Japan Public Procurement Signals — RFI & RFQ

For suppliers researching Japanese public procurement, this Actor turns selected official requests for quotations (RFQs) and information (RFIs) into a shortlist with the buyer, purchase subject, response deadline and source link. Check whether a notice fits your services before spending time on the official response process.

Inspect before you run: free three-notice JSON sample, checked 22 October 2026 · three practical workflows and ready-to-paste inputs. No signup or Actor run is needed to read these dated examples.

Try live data: open Input, keep 10 results, and click Start. A preview costs $0.005 per run + $0.01 per returned notice: 10 notices costs $0.105; 0 notices still costs $0.005. Repeated previews are charged again. This is not an unlimited free trial.

Current coverage is deliberately limited: Forestry Agency quotation notices indexed by the official 官公需情報ポータル API, and Osaka City's Digital Administration Bureau RFI announcements. This is not a nationwide tender database or a private-company contact list. No OpenAI or other AI API key is needed.

Hokkaido winter-service workflow: Find snow-removal and equipment-rental RFQs using a copyable Japanese keyword filter, then review the official notice's lots and response deadline. This is for contractors able to serve the relevant Japanese sites, not a private-buyer or nationwide tender list.

Problem

Supplier and bid-research teams need to distinguish a request for a price from an early information request, check the response deadline, and find the original requirements. Those details are scattered across Japanese notice titles, publication dates and issuing-office pages. This feed puts selected facts in one exportable record; it does not translate the requirements or decide your eligibility.

Who it is for

• Facilities-maintenance, fire-safety and vehicle-service suppliers checking the supported Forestry Agency quotation notices.
• Software and data-platform vendors watching the supported Osaka City RFI source. There may be no current RFI; it is not a continuous supply of software leads.
• Bid-research and automation teams exporting source-linked notice facts to a CRM, Make, Zapier or their own review queue.

Procurement qualifications and submission procedures still apply. If you need nationwide tenders, private-company contacts or confirmed purchase intent, this limited feed is not the right product.

Three practical uses: from notice to a review decision

For teams able to serve the relevant Japanese locations, use the feed to build a small bid/no-bid review queue, not an outreach list:

Your job	Dated example checked 22 October 2026	Ready-to-paste preview	What to do with the result
Facilities-maintenance coordinator	Staff-housing bathroom repairs, 宿舎浴室修繕業務; response date 6 November	Bathroom-repair input	Open the official notice, check eligibility and the work specification, then decide whether your team can quote.
Vehicle-service provider	Official-vehicle inspections, 官用自動車点検等業務; response date 9 November	Vehicle-service input	Review the service locations and vehicle requirements in the original; assign a human reviewer before preparing a quotation.
Snow-clearing equipment/rental operator	Snow-clearing equipment rental, 構内除排雪機械賃貸借; response date 6 November	Snow-equipment input	Check the individual lots, equipment and performance requirements at source. One notice can cover several lots; it is not one result per lot.

These short English glosses are guide explanations, not translated specifications produced by the Actor. All three examples are Forestry Agency Hokkaido notices and were open on the check date; status can change. Japanese titles remain in the data. The local presets matched 1 / 1 / 3 notices respectively on that date, not a guaranteed future result count. Filters use literal Japanese keywords; generic categories such as other are not a reason to discard a matching subject.

Start with onlyChanges: false to inspect the output. If it fits your work, enable onlyChanges: true and keep a stable monitor name and filters for recurring checks. The presets do not create a schedule or send a message. Each live preview is billable again, up to $0.105 for the preset's maximum ten notices.

What you get

• request_for_quotation: an official request for prices for goods or services, including open-counter procurement.
• request_for_information: an early information-gathering notice. It is not a purchase commitment, awarded budget, order or guaranteed sales lead.
• The buyer, subject, source date, deadline, prefecture, category, urgency, rule evidence and license attribution in every result.
• Persistent suppression of unchanged results across runs, plus stable IDs for your CRM or workflow.

Why this data is hard to get manually

Notice stages and dates differ across publishers. A question deadline is not necessarily the quotation deadline; a corrected notice can supersede an older version; a government sale is not a purchase request. The Actor applies deterministic stage/date rules and preserves evidence and source links. It does not inspect restricted attachments or replace your review of the official notice.

Try a 10-notice live preview

The Store form opens with a maximum 10-result snapshot preview (onlyChanges: false). Each preview run is billable, including unchanged records. This lets you inspect the current output without consuming monitoring history.

1. Leave Maximum results — keep 10 for the live preview unchanged. Sources and filters are optional under Customize.
2. Check your available Apify credit and set a maximum run charge if desired; $0.11 is enough for 10 notices at the published PPE prices.
3. Click Start, then open Procurement notices (Dataset) to compare buyer, subject, deadline and official source. The Dataset can be exported as JSON or CSV.
4. Open Source coverage and zero-result explanation to check source status, filtering and result/budget caps. An empty Dataset is not proof that the entire Japanese market has no opportunities.

