Find a Tender Scraper and Contracts Finder

Find a Tender and Contracts Finder notices in one dataset: search UK public procurement opportunities, planning notices and contract awards, with buyers, CPV codes, deadlines and disclosed supplier identifiers. Built for suppliers, bid teams and market analysts who track UK government tenders and public sector contracts.

The Actor helps suppliers and bid teams monitor relevant buying activity without maintaining separate exports for the two portals. It returns the original notice title and description, the buying organisation, the published value and currency, and a link to the notice. Award notices can include a Companies House registration number for each supplier when the official record discloses one. Missing information stays null; the Actor does not invent company identifiers or estimates.

Find a Tender coverage

Choose Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, or both. Find a Tender covers UK procurement notices, including notices under the Procurement Act 2023 and earlier regimes. Contracts Finder provides its published procurement notices in the same output shape. A notice describes a publication or update, rather than an entire procurement history. Planning, tender and award records therefore share one schema while retaining a stage field and the original publication tags.

Tender amendments and cancellations are included in the tender stage. Contract notices, contract updates and implementation releases belong to award. A cancellation flag is separate from the source's status: a cancelled notice can retain a source status such as complete. Keeping these fields separate helps teams distinguish a new opportunity from an amendment or termination.

Input

No input field is required. The default search covers the previous seven days, includes both portals and all stages, and returns up to 100 matching rows. Use max_items to set a total limit from 1 to 10,000. maxItems is an alias; when both limits are supplied, the smaller one applies.

For keyword searches, pass keywords as an array of words or phrases. Matching ignores case and uses OR: one term must occur in the title, description, a lot title or description, or buyer name. The keyword and query aliases accept comma-separated text. This is text matching, so a keyword does not imply that the buyer assigned a particular classification.

Use cpv_codes to match any classification on the notice. Prefixes contain two to eight digits, and an optional check digit is accepted. Trailing zeros after the first two division digits are removed for hierarchical matching: 72000000 searches the 72 family, and 70000000 searches only 70. Use stages to restrict results to planning, tender or award. Each supplied filter group must match, while multiple entries inside a keyword, CPV or region group use OR.

Set date_from and date_to to publication or update boundaries. A date such as 2026-09-30 means a British calendar date, including British Summer Time where applicable. The ending calendar date is included. ISO timestamps must include a timezone; a timestamp in date_to is exclusive. Future windows, reversed boundaries and windows longer than 366 days are rejected. A search ending today covers the hours already elapsed.

regions selects UK delivery regions such as London, Scotland or North West. UK-wide and Any region notices match every regional selection. England-only notices match English regions and UK-wide, but are excluded for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Selecting England includes all English regions. Notices without a disclosed delivery region are excluded when this filter is active; the buyer's address is not substituted. min_value compares disclosed GBP values only. Notices without a value or with another currency are excluded rather than converted. Award values use contract totals where available, otherwise award totals.

Select a portal with portal: both, find_a_tender or contracts_finder. The short values fts and cf also work, and source is an input alias. In output, source always identifies this product and portal identifies the official portal.

A concrete search for the recorded airport technology notice is:

{
  "keywords": ["Quantum Magnetic Sensing"],
  "portal": "find_a_tender",
  "stages": ["tender"],
  "date_from": "2026-09-30",
  "date_to": "2026-09-30",
  "max_items": 10
}

Output

Each dataset row contains notice_id, release_id, ocid, portal, title, description, buyer_name, buyer_id, cpv_codes, value, currency, stage, status, deadline, published_at, url and fetched_at. Additional fields include delivery regions, procurement method, original tags, notice type, VAT treatment and detailed awards. Null indicates information the publication does not disclose.

