UK Public Tenders Feed (Contracts Finder + Find a Tender, unofficial)

Get UK public-sector tenders and contract awards as clean, structured data. This actor reads the official APIs of the two UK government procurement services, Contracts Finder and Find a Tender. It merges notices that appear on both and returns one tidy row per notice. Filter by keyword, CPV code, value, region and date. You can also run it daily so you only see notices you haven't seen before.

• Both services in one feed, with cross-service duplicates merged.
• Around 600 new notices a day across the UK; the default run returns the 100 newest.
• Organisation data only: personal contact details are removed (see Privacy below).
• Unofficial and independent (see Data source, licence and attribution).

What data can I get from UK tenders?

Each row is one notice (one procurement process). Fields include:

Field	What it holds
title, description	What is being bought (contact lines redacted)
stage, status	planning, tender, award (and updates); active, complete…
buyer	Buying organisation: name, registry ID, town, region
cpvCodes, cpvDescriptions	Common Procurement Vocabulary codes and names
valueAmount, valueAmountGross, currency	Estimated or awarded value (GBP)
tenderDeadline, enquiryDeadline	When bids and questions are due
contractStart, contractEnd, lotCount	Contract period and number of lots
suitableForSme, suitableForVcse, procurementMethod, legalBasis	Procedure details
awardDate, awardValueTotal, suppliers[]	Who won (organisation name, ID, size; individuals' names withheld)
noticeUrl, submissionUrl	Links to the official notice and the bid portal
alsoPublishedOn	Set when the same notice is on both services
licence, attribution	Open Government Licence v3.0 statement

Sample output

A real notice from a test run on 20 October 2026, shortened:

{
  "source": "Find a Tender",
  "noticeUrl": "https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/099215-2026",
  "stage": "tender",
  "releaseDate": "2026-10-20T17:41:15+01:00",
  "title": "TENDER FOR THE COLLECTION AND RECYCLING OF WASTE TIMBER Ref: 2627 TNDR EP 004A",
  "mainProcurementCategory": "services",
  "procurementMethodDetails": "Open procedure",
  "cpvCodes": ["90000000", "90500000", "90514000", "03416000"],
  "valueAmount": 780000,
  "valueAmountGross": 936000,
  "currency": "GBP",
  "tenderDeadline": "2026-11-17T12:00:00+00:00",
  "lotCount": 2,
  "buyer": { "name": "Fermanagh and Omagh District Council", "locality": "Enniskillen", "region": "UKN0G" },
  "suppliers": [],
  "licence": "https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/"
}

How do I get UK tenders in 5 steps?

1. Click Try for free (or Start) on this page and sign in to Apify. A free account is enough to try it.
2. Type a few keywords (e.g. software) and/or CPV codes (e.g. 72 for IT services, 45 for construction).
3. Choose a date window under From / To: 2 days, 7 days or an ISO date such as 2026-10-01.
4. Click Start and wait about a minute. Results appear in the Output tab.
5. Download as Excel, CSV or JSON, or open Schedules to run it every morning with Only new since last run switched on.

Who is it for?

• Bid writers and sales teams: a morning list of new opportunities in their sector, sent to Slack, email or a CRM.
• Market researchers: who buys what, how often and at what value.
• Competitor tracking: which suppliers are winning awards, and from which buyers.

How much does it cost to get UK tender data?

You pay only for the notices returned: $4.00 per 1,000 notices ($0.004 each) on the base tier. Higher Apify plans pay $3.50 or $3.00 per 1,000.

• There is no separate platform-usage charge, and no charge when nothing matches.
• Apify's free plan includes $5 of monthly credit, which covers about 1,250 notices a month at the base price.
• Example: a daily alert that returns about 50 matching notices costs about $0.20 a day.
• Set Maximum cost per run in Apify, and the actor stops cleanly when it reaches it.

Input options

• Keywords: a notice matches if any keyword appears in its title or description.
• CPV codes: prefix match. 72000000 matches every IT-services code; 48 matches software packages.
• Stages: planning, tender, award.
• From / To: an ISO date or time, or relative (12 hours, 7 days). The default is the last 3 days.
• Max results: default 100 (newest first), so a default run costs at most $0.40.
• Fast mode: at most 20 notices from the last day, typically in under 30 seconds (see AI agents below).
• More filters: value range (GBP), delivery regions, SME-suitable only, and which services to search.
• Daily alerts: Only new since last run remembers what you've already received. Use a different state key for each saved search.
• Advanced: merging and de-duplication, politeness delay, and the rate-limit wait budget.

