UK Tenders Monitor: Government Contracts & Find a Tender Alerts

What is UK Tenders Monitor?

Find UK public sector tenders that actually fit your business, every morning, without reading hundreds of notices.

• Source. This Actor reads Find a Tender, the UK government's central digital platform for public procurement notices, through its official OCDS API. Since 24 February 2025 (Procurement Act 2023), new UK procurements publish both above- and below-threshold notices there (except below-threshold contracts in Scotland).
• Matching. It merges tender updates into one row per procurement and scores every notice against your profile: CPV codes, keywords, UK regions (ITL/NUTS), contract type, value, threshold level and SME/VCSE suitability.
• Output. One clean, flat row per opportunity, with the submission deadline, days left, estimated value in GBP, a relevanceScore from 0 to 100 and plain-English matchReasons.

Use it as a daily bid alert (monitor mode returns only notices you haven't seen yet), for a market scan of the last 31 days (backfill), or for competitor tracking (award notices with winning suppliers and awarded values).

Who it's for

• Bid managers and business development teams selling to UK public buyers (councils, NHS trusts, central government, universities, colleges, schools and academy trusts, police, housing associations). They get one scored shortlist each morning instead of searching Find a Tender by hand.
• SMEs and VCSEs looking for contracts they can realistically win. thresholdLevels: ["below"], smeSuitableOnly and vcseSuitableOnly use the suitability flags buyers set under the Procurement Act 2023.
• Bid writers and tender consultants monitoring several client profiles (one saved task and stateKey per client).
• European companies selling into the UK. The input schema is the same family as our German & EU Tenders Monitor and France Tenders Monitor, so one profile carries over.
• Analysts and AI agents that need structured UK procurement data (CPV, ITL regions, deadlines, values, award suppliers) through an API.

What it does

• Reads Find a Tender through its official OCDS release API (/api/1.0/ocdsReleasePackages), one day at a time, with cursor pagination. No login, no proxies, no HTML scraping.
• Respects the API's rate limits. On HTTP 429 or 503 the Actor waits the full Retry-After time before any further request (all parallel day fetches pause, as the API documentation asks), retries the same page and never skips ahead. At most two days are fetched in parallel. Requests carry an identifying User-Agent.
• Merges versions. A procurement often has a tender notice plus one or more updates (changed deadline, new documents) in the same window. You get the newest version once; the older notice ids go to relatedNoticeIds.
• Scores relevance with transparent rules (no LLM, no black box):
  • CPV codes by prefix: 72 matches all IT services, 48 software, 45 construction works, 909 cleaning.
  • Keywords, case-insensitive, in the title (full weight) and the description (half weight). Rare words count more. Short terms such as ICT or CCTV match whole words only; wrap a phrase in double quotes for an exact phrase.
  • Hard filters (filtered notices are never charged):
    • excludeKeywords
    • regions: ITL/NUTS codes (UKI London, UKM Scotland, UKD3 Greater Manchester) or names (London, North West, Yorkshire, Wales, England, Midlands)
    • contractTypes (goods, services, works)
    • thresholdLevels (above, below)
    • smeSuitableOnly, vcseSuitableOnly
    • minValue / maxValue (GBP, excl. VAT)
    • onlyOpen (the deadline is still in the future)
    • competitorNames (awards)
• Three modes: monitor, backfill and awards.
• GDPR by default. Contact-person names, personal e-mail addresses (first.last@…) and phone numbers are removed, from contact fields and from titles and descriptions. Only organisation names and functional contacts (e.g. procurement@council.gov.uk, "Commercial Team") are kept.

What you get that a plain Find a Tender scraper doesn't

	Typical Find a Tender scrapers	This Actor
Official OCDS API, no HTML scraping	most	✅
One row per procurement (tender updates merged)	rarely	✅ newest version, older ids in relatedNoticeIds
Relevance scoring with reasons	❌ or extra charge	✅ relevanceScore + matchReasons, included
Procurement Act 2023 fields: threshold level, SME and VCSE suitability, legal basis	partly	✅ as filters and output fields
UK region filter by name or ITL/NUTS code	partly	✅ delivery location, else buyer address
"Only new since last run"	some	✅ persistent state per stateKey
Personal contact data (names, e-mails, phones)	often included	removed
Charged only for notices that match your profile	rarely	✅ filtered and below-minScore notices are free

What we measured (Find a Tender, 5 Oct 2026):

• 7 days (29 Sep to 5 Oct): 2,387 releases, 80 older tender versions merged, 2,307 notices, of them 483 tender notices. The IT example profile below kept 33 of them at minScore 40.
• 31 days (5 Sep to 5 Oct): 9,800 releases, 9,255 notices, of them 1,749 tender notices.