One actual Find a Tender notice, 092305-2026, is titled “Use of Quantum Magnetic Sensing and Edge-AI in Asset Performance Monitoring in Airports”. It names CONNECTED PLACES CATAPULT as buyer, gives CPV 72212132, and discloses a gross value of GBP 80,000 with a deadline of 2026-10-15T12:00:00+01:00. Award notice 092391-2026 discloses South Farnham Educational Trust with registration number 07652902 and GBP 90,000 in contract value.

The top-level suppliers list provides name, registry_id and jurisdiction. A disclosed Companies House number is normalised to eight characters and jurisdiction GB, allowing a join to the Companies House UK product on those two fields. awards[].suppliers preserves richer identifiers and any disclosed supplier scale. Removed suppliers are excluded.

Example output row

This is a real award row returned for the input {"keywords": ["Teacher Apprenticeship L6"], "portal": "find_a_tender", "date_from": "2026-09-30", "date_to": "2026-09-30", "max_items": 1}:

{
  "source": "uk-public-tenders",
  "country": "GB",
  "fetched_at": "2026-10-05T09:47:21.826117+00:00",
  "row_id": "ocds-h6vhtk-077da2",
  "ocid": "ocds-h6vhtk-077da2",
  "notice_id": "092391-2026",
  "release_id": "092391-2026",
  "portal": "find_a_tender",
  "url": "https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/092391-2026",
  "title": "Teacher Apprenticeship L6",
  "description": "Teacher Apprenticeship training",
  "stage": "award",
  "status": "complete",
  "tags": [
    "award",
    "contract"
  ],
  "notice_type": "UK7",
  "cancelled": false,
  "published_at": "2026-09-30T14:09:14+01:00",
  "deadline": null,
  "buyer_name": "Portsmouth City Council",
  "buyer_id": "GB-PPON-PCNL-5714-PRZV",
  "buyer_scheme": "GB-PPON",
  "buyer_identifier": "PCNL-5714-PRZV",
  "buyer_companies_house_number": null,
  "buyer_region": "UKJ31",
  "cpv_codes": [
    "80500000"
  ],
  "cpv_main": "80500000",
  "regions": [
    "UKJ31"
  ],
  "value": 90000,
  "currency": "GBP",
  "value_includes_vat": true,
  "value_gross": 90000,
  "value_min": null,
  "procurement_method": null,
  "procurement_method_details": "Below threshold - unknown",
  "suitable_for_sme": null,
  "suitable_for_vcse": null,
  "suppliers": [
    {
      "name": "South Farnham Educational Trust",
      "registry_id": "07652902",
      "jurisdiction": "GB"
    }
  ],
  "awards": [
    {
      "id": "1",
      "date": null,
      "value": 90000,
      "currency": "GBP",
      "suppliers": [
        {
          "name": "South Farnham Educational Trust",
          "id": "GB-COH-07652902",
          "companies_house_number": "07652902",
          "identifiers": [
            {
              "scheme": "GB-COH",
              "id": "07652902"
            }
          ],
          "scale": "large"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "related_notice_ids": []
}

A Contracts Finder row has the same shape. For example, notice c786c0ef-fccb-41b3-b66f-13bf8ebdc59c (“On-demand Technology Learning Platform”, buyer STUDENT LOANS COMPANY LIMITED) returns GBP 391,159.41, suitable_for_sme: false and supplier COMPUTACENTER (UK) LIMITED with registry id 01584718.

Use cases for UK government tenders

• Bid pipeline. Run a daily search on your CPV families and regions, and push new tender-stage notices with a deadline into your CRM or a spreadsheet before competitors see them.
• Competitor and incumbent tracking. Filter on the award stage to see who won which public sector contracts, for how much, and when. Renewal dates follow from the award history.
• Lead generation for suppliers and partners. Award winners with a Companies House number are companies that just received public money; join suppliers.registry_id to the Companies House UK product for directors, addresses and filings.
• Market sizing. Sum disclosed GBP values per CPV code, buyer or region to see where UK public procurement spend goes.
• Buyer intelligence. Group notices by buyer_id to learn which councils, NHS bodies or departments buy what, through which procurement method, and whether contracts are flagged as suitable for SMEs.

