UK Public Tender Monitor — Contracts Finder

Watches UK Contracts Finder for new public-sector tender opportunities matching your keyword, CPV codes, minimum value and SME suitability. Each scheduled run emits only tenders published since the last run, with the buyer, value, closing date and a link. Optional webhook POST to Slack, Zapier, Make or n8n.

Who it's for

Buyer	Use
SMEs bidding for government work	Every relevant tender the day it's published, no daily portal-checking
Bid writers / proposal consultants	A qualified pipeline filtered to your clients' sectors
Sales teams selling into the public sector	Early signal that a buyer is going to market
Trade bodies / membership orgs	A curated tender feed as a member benefit
Researchers / journalists	Public-procurement activity by sector, buyer or value band

Quick start

1. No API key — Contracts Finder is free open data.
2. Set a keyword and/or cpvPrefixes for your sector (CPV is the more precise filter — see the list in the input). Optionally set minValueGbp or smeOnly.
3. Run once to seed (firstRunLookbackDays controls the backfill).
4. Schedule it daily. Later runs are incremental.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
keyword	string	—	Broad free-text search. Combine with CPV for precision, or leave empty and filter purely on CPV/value.
cpvPrefixes	string[]	[]	Keep only tenders whose CPV code (or an item's CPV) starts with one of these. Divisions: 45 Construction · 48 Software · 72 IT services · 71 Engineering/architecture · 79 Business services · 80 Education · 85 Health/social · 90 Environmental · 60 Transport · 92 Culture/sport. Use longer codes (e.g. 72200000) to narrow.
minValueGbp	integer	0	Skip tenders with a stated value below this. Tenders with no value are kept only when this is 0.
smeOnly	boolean	false	Keep only tenders flagged suitable for SMEs.
firstRunLookbackDays	integer 1–30	3	First run only: days of history to fetch.
webhookUrl	string	—	POST {source, filter, window, count, tenders[]} each run.
maxResults	integer 1–5000	500	Cap per run.

Output

One dataset item per new tender:

Field	Example
ocid / release_id	"ocds-b5fd17-458c4a19-…"
title	"Managed IT Support Services 2026–2029"
description	(first 2000 chars)
status	"active"
buyer	"East Sussex County Council"
cpv_code / cpv_description	"72500000" / "Computer-related services"
category	"services"
procurement_method	"Open procedure"
value	{ "amount": 250000, "currency": "GBP" } or null
published	"2026-09-02T14:22:34+01:00"
closing_date	"2026-10-01T12:00:00+01:00"
sme_suitable	true
documents_count	2
link	https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/ocds-b5fd17-…
scraped_at	"2026-09-03T09:00:00.000Z"

How incremental mode works

Cross-run state (seen release IDs + last-run time) lives in a named key-value store, uk-tender-monitor-state, namespaced by a hash of keyword + cpvPrefixes

• minValueGbp + smeOnly. Runs after the first fetch from the day before the previous run to today, then drop every release ID already seen. Seen-set capped at 20,000.

Scope note

Contracts Finder covers below-threshold and lower-value UK public procurement plus voluntary notices. High-value / above-threshold tenders are published on the separate Find a Tender Service — a future version of this actor may add it. Contracts Finder has no server-side CPV or value filter, so when no keyword is given the actor scans the whole publication window (a few hundred notices/day) and filters locally.

Local development

npm install
npm test
echo '{"cpvPrefixes":["72","48"],"firstRunLookbackDays":5}' > storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json
npm start

Deploy

$npm i -g apify-cli && apify login && apify push

Data source & licensing

Data from Contracts Finder (contractsfinder.service.gov.uk), a Crown Commercial Service system, in OCDS format, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Related actors

Part of a small suite of UK public-register monitors, same publisher, same pattern (incremental, no duplicates, webhook-ready):

• UK New Company Monitor — new incorporations by SIC / location
• UK Insolvency Notice Monitor — winding-up, administration, bankruptcy (The Gazette)
• UK Food Business Monitor — new food businesses + hygiene-rating changes (FSA)
• UK Company Change Monitor — watchlist diffing: status, charges, officers, filings

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Changelog

• 0.1 — Initial release: keyword + CPV + value + SME filters, incremental dedup, cursor pagination, webhook, transient-error retry.