So a focused profile turns roughly 70 new UK tender notices a day into a short daily list.

How to get daily UK tender alerts

1. Click Start with the prefilled IT-services example. It's a quick market scan (backfill) that returns up to 25 scored UK tenders, so you see real output before you change anything.
2. Replace the CPV codes and keywords with your own. Optionally add UK regions, contract types, threshold levels, SME/VCSE suitability and a value range.
3. Pick a mode: backfill for a market scan of the last days, monitor for daily alerts that return only notices you haven't seen yet, or awards for competitor tracking.
4. Look at the results in the Output tab (views "Matches" and "Awards") or download them as JSON, CSV or Excel.
5. For daily alerts, switch mode to monitor, save the input as a task and add a schedule (for example every weekday at 07:00).
6. Send new matches on with Apify integrations (Slack, Google Drive, Make, Zapier, n8n or a webhook), or call the Actor from your own code through the Apify API.

Modes

mode	What you get	Typical use
monitor (default)	Notices published or updated in the last lookbackDays (default 1) plus today (UK time) that earlier runs with the same stateKey have not returned. A first run that finds nothing looks back 7 days once (see below).	Schedule it daily (e.g. 07:30 Europe/London) and connect it to e-mail, Slack, a CRM or a spreadsheet.
backfill	Every matching notice between dateFrom and dateTo (max 31 days; without dates: the last 7 days). Leaves the monitor state untouched.	Market scan, pipeline building, testing a profile.
awards	Award notices only, with winnerNames, awardedValue and awardedCurrency.	Competitor and price intelligence, incumbent research before a re-tender.

The Console form vs. API defaults

• The Console form opens with a short trial: mode = backfill (the last 7 days), an IT profile (CPV 72/48 plus software, cloud, cyber security and data platform) and maxResults = 25. One click shows the 25 best current matches for at most USD 0.20. This prefill is also what Apify's daily automated Store test runs. It keeps no state, so it returns rows on any day, weekends and bank holidays included.
• Before you schedule it, switch mode to monitor and raise maxResults, or set it to 0 for no limit.
• API calls, tasks and schedules that leave a field out get the defaults: mode = monitor, lookbackDays = 1, maxResults = 200. The prefill values only fill the form.
• First monitor run on a quiet day: a monitor run with no saved state (the first run for a stateKey, or one with resetState) that finds nothing new looks back firstRunBackfillDays (default 7) once. Everything it returns is remembered, so the next run is a normal monitor run. Set it to 0 to turn this off.
• Quiet days and outages: a monitor run with nothing new still ends Succeeded, with 0 rows and a status message. Nothing is charged. If some days fail to download or the run runs out of time, it delivers the finished days and says so: the status message starts with PARTIAL DATA, the log has a PARTIAL SOURCE line with the missing days, and RUN_SUMMARY lists sourceStatus, missingDays and warnings. You only pay for rows that are delivered. If Find a Tender is unreachable, the run ends Failed with a clear message. Nothing is charged and the monitor state is left unchanged. The API is given up after 210 s in short monitor runs; backfills get 60 s plus 25 s per day of the window (about 14 minutes for 31 days), so a run never gets stuck.