Local source check on 22 October 2026 JST, using the standard 30-day window, found 17 qualifying Forestry Agency RFQs and no discovered Osaka RFI, with both sources responding successfully and no source cap. The default Store preview returns at most the first ten, ordered by deadline; load a focused preset above to inspect a later-deadline subject. This was a local source check, not customer use. Live availability changes: there is no guaranteed result count and no historical or fabricated record is inserted to fill a preview. For a predictable format example, use the free dated sample above.

Preview input (the API without these values still defaults to 50 results and change monitoring):

{
  "sources": ["forestry-quotes", "osaka-rfi"],
  "lookbackDays": 30,
  "maxResults": 10,
  "onlyChanges": false
}

Switch to recurring procurement monitoring

For recurring monitoring, turn on Only new or changed signals. API calls without this property default to change monitoring. The following monitoring input is ready to use:

{
  "sources": ["forestry-quotes", "osaka-rfi"],
  "lookbackDays": 30,
  "maxResults": 50,
  "onlyChanges": true,
  "monitorKey": "default"
}

For a focused feed, add "keywords": ["消防", "修繕"] or full Japanese prefecture names such as "prefectures": ["北海道"]. Keywords are literal, case-normalized OR matches in the purchase subject/title or English category. They are not arbitrary source queries.

The first run returns current matching opportunities. Subsequent runs with the same monitor name and filters return new or materially changed notices only. Zero new results can be a normal successful outcome. Check the SUMMARY record to distinguish no matches from an upstream failure or a source/result cap.

Selected fields from the bathroom-repair example, checked on 22 October 2026 (Japan time). The date is a response date, not a delivery deadline. Verify the precise closing time, eligibility and any corrections in the original notice. Full output also includes stable IDs, change type, deadline evidence and license links.

{
  "companyName": "林野庁北海道森林管理局",
  "organizationType": "government_agency",
  "signalType": "request_for_quotation",
  "expectedPurchase": "令和8年度網走西部森林管理署西紋別支署宿舎浴室修繕業務",
  "productCategory": "facilities_maintenance",
  "signalDate": "2026-10-21",
  "deadline": "2026-11-06",
  "status": "open",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.rinya.maff.go.jp/hokkaido/apply/publicsale/nisimonbetu/attach/pdf/261021_1-1.pdf",
  "license": "PDL-1.0",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-10-21T20:41:04.869Z"
}

The full three-record excerpt checked on 22 October 2026 includes the source/processing attribution and deadline evidence omitted from this compact illustration. The 13 October excerpt is retained as history; all three of its stated response dates have passed. September examples under examples/output.sample.json are historical too. None should be treated as live availability.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
companyName	Official issuing organization, including public-sector buyers; the local unit may also appear in sourceTitle.
organizationType	government_agency or local_government.
signalType	request_for_information or request_for_quotation.
expectedPurchase	Purchase subject taken from the notice title; no invented budget or purchase stage.
productCategory	Deterministic subject dictionary category. Generic goods remain other.
signalDate, signalDateKind	Source page date, or official API publication/index date. Indexing does not prove that an opportunity is newly announced.
deadline, deadlineEvidence	Unambiguous response/quotation date and its supporting phrase. Question deadlines and delivery dates are not response deadlines.
urgency, status	Date-based triage in Japan time; due_today requires checking the exact closing time at source.
sourceUrl, sourceTitle, sourcePageUrl	Official notice and discovery provenance.
prefecture	Source-reported area, which is not always the delivery/work location. Unknown is null.
confidence, confidenceReasons	Evidence score for classification/extraction, not purchase probability, buyer creditworthiness or chance of winning.
eventId, recordId, changeType	Stable update/deduplication identifiers and new, updated or snapshot.
license, licenseUrl, sourceTermsUrl, attribution	Underlying source license and processing attribution. Preserve these when sharing/exporting.

Evidence score: 0.60 for a recognized official notice stage, +0.20 for a subject dictionary match, +0.10 for an unambiguous deadline, +0.05 for directly fetched Osaka HTML. Generic subjects can score 0.70 with a clear deadline. This arithmetic is a transparent heuristic, not a statistically calibrated model.

Urgency is high at 0–7 days to the response date, medium at 8–21, low after 21, unknown without a date, and closed after the date or on explicit cancellation. Deadlines have date precision, not time precision. Expired/cancelled and missing/conflicting-deadline notices are excluded by default. Advanced inputs can include them for research.

Recurring monitoring

1. Enable Only new or changed signals, then save the desired input as an Apify Task.
2. Schedule it daily, for example at 09:00 in the Asia/Tokyo time zone. The sources do not require minute-by-minute polling.
3. Keep onlyChanges: true and the same monitorKey. Filter changes automatically use separate history; changing only the lookback or result cap retains history.
4. Read the Dataset through the Apify API or your normal Make/Zapier/webhook integration. Upsert by eventId. Configure notifications in your own integration; this Actor does not send messages or contact prospects.

