UK Public Contract Awards & Suppliers — Contracts Finder 🏛️

foXLabs procurement series: EU TED · World Bank · IADB · Ukraine Prozorro · India · US Federal

🎉 Find out which suppliers win UK public money — company name, contract title, award value, buyer and dates — straight from the official Contracts Finder service, no login and no API key. Built for sales teams chasing public-sector budget, competitors tracking rivals' wins, and analysts mapping government spend.

🔍 What is this Actor — and when should you use it?

Contracts Finder is the UK government's official publication service for public-sector procurement. Every contract award above threshold lands there in OCDS format. This Actor searches it by keyword and returns one clean row per award: the supplier that won, what they won, how much it was worth, which public body bought it, and when the contract runs.

Use it when you need: a list of suppliers already trusted with public money in your sector; the award value a competitor just won; a feed of new awards in a category you sell into; or the buyer-side contact trail (buyer id and source URL) for a bid you plan to chase.

Use something else when: you want tenders that are still open for bidding rather than finished awards — switch the stage input to tender or planning in this same Actor. For procurement outside the UK, use the matching Actor in the series above; they share the same core award schema, so outputs concatenate into one table.

🤖 Use with AI agents

Already on the Apify MCP server? Ask for this Actor by name: foxlabs/uk-contracts-finder-supplier-data.

Your agent can pay for its own runs. This Actor is pay-per-event with agentic payments, so an agent can discover it, run it and settle the bill over x402 (USDC on Base) or Skyfire — no Apify account or API token of its own. Billing is the same either way: per delivered award row.

Otherwise paste this into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP-enabled assistant:

Run the Apify actor foxlabs/uk-contracts-finder-supplier-data with
{"queries":["cyber security"],"stage":"award","maxResultsPerQuery":25}
and give me the suppliers, award values and buyers.

📋 Overview

Source	Contracts Finder (UK Government, OCDS search API)
Coverage	UK-wide public sector — central government, NHS, councils, agencies
Auth needed	None. No API key, no login, no proxy required
Row	One contract award (or tender/planning notice, depending on stage)
Measured run	75 rows in 36 s for 3 keywords (2026-09-19)
Pricing	$0.004 per delivered row — $4 per 1,000

✨ Features

• 🏢 Supplier-first — every row names the company that won, not just the notice
• 💷 Award value and currency on every row, as published
• 🔎 Keyword search — search by category ("cyber security"), by service, or by a supplier's own name to see everything they have won
• 🔄 Three stages — finished award, open tender, or upcoming planning notices from the same input
• 🧾 Buyer trail — buyer id, counterparty name and the official source URL for each notice
• ⚡ No proxy needed — the service answers direct requests; proxy is off by default

🎬 Quick Start

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/foxlabs~uk-contracts-finder-supplier-data/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":["cloud hosting","cyber security"],"stage":"award","maxResultsPerQuery":25}'

🚀 Getting Started (3 steps)

1. Pick your keywords. Put the service, category or supplier name into queries. The default run searches cloud hosting, cyber security and Capita.
2. Choose the stage. Leave stage at award for contracts already won; switch to tender for live opportunities.
3. Run it. Rows arrive in the dataset; export to CSV/JSON/Excel or read them over the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
queries	array	["cloud hosting","cyber security","Capita"]	Search terms. A category, a service, or a supplier name
stage	string	award	award (won contracts), tender (open), planning (upcoming)
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	25	Cap on rows returned per search term
maxConcurrency	integer	2	Parallel requests against Contracts Finder
requestDelayMs	integer	0	Optional pause between requests
includeRaw	boolean	false	Attach the untouched source record to each row
proxyConfiguration	object	proxy off	Contracts Finder answers direct requests; enable only if you need it

Example — everything one supplier has won:

{ "queries": ["Capita"], "stage": "award", "maxResultsPerQuery": 50 }

Example — live opportunities in a category:

{ "queries": ["software development"], "stage": "tender", "maxResultsPerQuery": 25 }

📤 Output

One row per notice. From the measured run above (75 rows, 3 keywords, 2026-09-19):