Input examples

1. IT services, 7-day scan (the form's trial input)

{
  "mode": "backfill",
  "cpvCodes": ["72", "48"],
  "keywords": ["software", "cloud", "cyber security", "data platform"],
  "maxResults": 25
}

2. Daily bid alert: IT and managed services in the North of England

{
  "mode": "monitor",
  "profileName": "it-services-north",
  "cpvCodes": ["72", "48"],
  "keywords": ["software", "cloud", "cyber security", "data platform", "managed service"],
  "excludeKeywords": ["catering"],
  "regions": ["North West", "Yorkshire", "North East"],
  "minValue": 25000,
  "minScore": 50,
  "lookbackDays": 1
}

3. Cleaning SME in London and the South East, below-threshold contracts only

{
  "mode": "backfill",
  "profileName": "cleaning-sme-london",
  "cpvCodes": ["909"],
  "keywords": ["cleaning", "janitorial", "window cleaning"],
  "regions": ["London", "South East"],
  "thresholdLevels": ["below"],
  "smeSuitableOnly": true,
  "maxResults": 100,
  "sortBy": "deadline"
}

4. Competitor tracking (awards)

{
  "mode": "awards",
  "profileName": "competitor-watch",
  "cpvCodes": ["72"],
  "competitorNames": ["Capita", "Computacenter", "Softcat"],
  "maxResults": 0
}

5. Unscored feed: every new tender in Scotland this week

{
  "mode": "backfill",
  "regions": ["Scotland"],
  "maxResults": 0,
  "includeDescription": false
}

Ready-to-run versions of these inputs are in the examples/ folder of the source code.

Input reference (short)

Field	Meaning
cpvCodes	CPV prefixes (2–8 digits). 72 = IT services, 48 = software, 45 = construction works, 909 = cleaning, 7971 = security services, 85 = health and social work, 80 = education and training.
keywords / excludeKeywords	English terms. Case is ignored; 4+ letter terms also match inside longer words, shorter ones only as whole words. "exact phrase" in double quotes.
regions	Region names (London, North West, Yorkshire, Midlands, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, England) or ITL/NUTS codes (UKI, UKD3, TLI3). Delivery location first, else buyer address.
contractTypes	goods, services, works.
thresholdLevels	above, below (the procurement thresholds). Notices that don't say are kept.
smeSuitableOnly / vcseSuitableOnly	Only tenders the buyer marked as suitable for SMEs / for voluntary, community and social enterprises.
minValue / maxValue	Estimated value in GBP excl. VAT (awards: awarded value). Notices without a value are kept and say so.
minScore	0–100. Only notices at or above it are returned and charged. 40 is a good default; 60 is strict.
onlyOpen	Drop tenders whose deadline has passed (default true).
competitorNames	Awards only: keep notices won by a supplier whose name contains one of these strings.
noticeTypes	tender (default), planning, award, cancellation, modification, other.
maxResults	Hard cap on rows (and therefore on cost) per run, best matches first. Default 200 (the Console form prefills 25). 0 = no limit.
sortBy	relevance, deadline, publicationDate or value.
stateKey / resetState	Separate monitor memory per profile, or start fresh.
firstRunBackfillDays	Monitor only: how far a first run with no saved state looks back if its normal window is empty. Default 7, 0 = off.

Without cpvCodes, keywords or competitorNames, the Actor returns an unscored feed (all notices that pass the filters), charged at the lower notice price.

Sample output

One row from the trial input on 5 Oct 2026 (five real rows are in sample-output.json):

{
  "noticeId": "091992-2026",
  "ocid": "ocds-h6vhtk-077cc1",
  "noticeType": "tender",
  "isUpdate": false,
  "title": "ICT Data Platform Consultancy Services",
  "description": "Ayrshire College is seeking to appoint a suitably qualified and experienced technical specialist partner to support the development of a modern, secure and scalable enterprise data platform capability for Ayrshire College.",
  "buyerName": "Ayrshire College",
  "buyerCity": "Kilmarnock",
  "buyerPostalCode": "KA1 3HY",
  "buyerRegionCode": "UKM93",
  "buyerRegion": "Scotland",
  "buyerEmail": "procurement@ayrshire.ac.uk",
  "buyerContactPoint": "Procurement Manager",
  "deliveryRegions": ["UKM93"],
  "cpvMain": "72220000",
  "cpvCodes": ["72220000"],
  "contractNature": "services",
  "procedureType": "Open procedure",
  "legalBasis": "PCR 2015 (Directive 2014/24/EU)",
  "estimatedValue": 200000.0,
  "currency": "GBP",
  "submissionDeadline": "2026-11-11T12:00:00+00:00",
  "daysUntilDeadline": 37,
  "isOpen": true,
  "publicationDate": "2026-09-29",
  "lotCount": 1,
  "suitableForSme": false,
  "suitableForVcse": false,
  "noticeUrl": "https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/091992-2026",
  "relevanceScore": 75,
  "matchReasons": [
    "Main CPV 72220000 matches profile CPV 72",
    "Keyword 'data platform' in title",
    "Tender deadline in 37 day(s)"
  ],
  "profileName": "default",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-10-05T22:43:47+01:00"
}

