These terms are a contract between you and KK London (Designs & Fashion) Limited, trading as TenderSignal, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 12968488, whose registered office is at 1 Davies Meadow, East Hanney, Wantage OX12 0GG, VAT number GB371399079, email [email protected] ("we", "us", "our").
Please read them carefully, and save or print a copy for your records. You can download the current version at tendersignal.co.uk/api-terms at any time.
1. About these terms
1.1 When they apply. These terms apply to your use of the TenderSignal application programming interface (the "API") and the Data. They form a contract when you tick the box to accept them and either create an API key or complete checkout for an API Plan. We record the version you accepted and when.
1.2 Business use only. The API is only for businesses. By accepting these terms you confirm that you are acting for the purposes of your business, trade or profession and not as a consumer, and that you have authority to bind the business you name in your account ("you", "your"). We may refuse or end access for anyone who is not acting for business purposes.
1.3 How these terms fit with our other terms. These API Terms add to our Terms of Service at tendersignal.co.uk/terms. If they conflict, these API Terms apply to the API and the Data. Our Privacy Notice at tendersignal.co.uk/privacy explains how we use personal data about you and your users.
1.4 Definitions. In these terms:
(a) "Data" means all information you receive through the API, including Records, fields, classifications, flags, predictions, buyer information and any part, extract or copy of them;
(b) "Record" means one tender, award, renewal or buyer object returned by the API;
(c) "Contact Data" means any name, email address, telephone number or other information about an identifiable individual included in the Data;
(d) "Portal Link" means any link in the Data to a page on a buyer's own website or procurement portal, including the source_url and submission_url fields and links inside descriptions;
(e) "Open Licensed Material" means information in a Record that its original publisher has made available under an open licence, such as the Open Government Licence v3.0 or Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International;
(f) "Plan" means the free Demo, API Starter, API Pro or any custom allowance we agree with you, as described at tendersignal.co.uk/developers;
(g) "Authorised Users" means your employees, and contractors working on your behalf, whom you allow to use the API or the Data for your business;
(h) "Business Day" means a day other than a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday in England.
2. Your account and API keys
2.1 Each API key belongs to the account that created it. You must keep your keys secret and secure. In particular, you must not put keys in web pages, mobile apps or any other code that runs on a device you do not control, in public code repositories, or in URLs.
2.2 You are responsible for everything done with your keys, and for your Authorised Users' compliance with these terms, as if it were your own act.
2.3 If you think a key has been exposed, you must revoke it straight away at tendersignal.co.uk/developers and tell us at [email protected] if you think the Data has been misused.
3. Your licence
3.1 Subject to these terms and to payment of the fees for your Plan, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence, for as long as your Plan is active, to:
(a) access the API using your keys; and
(b) use, copy, store and adapt the Data for your own internal business purposes, including in your own internal tools, CRM, reports, analysis and bid processes.
3.2 Your Authorised Users may use the API and the Data under this licence on your behalf.
3.3 You may use AI tools, including large language models and assistants connected to the API, to search, summarise or analyse the Data for your own internal business purposes, provided the provider of that tool is not permitted to use the Data to train or improve its models or services, and the output is used only in ways these terms allow.
3.4 The free Demo is part of this licence. We may withdraw or change the Demo at any time.
3.5 Some Data comes from third parties. To the extent any Data is owned by someone else, we grant you only the rights we are able to grant.
4. Sharing Data with others
4.1 You may share individual Records with your own clients and professional advisers where this is incidental to services you provide to them, for example sending a client a tender you think they should bid for, or including Records in advice or a bid report you prepare for a client.
4.2 When you share Records under clause 4.1, you must not share more than 50 Records with any one recipient in any calendar month, and you must not share them as a continuous, automated or self-service feed, or through a portal or tool your clients can search themselves.
4.3 Apart from clause 4.1 you must not make the Data, or any part of it, available to anyone other than your Authorised Users.