Field	Type	Fill	Description
companyName	string	100%	Supplier that won the contract
companyId	string	100%	Supplier identifier as published
awardId	string	100%	OCDS award/notice id
awardTitle	string	100%	Contract title
awardType	string	100%	Procedure type (e.g. selective, open)
amount	number	100%	Award value
currency	string	100%	Currency of amount
awardedOn	string	100%	Award date (ISO)
startDate / endDate	string	100%	Contract period
status	string	100%	Notice status
counterparty	string	100%	Public body on the other side of the contract
buyerId	string	100%	Buyer identifier
industryCode	string	100%	Classification code for the contract
region	string	56%	Region, where the notice carries one
additionalClassifications	array	4%	Extra classification codes, rarely published
description	string	100%	Notice description
sourceUrl	string	100%	Official Contracts Finder URL for the notice
country / countryName / source / query / scrapedAt	string	100%	Provenance fields
city	string	0%	Contracts Finder does not publish supplier city in these records — the column is present for schema parity with the series and is always empty here

A real row from the default run:

{
  "companyName": "Southampton Marine Services",
  "awardId": "ocds-b5fd17-0db0dcf8-9a57-4c5f-b751-cb43f8227f95",
  "awardTitle": "T0345 - Dry Dock & Repair of Lightvessel 06",
  "awardType": "selective",
  "amount": 408069,
  "currency": "GBP",
  "awardedOn": "2026-07-13",
  "countryName": "United Kingdom"
}

💼 Use cases

• Public-sector sales — build a list of buyers who already spend in your category, with the value they spent
• Competitive intelligence — search a rival's name and see every public contract they hold, with values and end dates
• Renewal timing — endDate tells you when an incumbent's contract runs out, which is when the buyer starts looking
• Market sizing — sum award values by category to size the addressable public budget
• Partner sourcing — find suppliers already cleared to work with government in a discipline you need

🔗 Integration

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('foxlabs/uk-contracts-finder-supplier-data').call({
  queries: ['cyber security'], stage: 'award', maxResultsPerQuery: 25,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("foxlabs/uk-contracts-finder-supplier-data").call(
    run_input={"queries": ["cyber security"], "stage": "award", "maxResultsPerQuery": 25}
)
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items

No-code: Make, n8n and Zapier all reach this Actor through the Apify app — schedule a run and push new awards straight into a CRM or a sheet.

📊 Pricing

Pay-per-event: award-record — $0.004 per delivered row ($4 per 1,000). Compute and traffic are included in that price; you pay for rows, not for run time. Rows that carry no supplier and no award id are not charged.

View current pricing.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key for Contracts Finder? No. The service is public and this Actor needs no key, login or proxy.

Does it cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? Contracts Finder is the UK-wide service and publishes notices from across the UK, but some devolved bodies publish primarily on their own portals. Treat the results as "what Contracts Finder holds", not as a guaranteed census of every UK public contract.

Can I get contracts that are still open? Yes — set stage to tender for live opportunities or planning for pipeline notices.

Why is city always empty? The award records Contracts Finder publishes do not carry supplier city. The column stays in the schema so rows from this Actor line up with the other procurement Actors in the series.

How fresh is the data? Every run queries Contracts Finder live; you get what the service holds at that moment.

Can I search by supplier instead of category? Yes — put the company name in queries, e.g. ["Capita"].

🐛 Troubleshooting

A search returns fewer rows than maxResultsPerQuery. That keyword simply has fewer matching notices. Broaden the term or add more entries to queries.

A run returns nothing at all. Check the keyword spelling and try stage: "award" — planning notices are far rarer than awards.

Rows look truncated. Raise maxResultsPerQuery; the cap applies per search term, not per run.

⚠️ Trademark

Contracts Finder is a service of the UK Government. This Actor is an independent tool, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the UK Government or any public body, and reads only publicly published procurement notices.

⚖️ Is it legal to scrape this data?

Contracts Finder notices are official public-sector information published for reuse, and the data this Actor returns is the published notice content — supplier names, contract values, buyers and dates. That is business information about public spending, not personal data. Public bodies publish it precisely so suppliers and citizens can see where public money goes. As always, you are responsible for how you use the output.

🤝 Support & contact

Questions, a field you need, or a bug: info@foxlabs.com.tr — or open an issue on the Actor's Apify page.

Changelog

0.1

• Contracts Finder search across award, tender and planning stages.
• One row per notice with supplier, value, buyer, dates and source URL.
• Pay-per-event billing on delivered rows (award-record).