·  no credit card to try *We do the dirty work so your dataset stays clean.* 😈 Export UK Contracts Finder public-sector tenders as flat lead-ready rows: buyer, title, value, CPV code, deadline, and award/supplier info. Keyless UK government OCDS API — filter by keyword, date range, notice type, and value.
*** > **Quick answer:** The **UK Contracts Finder Tenders Scraper** exports UK public-sector contract notices — buyer, title, value, CPV classification, publish and closing dates, status, and award/supplier detail once a contract is won — into JSON, CSV or Excel, filtered by keyword, date range, notice type and value. Contracts Finder is where every UK public body (councils, NHS trusts, central government departments) posts notices, and its public API is keyless Open Contracting Data Standard JSON: deeply nested `tender`/`award`/`parties` objects we flatten to one lead-ready row instead of handing you a 300+ KB OCDS blob. Pricing is pay-per-result — **$4.20 per 1 000 notices**, no subscription, no card required to try it. ### 🎯 What this scrapes UK Contracts Finder is the central portal where every UK public body — councils, NHS trusts, central government departments — posts contract notices. The raw feed is Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) JSON: deeply nested `tender`/`award`/`parties` objects that are a pain to parse by hand. This Actor queries Contracts Finder's public OCDS search API and flattens every release into one buyer-ready row — buyer name, title, value, CPV classification, publish/closing dates, status, and award/supplier info when a contract has already been won. No API key, no login, no OCDS-schema puzzle. ### 🔥 What we handle for you - 🔁 **Retries with exponential backoff** on `429`/`503`/network errors — up to 5 attempts, `Retry-After` honoured. - 🧱 **Per-release fault isolation** — one malformed OCDS release is skipped and logged, never crashes the whole run. - 🧊 **Clean, typed dataset rows** — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, never the raw 300+ KB OCDS blob. - 💰 **Pay-Per-Event pricing** — you only pay for rows that land in your dataset. No data, no charge. ### 💡 Use cases - Bid-team pipeline — pull new tenders matching a keyword or CPV area every day. - Market intelligence — track which UK public bodies are buying what, and at what value. - Award tracking — monitor closed notices for supplier names and award values on contracts you bid on. - Lead generation — build a prospect list of buyers issuing contracts in your sector. ### ⚙️ How to use it 1. Click **Try for free** at the top of the page. 2. Fill in the input form — most fields have sensible defaults. 3. Click **Start**. Output streams into the run's dataset. 4. Export from **Storage → Dataset** as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API. ### 📥 Input | Field | Type | Required | Default | Notes | |---|---|:--:|---|---| | `keyword` | `string` | no | '—' | Free-text keyword sent to Contracts Finder's search (e.g. grounds maintenance). Leave blank to match all… | | `noticeTypes` | `array` | no | \['Contract'] | Notice types to search for, e.g. Contract, Tender, Award. Only… | | `publishedFrom` | `string` | no | '—' | Only include notices published on or after this date, e.g. 2026-01-01. | | `publishedTo` | `string` | no | '—' | Only include notices published on or before this date, e.g. 2026-08-01. Must be on/after… | | `minValue` | `number` | no | '—' | Discard notices whose contract value is below this amount. Applied client-side after fetching (never sent to the API). | | `maxValue` | `number` | no | '—' | Discard notices whose contract value is above this amount. Applied client-side after fetching (never sent to the API).… | | `maxResults` | `integer` | no | 20 | Hard cap on the number of contract notice rows returned by this run. | | `useProxy` | `boolean` | no | False | Route requests through Apify Proxy. Contracts Finder is UK government infrastructure with no observed anti-bot, so this… | #### Example input ```json { "noticeTypes": [ "Contract" ], "maxResults": 5, "useProxy": true } ``` ### 📤 Output Every row is one dataset item. | Field | Type | Notes | |---|---|---| | `notice_id` | `string` | OCDS release ID. | | `ocid` | `string` | Open Contracting ID grouping releases for the same contracting process. | | `notice_url` | `['string', 'null']` | Public Contracts Finder notice URL; null when the release ID doesn't match the expected GUID format. | | `notice_type` | `['string', 'null']` | OCDS release tag, e.g. `tender`, `award`, `contract`, `planning`. | | `title` | `string` | Notice title. | | `description` | `['string', 'null']` | Notice description. | | `buyer_name` | `['string', 'null']` | Contracting authority / buyer name. | | `status` | `['string', 'null']` | Tender status, e.g. `active`, `complete`, `cancelled`. | | `value_amount` | `['number', 'null']` | Contract value amount. | | `value_currency` | `['string', 'null']` | Contract value currency (usually GBP). | | `cpv_codes` | `array` | Deduplicated CPV classification codes; empty list when none present. | | `publish_date` | `['string', 'null']` | ISO 8601 publish date of the release. | | `closing_date` | `['string', 'null']` | Tender submission deadline. | | `award_status` | `['string', 'null']` | Status of the first award; null for pre-award notices. | | `award_value_amount` | `['number', 'null']` | Value of the first award; null for pre-award notices. | | `award_value_currency` | `['string', 'null']` | Currency of the first award value. | | `supplier_names` | `array` | Deduplicated supplier names across all awards; empty list for pre-award notices. | | `scraped_at` | `string` | ISO 8601 UTC timestamp when this row was scraped. | #### Example output ```json {} ``` ### 💰 Pricing Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire: | Event | USD | What it is | |---|---:|---| | `actor-start` | $0.20 | One-off warm-up charge per run | | `result-row` | $0.004 | Per unique dataset item | Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ **$4.20**. