UK Public Sector Tenders (Contracts Finder) – OCDS

Get UK government tenders, contract awards and procurement pipeline notices from Contracts Finder (the UK government's official notice service for public sector contracts over £12,000, run by the Cabinet Office / Crown Commercial Service) as clean, structured data: buyer, CPV categories, estimated value (GBP), submission deadline, region / postcode, procurement method, documents and the notice URL. The actor uses the official OCDS API (Open Contracting Data Standard 1.1) — no scraping — and the data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0, which allows commercial reuse with attribution. Contact details of buyer staff are masked by default. Runs in one click with sensible defaults (open tenders published in the last 7 days); monitor mode returns only what changed since the last run.

What you get

One record per contracting process (OCDS ocid), in the same TenderRecord schema as the other tender actors of this studio, plus Contracts Finder-specific fields.

Field	Type	Example
source	string	"uk-contracts-finder"
sourceId / ocid	string	"ocds-b5fd17-0ef77028-82a3-4664-830f-1408fc3afa4e" (stable across tender → amendment → award)
noticeId / releaseId	string	Contracts Finder notice id / OCDS release id
url	url	https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/2fc5a2e0-854f-43ec-b88b-0eafbb58d740
title, titleEn	string	"Contract for the Provision of Hire Vehicles"
description	string/null	≤600-char excerpt, e-mails/phones redacted
buyer	object	{ "name": "Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority", "unit": null, "type": "authority" }
buyerName	string	flat copy of buyer.name for tables
buyer.type	enum	municipality (councils) · hospital (NHS) · ministry (central government) · authority (agencies, police, regulators) · gov-company (Ltd/plc buyers) · other (schools, universities, charities)
stage / releaseTag	enum / string[]	tender · award · planning / e.g. ["tenderAmendment"]
tenderType	enum	public (open/restricted competition) · framework (framework or DPS call-off) · exemption (limited/direct award) · rfi (planning / early engagement) · other
tenderNumber	string/null	buyer's reference, e.g. "MT238218"
status	enum	open · closed · awarded · cancelled · unknown (deadline vs. now; award notices are awarded)
publishedAt, updatedAt	ISO datetime	notice publication / this release's date
deadlineAt	ISO datetime/null	tender.tenderPeriod.endDate, e.g. "2026-10-26T12:00:00Z"
valueGBP, minValueGBP	number/null	estimated (or awarded) value in GBP
categories / cpvCodes	string[]	["34100000 Motor vehicles"] / ["34100000"]
procurementMethod, procurementMethodDetails	string/null	"open" / "Open procedure (below threshold)"
mainProcurementCategory	string/null	goods · services · works
suitableForSme, suitableForVcse	boolean/null	Contracts Finder suitability flags
location	object	{ "city": "Liverpool", "region": "North West" } (published region, else derived from the postcode area)
deliveryRegions, deliveryCountries, postcode, postcodeArea		as published in items[].deliveryAddresses[]
contractPeriod	object	{ "startDate": "2026-12-01T00:00:00Z", "endDate": "2029-11-30T23:59:59Z" }
documents	array	[{ "title": "Opportunity notice on Contracts Finder", "url": "…" }, { "title": "Bidding documents", "url": "…" }]
awards	array	award notices: [{ "supplierName": "D+B FACADES UK LTD", "supplierId": "GB-CFS-338591", "supplierMasked": false, "valueGBP": 714000, "date": "2026-05-16T00:00:00+01:00", "status": "active" }]
contact	object/null	{ "name": null, "email": null, "role": "Procurement Support", "unit": null } (masked; generic role kept)
changeType	enum	new · updated · deadline-changed · awarded · closed · unchanged (monitor mode)
source_url	url	the notice page
fetched_at	ISO datetime	2026-09-24T17:12:03.101Z
actor_version	string	0.1

{
  "source": "uk-contracts-finder",
  "sourceId": "ocds-b5fd17-0ef77028-82a3-4664-830f-1408fc3afa4e",
  "url": "https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/2fc5a2e0-854f-43ec-b88b-0eafbb58d740",
  "title": "Contract for the Provision of Hire Vehicles",
  "titleEn": "Contract for the Provision of Hire Vehicles",
  "buyer": { "name": "Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority", "unit": null, "type": "authority" },
  "buyerName": "Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority",
  "tenderType": "public",
  "tenderNumber": "MT238218",
  "status": "open",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-24T17:45:10+01:00",
  "updatedAt": "2026-09-24T17:45:10+01:00",
  "deadlineAt": "2026-10-26T12:00:00Z",
  "categories": ["34100000 Motor vehicles"],
  "cpvCodes": ["34100000"],
  "location": { "city": "Liverpool", "region": "North West" },
  "estimatedValueILS": null,
  "valueGBP": 48600,
  "minValueGBP": null,
  "procurementMethod": "open",
  "procurementMethodDetails": "Open procedure (below threshold)",
  "mainProcurementCategory": "services",
  "suitableForSme": true,
  "suitableForVcse": false,
  "contractPeriod": { "startDate": "2026-12-01T00:00:00Z", "endDate": "2029-11-30T23:59:59Z" },
  "deliveryRegions": ["North West"],
  "deliveryCountries": ["United Kingdom"],
  "postcode": "L3 1BP",
  "postcodeArea": "L",
  "documents": [{ "title": "Opportunity notice on Contracts Finder", "url": "https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/2fc5a2e0-854f-43ec-b88b-0eafbb58d740" }],
  "awards": [],
  "contact": { "name": null, "email": null, "role": "Chief Executive", "unit": null },
  "contactTelephone": null,
  "ocid": "ocds-b5fd17-0ef77028-82a3-4664-830f-1408fc3afa4e",
  "noticeId": "2fc5a2e0-854f-43ec-b88b-0eafbb58d740",
  "releaseId": "2fc5a2e0-854f-43ec-b88b-0eafbb58d740-915418",
  "releaseTag": ["tender"],
  "stage": "tender",
  "changeType": "new",
  "source_url": "https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/2fc5a2e0-854f-43ec-b88b-0eafbb58d740",
  "fetched_at": "2026-09-24T17:12:03.101Z",
  "actor_version": "0.1"
}