Find a Tender scraper compared with the alternatives

	This Actor	Find a Tender website	Contracts Finder website	Official OCDS APIs directly
Both portals in one search	Yes	No	No	No, two different APIs
One output schema	Yes	Not applicable	Not applicable	Two different OCDS dialects
Keyword, CPV, stage, region and GBP value filters together	Yes	Partly	Partly	Partly, and differently per API
Companies House supplier number as a join key	Normalised, eight characters	Shown on the notice page	Shown on the notice page	Raw identifier, in varying formats
Pagination, retries and continuation	Handled	Manual	Manual	Your own code
Export to JSON, CSV, Excel or an API	Yes, via the Apify dataset	Search in the browser	Search in the browser	JSON only

Many Store actors cover a single portal. This Actor merges both into one dataset with the same fields and a ready Companies House join key, so a single scheduled run replaces two separate searches.

Deduplication and continuation

With the default dedupe_by_ocid: true, the newest matching notice for a procurement OCID is retained. Set it to false to keep individual releases. The portals do not share procurement identifiers, so similar titles across the two services remain separate. related_notice_ids lists earlier notices observed within the same response; later pages cannot amend a row already returned.

The Actor follows continuation pages automatically. Direct API consumers should repeat unchanged search filters with the returned next_cursor until it is null. Work proceeds by British publication day, newest day first, with Find a Tender before Contracts Finder within each day. The combined dataset is ordered by this traversal, rather than a global comparison of timestamps across portals. partial and warnings report unfinished collection or unavailable sources, and unsuccessful positions remain resumable.

A continuation response can contain no matching notices and still have a next_cursor. Continue with that cursor to finish the search. Empty continuation responses add no billable notices; only delivered dataset rows count toward the tender event.

Pricing

The billing unit is one delivered tender notice. Empty searches deliver no rows and incur no tender event. A repeated procurement excluded by deduplication is not a delivered row and is not charged again. The proposed price is USD 0.004 per delivered notice (USD 4 per 1,000 notices), with no start fee; the Actor's Pricing tab shows the price that applies to your run. Non-paying users receive up to ten matching rows per run, and collection stops when that allowance is filled. Requests below that limit keep their requested size.

FAQ

Can I search both portals together?

Yes. The default portal choice is both. Use the output portal field when comparing sources or preparing separate exports.

Are supplier registration numbers always available?

No. They are returned only when the official OCDS record discloses a GB-COH identifier. A supplier can have a name and another identifier while its Companies House number remains null.

Does a region filter use the buyer's office address?

It uses disclosed delivery regions. A national delivery notice matches regional searches, while a record with no delivery region is excluded.

Can I keep every update to a tender?

Set dedupe_by_ocid to false. Each official release then has its own row identity, while the shared OCID still lets you group the history.

What happens when there are no matching notices?

The Actor finishes with an empty dataset and a no-results message. No tender event is charged. Broaden the keyword, CPV, region or date filters to collect a wider set of publications.

How do I get daily alerts for new UK tenders?

Create a schedule in Apify Console that runs the Actor every morning with your keywords or CPV codes and stages: ["tender"]. Leave date_from and date_to unset so each run searches the previous seven days. Deduplicate notices by OCID in your destination to avoid repeated alerts across overlapping runs. Connect the dataset to email, Slack, Google Sheets or a webhook through an Apify integration.

What is the difference between Find a Tender and Contracts Finder?

Find a Tender is the UK-wide service for notices under the procurement regulations, including the higher-value contracts; Contracts Finder lists public sector contracts in England, including many lower-value opportunities. Many suppliers need both, which is why the default searches both portals and labels each row with its portal.

Do I need an API key for Find a Tender or Contracts Finder?

No. The Actor reads the public notices on your behalf; you only need an Apify account.