(Shortened: every row has all fields, null where the notice doesn't say.) Award rows also carry winnerNames, awardedValue and awardedCurrency. Every run stores a RUN_SUMMARY record in the key-value store: releases and pages per day, failed days (missingDays, sourceStatus), merge statistics, filter counts, matches, rows pushed and bytes downloaded.

Output fields

Group	Fields
Identity	noticeId, ocid, noticeType, noticeCode (e.g. UK4), noticeLabel, isUpdate, tenderStatus, relatedNoticeIds
Content	title, description (shortened), cpvMain, cpvCodes, contractNature, procedureType, legalBasis (Procurement Act 2023 or PCR 2015 …), aboveThreshold, lotCount, suitableForSme, suitableForVcse
Buyer and place	buyerName, buyerType, buyerCity, buyerPostalCode, buyerRegionCode, buyerRegion, buyerWebsite, buyerEmail and buyerContactPoint (functional only), deliveryRegions
Money and dates	estimatedValue (excl. VAT), estimatedValueGross, currency, publicationDate, submissionDeadline, enquiryDeadline, participationDeadline, daysUntilDeadline, isOpen, contractStart, contractEnd
Links	noticeUrl, documentsUrl
Matching	relevanceScore, matchReasons, profileName, retrievedAt
Awards	winnerNames, awardedValue, awardedCurrency

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price
Actor start	USD 0.00005
scored-match: a notice that matched your profile at or above minScore	USD 0.008
notice: a row in an unscored feed (no CPV, keyword or competitor profile)	USD 0.003

Filtered notices, notices below minScore, older merged versions and notices already delivered by an earlier monitor run are never charged. Platform compute is included. You can cap cost with maxResults and with the run's maximum total charge; the Actor stops cleanly when the limit is reached.

Local test runs on 5 Oct 2026 against the live API (inputs in examples/; your numbers depend on the day and profile):

Run	Rows returned	Your cost
Form trial: 7-day IT scan, maxResults 25	25 (33 matched)	USD 0.20
Daily monitor, IT in the North of England, first run (looked back 7 days)	17	USD 0.14
Same monitor, next run	0 new	USD 0.00005
7-day awards, three IT suppliers as competitors	3	USD 0.024
7-day unscored feed, Scotland	114	114 × 0.003 = USD 0.34

A daily monitor for a focused profile typically costs a few US dollars per month. You pay only for notices that matched.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

The input schema is written so that an LLM can call the Actor without guessing: plain-English descriptions, enums, defaults and examples. Add the Actor to the Apify MCP server in Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code or any other MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=actors,lindenwerk/uk-tender-matcher"
    }
  }
}

Then ask, for example: "Find open UK tenders for cyber security services in Wales and the South West from the last 14 days that are suitable for SMEs, and list the five closest deadlines." The agent maps this to:

• mode: backfill, dateFrom: 14 days ago
• cpvCodes: ["72"], keywords: ["cyber security", "penetration testing", "security operations"]
• regions: ["Wales", "South West"], smeSuitableOnly: true
• sortBy: deadline

It can then quote matchReasons to explain each result.

You can also call the Actor through the Apify API (POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/lindenwerk~uk-tender-matcher/run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the Python/JS clients. It connects to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets or Slack through Apify integrations.

Data source, licence and attribution

The Actor processes public procurement notices that UK contracting authorities are legally required to publish.