Named storage belongs to the account running the Actor. History is retained for 365 days, capped at 20,000 delivered versions. A new monitor name starts fresh. onlyChanges: false returns a snapshot without consuming change history. Previously delivered snapshot rows are billable when you request them again.

One monitor has a distributed lock to avoid simultaneous output. Do not schedule overlapping runs. The lock expires after 10 minutes if the process is interrupted. Results are checkpointed after each successful output. A crash between output and checkpoint can repeat that same eventId; this is at-least-once delivery, so downstream consumers should deduplicate. Normal completed repeated runs do not emit or charge the same version again.

Material changes currently mean a changed title-derived purchase subject, response date, explicit cancellation or category. Countdown changes do not create events. The feed does not infer withdrawal from a disappearing page, guarantee historical completeness, or diff PDFs/attachments. An API-indexed notice can lag its source by roughly one day; follow the original link for the latest requirements.

Pricing

The pay-per-event price is $0.005 per run plus $0.01 per delivered signal ($10 per 1,000 signals). These are usage charges for recurring monitoring, not a flat monthly subscription. The Store's active pricing controls billing; the Actor fails safely if configured PPE events/prices differ from the contract.

• One run with 12 results: $0.125.
• One preview with 10 results: $0.105; with 6 results: $0.065; with no results: $0.005.
• 30 daily runs and 20 new/updated results in total: $0.35.
• 30 runs with no new result: $0.15 in start events.

A billable unit is one emitted notice/version, not each matching keyword or raw page. No extra synthetic Dataset-item event is permitted. Set an Apify maximum run charge to bound results. Low budgets and maxResults stop output before additional items and leave undelivered items eligible for a later run. A source failure may still incur the automatic run-start event, but emits no signal events.

Preview questions

Can I try it without an Apify account? Yes, inspect the free dated JSON sample and guide. Running live data requires Apify and uses the published event pricing; available account credits may cover it.

Is another preview free? No. Each snapshot run incurs the start charge and charges for each emitted notice, even if you saw the same records before. Reopening a saved Dataset does not run the Actor again.

Why are there zero results? Read SUMMARY: selected sources may have no qualifying open notice, filters may exclude records, a cap may limit coverage, or a source may fail. Do not confuse a successful zero-match check with a failed or incomplete one.

Does an RFI mean a buyer will order? No. It requests information, not a committed purchase or awarded contract. RFQs still require source review and any applicable supplier qualifications.

Sources, permissions and exclusions

This Actor uses the official 官公需情報ポータル API under its API terms. That API is a discovery/extraction channel, not a blanket license for all indexed material. Only the reviewed Forestry Agency procurement paths are accepted. The Forestry Agency's site links to the MAFF content terms, which apply PDL1.0 absent separate rights or restrictions.

Osaka RFI discovery uses the Digital Administration Bureau's official index. Public HTML notices must explicitly display CC BY 4.0. The Actor does not fetch attachments or materials requiring application or a nondisclosure agreement.

Outputs contain selected notice facts and short deadline evidence, processed by Japan Signal Lab. They are not official government analysis or endorsement. Source attribution and license links are included in each row. No logos, photos, maps, third-party reports, officials' contact details, personal addresses or enriched contact lists are distributed. Source rights and coverage decisions are recorded in the repository's docs/source-review.md.

Subsidy project prose and permit-based purchase inference are not included in this version. Government sales/disposals, awards/results, expired notices and superseded versions are filtered conservatively. A generic title such as “goods procurement” stays generic; we do not invent the actual equipment list.

Reliability and limits

Each run makes at most one 官公需 API request (200 candidate notices) and one Osaka index check plus up to 10 relevant HTML pages, with sequential, paced requests and size/time caps. Robots restrictions are respected for Osaka. Source errors fail the run without advancing monitor state. A truncated source is disclosed in SUMMARY; no claim of complete coverage is made. The source HTML/XML structure may change and require maintenance.

Apify Store health checks use the input form prefill, so they exercise a live snapshot rather than consume a persistent change monitor. If no current notice qualifies, the Actor returns zero real records; it never inserts sample or fabricated opportunities to pass a health check.

The Actor uses deterministic rules and the existing Japan Signal Lab patterns for XML processing, Apify metadata and PPE cost guards. It runs separately from the existing Supplier/KYB Actor and preserves that Actor's inputs, outputs, billing and source code.

Local development

From this Actor's directory, run npm ci, npm test, npm run build, and npm run verify:live. The live verifier performs bounded source reads without Apify cloud execution or AI charges and writes its report under work/. Use npm start for a complete local Actor run. Node.js 20 or newer is required.

Before Store release, verify a cloud build, initial and repeat runs, the input/output view, exact PPE configuration, permissions and the public Store page. Local tests alone do not prove a published product or customer demand.