SAM.gov & UK Contracts Finder Tenders Scraper: US federal and UK public procurement

Search US federal contract opportunities on SAM.gov and UK public tenders on Contracts Finder through their official APIs, and export clean notices: title, buyer, country, dates, deadlines, value, CPV/NAICS, procedure type and a direct notice URL. Filter by keywords and publication window, or turn on Only new notices for a daily tender alert feed. ~$2.50 per 1,000 notices; empty or failed runs and already-seen notices are free (apart from the tiny start fee).

What you get from the SAM.gov & UK Contracts Finder Tenders Scraper

• Official sources only: SAM.gov Get Opportunities Public API and the UK Contracts Finder OCDS Search under the Open Government Licence v3.0: no HTML scraping.
• One Actor, two markets, one schema: pull US and UK public procurement together, or run either source alone. Fields include source, noticeId, title, description, publication and deadline dates, isOpen, buyer, value, currency, CPV/NAICS, procedure and notice type, notice URL.
• Tender alerts built in: enable Only new notices and schedule the Actor; each run returns only notices you have not seen under that state key (already-seen notices stay free).

Sample output (JSON)

{
  "source": "contracts-finder",
  "noticeId": "ocds-b5fd17-eba856aa-b8d6-4d73-b794-8420ea10a3d9",
  "title": "CA18543 - Northampton College - Media planning & Buying Services",
  "publicationDate": "2026-10-09",
  "deadlineDate": "2026-11-04",
  "isOpen": true,
  "buyerName": "Northampton College",
  "buyerCountry": "United Kingdom",
  "estimatedValue": 250000,
  "currency": "GBP",
  "cpvOrNaics": "79340000",
  "procedureType": "Open procedure",
  "noticeType": "tender",
  "noticeUrl": "https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/d2301388-4ca6-48fc-805d-eb2e5793377e"
}

Download as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or send it to Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack, webhooks or the Apify API. Run totals and per-source stats are saved to the SUMMARY record in the key-value store.

How to configure the SAM.gov & UK Contracts Finder Tenders Scraper

1. Pick Sources: UK Contracts Finder (no key), SAM.gov (needs a free public API key), or both.
2. Optional: keywords, last N days (default 7), max notices (default 50), only open, Contracts Finder stages, SAM NAICS/state/procurement type.
3. For SAM.gov: create a free account at sam.gov, open Account Details, generate a public API key, paste it into SAM.gov public API key.
4. Run, or schedule daily with Only new notices on.

Example input: UK Contracts Finder only (no SAM key)

{
  "sources": ["contracts-finder"],
  "keywords": ["software"],
  "publishedWithinDays": 14,
  "maxResults": 50,
  "cfStages": ["tender"]
}

Example input: both sources with alerts

{
  "sources": ["sam.gov", "contracts-finder"],
  "keywords": ["cybersecurity"],
  "publishedWithinDays": 7,
  "maxResults": 100,
  "samApiKey": "YOUR_SAM_PUBLIC_API_KEY",
  "onlyNew": true,
  "stateKey": "cyber-us-uk"
}

Setting	Default	Notes
sources	contracts-finder	sam.gov, contracts-finder, or both
keywords	none	Match title (and UK description); case-insensitive
publishedWithinDays	7	Or set published from/to dates
maxResults	50	Cap across selected sources
onlyOpen	false	Keep notices whose deadline is today or later
includeDescription	true	Truncated description when the API returns it
onlyNew / stateKey	off / default	Incremental alerts; one key per saved search
samApiKey	empty	Required for SAM.gov; skip SAM if empty
samNaicsCode / samState / samPtype	none	Optional SAM.gov filters
cfStages	tender	planning, tender, award, implementation

Common use cases

• Bid and BD teams: daily feed of new US federal and UK public opportunities in your keywords or NAICS/CPV area.
• Lead generation: contracting authorities that are actively buying, with notice links.
• Market intelligence: track awards and open solicitations across both markets in one pipeline.
• Tender portals and consultants: feed your CRM or alerting product from official APIs.

Pricing (pay per notice, failures free)

• Notice (notice): $0.0025 per notice saved to your dataset (~$2.50 per 1,000), $0.00225 on Silver and $0.002 on Gold.
• Free: notices skipped as already seen (Only new), duplicates in a run, and runs that save nothing (apart from the tiny actor-start fee).

Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops gracefully when it is reached. See the Pricing tab for current tier discounts.

Limitations

• SAM.gov requires your own free public API key. Without it, the Actor skips SAM.gov and still returns UK Contracts Finder results when that source is selected.
• SAM.gov date ranges must be at most one year (API rule). This Actor defaults to the last 7 days.
• Contracts Finder keyword matching is applied client-side on title/description after the official date/stage search.
• Values and descriptions are only as complete as the publishing authority's notice.
• Respect API rate limits; Contracts Finder may return HTTP 403 if you request too aggressively (the Actor backs off and retries).

Licence / legal

• UK Contracts Finder: public sector information under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Attribution: Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• SAM.gov: this Actor uses only the Get Opportunities Public API. It does not scrape the SAM.gov website (scraping is prohibited in the SAM.gov Terms of Use). Share only data from the public API. U.S. federal government works are generally not protected by copyright in the U.S.; cite SAM.gov / GSA.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This Actor works as a tool for AI agents through the Apify MCP server at https://mcp.apify.com. Connect Claude, Cursor, VS Code, n8n or any other MCP client to https://mcp.apify.com?tools=tinyrex/us-uk-tenders-scraper and ask, for example: "Find UK software tenders from the last 14 days". Results come back as structured JSON at the same pay-per-notice price; empty or failed lookups stay free.

FAQ

How do I scrape SAM.gov contract opportunities? Add your free SAM.gov public API key, set Sources to include sam.gov, add keywords or NAICS filters, and run. Opportunities come from the official public API only; this Actor does not scrape the SAM.gov HTML site.

How do I get UK Contracts Finder tenders without an API key? Set Sources to contracts-finder only. No key is required. Keyword and stage filters (default: tender) apply to the official OCDS Search API.

Can I get daily US and UK tender alerts? Yes. Enable Only new notices, set a State key, and schedule the Actor daily. The first run is the baseline; later runs return only new notices, and already-seen notices are free.

Do I need API keys? Only for SAM.gov (free public key from sam.gov Account Details). Contracts Finder needs none.

Is this legal? Yes for the intended use: official public APIs, OGL (UK) and public-domain / government-work norms for SAM public opportunity data. Do not scrape the SAM.gov HTML site.

How fresh is the data? Both portals publish continuously; a daily schedule with Only new notices catches new opportunities.

📘 Step-by-step guide with Python, JavaScript, curl and MCP examples: How to export US federal (SAM.gov) and UK (Contracts Finder) tenders to CSV or JSON

Related actors

• TED EU Tenders Scraper: EU public tenders and awards from TED.
• EU Grants Scraper: Horizon Europe and other EU funding calls.
• TenderNed NL Tenders Scraper: Dutch public tenders (CC0).
• Contact Details Extractor: emails, phones and socials from buyer websites.