• Find a Tender (UK central digital platform), Cabinet Office, through the OCDS release package API (https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/api/1.0/ocdsReleasePackages).
• Licence: notice data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/). Attribution: "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0." Publication policy: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-contracting. The data was reshaped and scored by this Actor.
• This is an independent tool, not an official service of the Cabinet Office or any UK government department. Always check the original notice (noticeUrl) and the procurement documents before you bid. The official notice prevails.

GDPR and responsible use

UK notices often name a buyer contact officer with a direct e-mail address and phone number. This Actor drops personal data by default:

• It never outputs phone numbers or contact-person names.
• It keeps a buyer e-mail only if it is clearly a role mailbox (procurement@, tenders@, commercial.team@ …); anything that could be personal (first.last@, initials) is dropped.
• It removes person-like e-mail addresses, phone numbers and Mr/Mrs/Contact: <name> mentions from titles and descriptions.
• Supplier contact details from award notices are never output, only the supplier name as published.

Organisation names (buyers and suppliers) are kept as published. A small share of award suppliers can be sole traders trading under their own name. Use the output to find and bid for tenders and to understand your market, not for contact harvesting or unsolicited marketing.

Limits

• Coverage. Find a Tender has all above-threshold UK notices, and since 24 Feb 2025 also below-threshold notices for new procurements, except below-threshold contracts in Scotland (those stay on Public Contracts Scotland). Below-threshold notices of procurements that started before 24 Feb 2025 are on Contracts Finder, which v0.1 does not read.
• Not every notice states a value, region, SME flag or threshold level. Filters keep notices that don't say (except a region filter, which needs a delivery or buyer region).
• One run covers at most 31 days. For longer histories, run several backfills.
• A very busy day is read up to 6,000 releases (normal days have 300–900); if that ever cuts a day short, the run says so.
• If Find a Tender rate-limits heavily, the run waits as instructed; if it can't finish within its time budget, it delivers the complete days and marks the run PARTIAL DATA with the missing days.

FAQ

How is relevanceScore calculated?

• CPV evidence (main CPV counts more than additional CPVs) and keyword evidence (title hits count double, rare terms weigh more) are combined as 100 × (1 − (1 − cpv) × (1 − keywords)).
• In a profile with both CPV codes and keywords, a CPV-only match scores 50, one title keyword alone about 46, and CPV plus a title keyword about 73.
• matchReasons lists every contribution.

Which deadline is submissionDeadline? The tender submission deadline as published, as an ISO timestamp with the UK offset. For two-stage procedures, participationDeadline holds the request-to-participate deadline, and enquiryDeadline the clarification deadline.

What happens when a buyer extends a deadline? The update arrives as a new release. In monitor mode it isn't re-sent (and not re-charged) if you already received the procurement; in backfill mode you get the newest version with the old notice id in relatedNoticeIds.

Can I monitor several profiles? Yes. Create one saved task per profile, each with its own stateKey.

What does a run with no matches cost? Only the Actor start event (USD 0.00005).

Does it cover the EU or other countries? This Actor is UK only. For Germany and any EU country via TED, see our German & EU Tenders Monitor; for France, the France Tenders Monitor.

Examples

• IT and software tenders in the UK - last 7 days: a published example task with a ready-made input. Open it, adjust the input and run it in your own Apify account.

Other Lindenwerk Data Actors

• German & EU Tenders: Public Procurement Monitor: Ausschreibungen from oeffentlichevergabe.de and TED, deduplicated and scored to your CPV codes and keywords.
• France Tenders Monitor: BOAMP, TED & Marchés Publics: marchés publics from BOAMP and TED in one deduplicated, scored list.
• SAM.gov Government Contract Opportunities Monitor: US federal bids and RFPs from SAM.gov, scored to your NAICS and set-asides.
• Website Technology & Tech Stack Detector: BuiltWith Alternative: CMS, shop system, analytics, consent manager and email provider of any website, in bulk.
• SEO Audit Crawler: Broken Links, llms.txt & AI Bot Check: on-page SEO, broken links, llms.txt and AI crawler check for whole websites.
• PDF to Markdown & RAG Chunks: Document Parser (DOCX/PPTX/XLSX): PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel to clean Markdown with inline tables and page-cited RAG chunks; it reads the procurement documents behind each notice's documentsUrl.

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Made by Lindenwerk Data. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.