5. What you must not do
You must not, and must not help or allow anyone else to:
5.1 sell, resell, sublicense, rent, lend or otherwise distribute the Data, or access to the API, to any third party, except as clause 4 allows;
5.2 publish the Data or any substantial part of it, or make it publicly available, whether on a website, in a dataset, in a feed, through an API or service of your own, or by any other means;
5.3 repeatedly or systematically extract or use insubstantial parts of the Data in a way that, taken together, amounts to using a substantial part of it, other than in the normal use of your Plan within these terms;
5.4 share your API keys outside your business, or use more than one account, or let others use your account, to get more than your Plan allows;
5.5 get around, or try to get around, rate limits, record allowances, fair-use limits, plan restrictions, field restrictions or any other technical limit of the API;
5.6 interfere with or disrupt the API or the systems behind it, or try to gain unauthorised access to them, including by probing or load testing without our written consent;
5.7 use the API or the Data in any way that is unlawful, fraudulent, or in breach of anyone else's rights, or to harass any person; or
5.8 suggest that we, or any buyer or publisher of the Data, endorse you or your products.
6. Competing products and AI training
6.1 You must not use the API or the Data, in whole or in part, to create, build, improve or supply any database, dataset, product or service that makes procurement or tender notices, awards, buyer information, renewal predictions or alerts based on them available to others, or that would substitute for TenderSignal.
6.2 You must not use the Data to train, fine-tune, evaluate or improve any machine learning or artificial intelligence model or system, except a model that you use only internally, for your own business, and that is not made available to, or used to provide services to, anyone else.
6.3 You must not put the Data into any third-party service, including an AI service, on terms that allow the provider to keep it for its own purposes or to train or improve its models or services.
6.4 Clause 6 does not stop you from using the Data within the services you provide to your clients as clause 4 allows, such as bid writing, bid management or advice on specific opportunities, provided you do not give your clients access to the Data itself beyond clause 4.
7. Our sources and methods
7.1 You must not use the API or the Data to identify, list, map or reconstruct where or how we obtain our information, including which buyers publish on which websites or portals, or our methods of collecting, classifying, matching, de-duplicating, enriching or predicting data.
7.2 Clause 7.1 does not stop you from following a Portal Link to view, register for or respond to the opportunity it relates to. It does stop you from compiling Portal Links, or the websites or portals they point to, into a list, map or dataset.
7.3 You must not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the API or the systems behind it, or try to discover how they work, except to the extent that applicable law does not allow this restriction.
8. Open data, attribution and your rights in public notices
8.1 Attribution. Some Records contain information published by public bodies under the Open Government Licence v3.0 or the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Every API response contains an attribution statement. Wherever you display or share any Record outside your own systems, as clause 4 allows, you must include, or clearly link to, this statement:
"Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/). Contains Irish public sector data from the Office of Government Procurement licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This information has been modified and combined with other information by TenderSignal."
We may update this statement by changing the attribution field in API responses, and you must then use the updated statement for anything you display or share after the change.
8.2 Your rights in the public notices are not affected. Nothing in these terms limits any right you have to obtain public notices from their original publishers, or to use them under those publishers' own licences or terms. To the extent a Record contains Open Licensed Material, nothing in these terms restricts any right the relevant open licence gives you in that material.
8.3 What these terms do protect. These terms apply to the API and to what we add, including our collection of notices from buyers' own websites and portals, our selection and arrangement of Records, our classifications, de-duplication, buyer matching, hard-to-find flags, renewal predictions and other enrichment, and the Data as a whole.
8.4 Personal data is not open licensed. The Open Government Licence does not cover personal data. Contact Data is covered by clause 10, whatever its source.
9. Our rights
9.1 We and our licensors own all intellectual property rights in the API, its documentation and the Data as supplied by us, including any database right and copyright that exists in them, except the rights in Open Licensed Material and other third-party content, which remain with their owners.
9.2 Except for the licence in clause 3, these terms do not give you any rights in the API or the Data.
9.3 If you send us suggestions or feedback about the API, we may use them freely without paying you.
10. Personal data
10.1 Roles. Some Plans include Contact Data, mostly the work contact details of people who work for public bodies and other buyers. We disclose it to you as an independent controller, and you become an independent controller of the Contact Data you receive. Each of us is separately responsible for complying with data protection law, including the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) and, where they apply to you, the EU GDPR and the e-privacy laws of any other country.