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit. ### 🚧 Limitations - Contracts Finder only — Sell2Wales, Public Contracts Scotland, and eTendersNI are out of scope. - No tender-document (PDF) downloads, only the structured notice metadata. - Real-time per-query only — no historical bulk CSV/XML export and no cross-run deduplication. ### ❓ FAQ **Do I need a Contracts Finder account or API key?** No. Contracts Finder's OCDS search API is public and keyless — this Actor calls it directly. **Which notice types are supported?** `notice_types` defaults to `["Contract"]`, the confirmed-working value. Other OCDS notice types (e.g. `Tender`, `Award`) are passed through as-is; an unsupported value surfaces the API's own rejection rather than failing silently. **Why is `maxResults` capped at 300?** Each OCDS release is unusually large (~310 KB) because it carries full tender/award/parties objects. The cap keeps a single run's bandwidth (and cost) predictable; raise it only if you need a bigger sample. **Can I filter by contract value?** Yes — `minValue`/`maxValue` filter on the parsed `value_amount` client-side (Contracts Finder's API doesn't expose a value filter server-side). ### 💬 Your feedback Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's **Issues** tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report. ***
Built by **[Devil Scrapes](https://apify.com/DevilScrapes)** 😈 — a small fleet of opinionated public-data Actors. Honest pricing, real engineering, zero fine print.
# Actor input Schema ## `keyword` (type: `string`): Free-text keyword sent to Contracts Finder's search (e.g. grounds maintenance). Leave blank to match all notices of the selected type(s). ## `noticeTypes` (type: `array`): Notice types to search for, e.g. Contract, Tender, Award. Only Contract is confirmed-working; other values are sent through as-is. ## `publishedFrom` (type: `string`): Only include notices published on or after this date, e.g. 2026-01-01. ## `publishedTo` (type: `string`): Only include notices published on or before this date, e.g. 2026-08-01. Must be on/after publishedFrom when both are set. ## `minValue` (type: `number`): Discard notices whose contract value is below this amount. Applied client-side after fetching (never sent to the API). ## `maxValue` (type: `number`): Discard notices whose contract value is above this amount. Applied client-side after fetching (never sent to the API). Must be on/above minValue when both are set. ## `maxResults` (type: `integer`): Hard cap on the number of contract notice rows returned by this run. ## `useProxy` (type: `boolean`): Route requests through Apify Proxy. Contracts Finder is UK government infrastructure with no observed anti-bot, so this defaults off — enable only if you see rate-limiting. ## Actor input object example ```json { "keyword": "grounds maintenance", "noticeTypes": [ "Contract" ], "publishedFrom": "2026-01-01", "publishedTo": "2026-08-01", "maxResults": 20, "useProxy": false } ``` # Actor output Schema ## `datasetItems` (type: `string`): All dataset items as JSON. ## `datasetItemsCsv` (type: `string`): Same data exported to CSV. ## `datasetView` (type: `string`): Open the run dataset in the Console. # API You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup. ## JavaScript example ```javascript import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client'; // Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token // Replace the '' with your token const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '', }); // Prepare Actor input const input = {}; // Run the Actor and wait for it to finish const run = await client.actor("devilscrapes/uk-contracts-finder-tenders-scraper").call(input); // Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any) console.log('Results from dataset'); console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`); const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems(); items.forEach((item) => { console.dir(item); }); // 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs ``` ## Python example ```python from apify_client import ApifyClient # Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token # Replace '' with your token. client = ApifyClient("") # Prepare the Actor input run_input = {} # Run the Actor and wait for it to finish run = client.actor("devilscrapes/uk-contracts-finder-tenders-scraper").call(run_input=run_input) # Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any) print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}") for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items(): print(item) # 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start ``` ## CLI example ```bash echo '{}' | apify call devilscrapes/uk-contracts-finder-tenders-scraper --silent --output-dataset ``` ## MCP server setup ```json { "mcpServers": { "apify": { "type": "http", "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,devilscrapes/uk-contracts-finder-tenders-scraper" } } } ``` The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer ` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations). ## OpenAPI specification Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/XZdbPJvGzoPRCHWgC/builds/ENEnSE6mICcVQ9OcQ/openapi.json