Integrations: Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, n8n

Like every Apify actor, this one works with Apify's built-in integrations:

• Schedules: run it daily or hourly.
• Google Sheets, Slack and email: add an integration on the actor or task so new results are sent automatically after each run.
• Zapier, Make and n8n: use the Apify app or node to start runs and pick up the dataset.
• Webhooks and API: start runs and fetch results from your own code (Python, JavaScript or plain HTTP).

Can AI agents use it (MCP)?

Yes. AI assistants can find and run this actor through Apify's MCP server and the Apify API.

• For quick answers, use fast mode. It returns up to 20 newest notices from the last day and typically finishes in under 30 seconds: {"fastMode": true, "keywords": ["software"]}
• Set a maximum cost per run (maxTotalChargeUsd) so an agent can never spend more than you intend.
• The input fields and output schema describe every option and field, so agents can build their own queries.

FAQ

Is this an official government service? No. It is an independent tool that reads the services' public APIs. Always check the official notice (noticeUrl) before you bid.

Does it include contact names, e-mails or phone numbers? No. Contact points and street addresses are dropped, and contact lines inside descriptions are redacted.

How fresh is the data? As fresh as the services themselves: each run reads the live APIs.

Why did I get "partial results"? Both services sometimes ask busy clients to pause. The actor always waits as asked, up to the run's wait budget. If a service is still limiting after that, you get what was collected, clearly flagged in the status message and in RUN_SUMMARY (partial: true). The Only new since last run bookmark is not moved forward, so the next run fills the gap.

Can I backfill months of data? Yes. Set From to an earlier date and raise Max results. Long windows take longer because of the services' rate limits. The actor searches them in 3-day parts, newest first, and saves results as it goes. If the run gets close to its timeout, it stops, keeps what it found and marks the run as partial (RUN_SUMMARY.timedOut). You only pay for results you get. For 30–90 day backfills, filter by keyword or CPV, or give the run a longer timeout.

Are Scottish and Welsh tenders included? Notices that appear on Contracts Finder or Find a Tender are included. Tenders published only on regional portals are not.

Something isn't working? Open an issue on the Issues tab and include the run link; we aim to reply within a few days.

Speed and reliability

• Requests go one at a time, at least 1 second apart, and the actor honours 429/503 Retry-After. It uses no proxy rotation.
• Contracts Finder signals "too many requests" with HTTP 403 and asks clients to wait 5 minutes. The actor then stops reading that service for the run and keeps the other one.
• If both services are unavailable and nothing was found, the run fails with a clear message and nothing is charged.

Data source, licence and attribution

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

• Data comes from the official OCDS APIs of Contracts Finder and Find a Tender (Crown Commercial Service / Cabinet Office). It is not scraped from web pages.
• Each record includes the attribution and licence link. If you republish the data, keep that attribution, as the OGL requires.

Unofficial: this actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the UK Government, Crown Commercial Service, the Cabinet Office or GOV.UK.

• Data is provided "as is". Always check the official notice (the noticeUrl field) before bidding.

Privacy

This actor is built to output organisation information only:

• Named contact persons, contact e-mails, phone numbers and street addresses are removed.
• E-mail addresses, phone numbers and contact-instruction lines inside notice descriptions are redacted.
• Supplier names are shown only when the supplier is clearly an organisation (a registry ID such as a Companies House number, a legal form such as "Ltd", "LLP", "PLC" or "CIC", a public-body word such as "Council" or "NHS", or a supplier declared "large" on Find a Tender). Trade words such as "Taxis", "Transport", "Cleaning", "Services" or "Group" do not count. Every other supplier is shown as [individual supplier - name withheld], with nameWithheld: true and no ID or town, and the name is also removed from the notice's title and description. When in doubt, the name is withheld.
• Route-level passenger transport notices (for example individual home-to-school taxi routes) get a generic title such as "Home-to-school transport contract (route details withheld)", and their description is replaced with a short note, because pick-up areas, destinations, times and seat details could relate to a child. Buyer, value, dates and CPV codes are kept, and routeDetailsWithheld is true. The full notice is still on the official site.
• House and flat numbers are removed from address-like text (e.g. "12 High Street" becomes "High Street"), and full postcodes are shortened to the outward code (e.g. BN7).
• These filters are automatic and can't be perfect: a notice may still mention a person in free text. You are the controller of any personal data you process, so handle it under UK GDPR.