10.2 Permitted purpose. You may use Contact Data only to communicate with the relevant buyer about the specific opportunity, contract or procurement activity to which it relates, including asking questions about a procurement, responding to it, and pre-market engagement the buyer has invited. You must not:
(a) add Contact Data to general marketing, newsletter or prospecting lists, or use it to promote products or services unrelated to that opportunity or contract;
(b) sell, share or disclose Contact Data to anyone other than your Authorised Users;
(c) combine it with other information to build profiles of individuals; or
(d) use it to contact anyone in a way that breaks the rules of a procurement, including any rules in the notice about how and when suppliers may contact the buyer.
10.3 Your obligations. For the Contact Data you receive, you must:
(a) have a lawful basis for your use and give the individuals any information that data protection law requires;
(b) identify yourself in every communication and give a simple way to object to further contact, and stop contacting anyone who objects;
(c) keep it secure, using appropriate technical and organisational measures;
(d) keep it only as long as you need it for the purpose in clause 10.2, and in any event delete it as clause 15 requires;
(e) not transfer it, or allow access to it, from outside the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area or a country that the UK government has recognised as providing adequate protection for personal data, unless you have put in place a transfer mechanism that UK data protection law recognises;
(f) tell us without undue delay, and in any event within 72 hours, if you become aware of any personal data breach affecting Contact Data you received from us; and
(g) help us, at your own cost, to deal with any request, complaint or enquiry from an individual or a regulator that relates to your use of their Contact Data.
10.4 Corrections and objections. If we tell you that an individual has asked for their details to be corrected or removed, or has objected to their use, you must update or delete those details, and stop using them, within 10 Business Days.
10.5 Your own data. We use information about you and your Authorised Users, such as account details and API usage, as described in our Privacy Notice.
11. Plans, allowances and fair use
11.1 Each Plan has a record allowance, a rate limit and a set of available endpoints and fields, as described at tendersignal.co.uk/developers at the time you subscribe or as changed under clause 13.4.
11.2 A Record is counted against your allowance the first time it is returned to your account in a calendar month (UTC). Returning the same Record again in that month does not count again. Allowances reset at 00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month, whatever date your billing period starts. The free Demo allowance is a one-off and does not reset.
11.3 When your allowance is used, the API stops returning new Records until the allowance resets or you change Plan. Unused allowance does not roll over and has no cash value.
11.4 We may apply fair-use limits to Portal Links and Contact Data, including a limit on the number of distinct Records containing a Portal Link returned to your account in a month. If you reach a fair-use limit, we may withhold those fields for the rest of that month. This is not a breach of these terms by us.
11.5 We may monitor use of the API, including the Records returned to your account, to operate it, keep it secure, enforce allowances and fair-use limits, and check compliance with these terms.
11.6 On reasonable notice, and not more than once in any 12 months unless we reasonably suspect a breach, you must give us written information we reasonably ask for to show that you are complying with clauses 4 to 10, including how you store the Data and with whom you have shared it.
12. Prices, payment and VAT
12.1 Prices are shown and charged in pounds sterling and exclude VAT. Where VAT applies you will pay it in addition, at the applicable rate. If you are a business outside the United Kingdom and give us a valid VAT or equivalent tax number, the reverse charge may apply, in which case you must account for any VAT due in your country.
12.2 Paid Plans are billed monthly in advance through our payment provider, Stripe. By subscribing you authorise us to charge your payment method at the start of each billing period until you cancel.
12.3 If a payment fails, we, through Stripe, will retry it. Your access continues while we retry. If the payment is still unpaid when the retries end, we may suspend or end your paid Plan, and your account will return to the Demo allowance, if any of it remains.
12.4 You must pay any bank, card or currency conversion charges your own provider applies.
13. Changing or cancelling your Plan
13.1 Changing Plan. You can move between API Starter and API Pro at any time from tendersignal.co.uk/developers. The change takes effect immediately and Stripe adjusts your next charge pro rata.
13.2 Cancelling. Paid Plans renew monthly until cancelled. You can cancel at any time through "Manage billing" in your account. Your Plan stays active until the end of the billing period you have paid for, and then ends.