Who uses it

• Suppliers, SMEs and bid teams watching for new public sector opportunities in their CPV categories, regions or value bands (facilities management, construction, IT, consultancy, social care, …) with the submission deadline in one field.
• Bid aggregators, tender portals and procurement analysts who need Contracts Finder notices alongside other national sources in one normalized schema (tenderType, buyer.type, deadlineAt, valueGBP).
• Market intelligence and sales teams tracking contract awards (stages: ["award"]): who won what, for how much, from which council, NHS trust or department.
• AI agents (MCP) and workflow tools (Make, Zapier, n8n): mode=monitor on a daily schedule gives a clean feed of new, amended, closed and awarded notices.

Pricing

Pay per result: $0.004 per notice (event record-extracted). run-started is free. No charge for runs with no matching notices. Set maxItems to cap your spend. In monitor mode you pay only for changed records.

Input

Parameter	Default	Notes
query	""	Text filter on title/description (client-side substring)
stages	["tender"]	Any of tender, award, planning
publishedFrom	last 7 days	YYYY-MM-DD; server-side filter on the Contracts Finder publication date
publishedTo	now	YYYY-MM-DD
openOnly	true	Keep only notices with a future deadline (planning notices count as open). Turn off for awards
regions	[]	Region names ("London", "Scotland", "North West") or postcode areas ("SW", "M", "EH")
buyers	[]	Buyer name substrings ("NHS", "Ministry of Defence")
minValueGBP, maxValueGBP	–	GBP bounds; notices without a published value are dropped when set
mode	search	monitor = only changes vs. the previous run's STATE
maxItems	100	Max 2000
maskContacts	true	Contact name/e-mail/phone removed, text redacted, individual-looking supplier names masked, raw release dropped
proxy	none	Contracts Finder works without a proxy
maxPages	25	Advanced: safety cap on 100-notice API pages
stateStore	–	Advanced: named key-value store for monitor STATE (persists across runs)

Monitor mode

mode=monitor fetches every notice in the window (publishedFrom/publishedTo, stages, query, regions, buyers, value bounds), compares each contracting process (ocid) with the STATE saved by the previous run (fingerprint of title, status, deadline, release date, documents) and pushes only records whose changeType is new, updated, deadline-changed, awarded or closed. Include award in stages to get awarded transitions for tenders you saw earlier; openOnly narrows new/updated records to open ones, while closures and awards are always reported. Schedule it daily; the key-value store key RUN_SUMMARY holds the counts. On the Apify platform the run's default key-value store is per run, so set stateStore (e.g. uk-contracts-finder-state) or run from a saved task to keep state between runs.

Use from code, Make/Zapier/n8n, or AI agents (MCP)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/signalrows~tenders-uk-contracts-finder/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"stages": ["tender"], "regions": ["London"], "minValueGBP": 100000, "maxItems": 50}'

This actor is also exposed as a tool on the Apify MCP server, so AI agents can call it directly (e.g. "list open UK council tenders for cleaning services above £100k published this week").

Limits and fair use

• Source: the official Contracts Finder OCDS Search API (/Published/Notices/OCDS/Search, 100 notices per request, cursor pagination), ≤1 request/second, one request at a time, identifying User-Agent Signalrows/0.1 and From: header. Respects robots.txt and Retry-After.
• The API filters by publication date and stage only; query, regions, buyers and value bounds are applied client-side, so a narrow filter over a long window can need many pages — use publishedFrom and maxPages to bound a run.
• Contracts Finder covers England-wide and cross-UK notices published by central government, councils, NHS bodies and other public buyers above £12,000 (central government) / £30,000 (wider public sector). Above-threshold notices are also on Find a Tender (a separate actor). Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own national portals.
• location.region is the region published by the buyer or, if absent, an approximation from the postcode area. buyer.type is a heuristic on the buyer's name.
• Deadlines and values are as published in the notice; always check the notice page and the buyer's portal before submitting a bid. Attached documents are linked (documents[]), not downloaded.
• Collects only publicly available data. Contact details of buyer staff are personal data outside the Open Government Licence and are masked unless you set maskContacts=false for a declared, lawful purpose. Supplier names on award notices are kept when they are clearly organisations; names that may be individuals (sole traders) are masked (supplierMasked: true).
• Source structure changes are monitored daily and fixed automatically; if a run fails, please open an issue.

Licence and attribution

Notice data is published by the Cabinet Office under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (the OCDS package's license field). You may copy, publish, adapt and exploit it commercially and non-commercially, provided you acknowledge the source. Include this statement (or a link to it) in your product:

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Source: Contracts Finder (Crown Commercial Service / Cabinet Office). The licence does not grant any right to suggest official status or endorsement.

Data removal / contact

If you represent the source or a buyer and want content excluded, contact signalrows.data@gmail.com. Requests are handled within 24 hours.

Development

• Shared schema/normalizer/masking/diff code lives in ventures-src/apify/shared/tenders and is vendored into src/shared/tenders; run scripts\sync-shared.cmd (or npm run sync-shared) after changing the shared module — never edit the vendored copy.
• npm test runs offline tests on redacted OCDS fixtures (test/fixtures). LIVE=1 npm run test:live performs a ≤2-request smoke test against the live API.
• apify run (input in storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json) writes records to storage/datasets/default and RUN_SUMMARY to the default key-value store.