13.3 Refunds. Fees are not refundable, including for part months or unused allowance, except under clause 14.4 or where the law requires.
13.4 Price and Plan changes. We may change prices, allowances, rate limits, or which endpoints and fields a Plan includes, by giving you at least 30 days' notice by email. The change applies from your first billing period that starts after the notice ends. If you do not agree, you may cancel before then. We may make a change that is better for you, or that is needed for legal or security reasons, with shorter or no notice.
14. Suspension and termination
14.1 Suspension. We may suspend your access to the API, or to particular endpoints or fields, immediately if:
(a) we reasonably believe that you, or anyone using your keys, has breached clauses 2 or 4 to 10;
(b) your use creates a security risk, or is harming the API, other customers or us;
(c) a payment is overdue as clause 12.3 describes; or
(d) we must do so to comply with the law or a request from a regulator or public body.
Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will tell you why and give you an opportunity to explain or put things right. We will restore access promptly once the reason for the suspension no longer applies.
14.2 Termination by us for breach. We may end these terms and your access by email if you:
(a) commit a material breach of these terms that cannot be put right, or that you do not put right within 14 days of our asking you to;
(b) commit a serious or repeated breach of clauses 4 to 10, in which case we may end them immediately; or
(c) become insolvent, enter administration or liquidation (other than for a solvent reorganisation), or have a receiver appointed, or anything similar happens to you in any country.
If we end these terms under this clause, you are not entitled to any refund.
14.3 Termination by you. You may end these terms at any time by cancelling your Plan under clause 13.2 and revoking your keys.
14.4 Withdrawal of the API. We may withdraw the API, or any Plan, or end these terms for any reason, by giving you at least 30 days' notice by email. If we do, we will refund any fees you have paid for any period after the withdrawal takes effect.
15. When your access ends
15.1 Your licence under clause 3 ends when your Plan ends (and, if you have no paid Plan, when your Demo is withdrawn), or when these terms end.
15.2 Within 30 days after your licence ends you must delete all Data from your systems, except:
(a) Records relating to specific opportunities that you have bid for, registered an interest in or were actively pursuing, and that you keep in your ordinary business records;
(b) Records you have incorporated into your own bid, contract or client documents in the ordinary course of business;
(c) summaries, statistics and analysis you have produced that do not contain Records and from which Records cannot be reconstructed;
(d) copies held in routine back-ups, provided they are overwritten in your normal back-up cycle and in any event within 90 days, and are not restored for use in the meantime; and
(e) copies you are required to keep by law.
15.3 Contact Data is not covered by clauses 15.2(a) and (b) unless you have already corresponded with that individual about the opportunity, in which case you may keep it with that correspondence for as long as you need it for that purpose.
15.4 These terms continue to apply to any Data you keep. If we ask, you must confirm in writing, signed by an authorised person, that you have complied with this clause.
15.5 The following clauses survive the end of these terms: 4 to 10, 15, 16.3, 17, 18 and 21, together with any other clause that by its nature is intended to survive, and any rights or liabilities that have built up before the end.
16. The Data and the API
16.1 The Data comes largely from notices published by third parties, and some of it, including hard-to-find flags and renewal predictions, is our own assessment based on that information. We work to keep the Data accurate and up to date, but we do not promise that it is complete, accurate or current, that any prediction will prove correct, or that the API will meet your particular needs.
16.2 You must check important details, especially deadlines, values, eligibility and submission requirements, with the buyer or in the official procurement documents before relying on them.
16.3 Except as set out in these terms, the API and the Data are provided "as is" and "as available", and all warranties, conditions and other terms implied by statute or common law are excluded to the fullest extent the law allows.
16.4 We do not promise that the API will be available at all times or free from interruption or errors. We may change the API, including by adding, renaming or removing fields or endpoints. We will give you at least 30 days' notice of any change that is likely to break an existing integration, except where a change is needed for legal or security reasons, or to protect our sources, in which case we will give as much notice as is reasonable.
17. Our liability to you
17.1 Nothing in these terms limits or excludes any liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
17.2 Subject to clause 17.1, we are not liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise, for any:
(a) loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, opportunity or anticipated savings;
(b) loss arising from a missed deadline, an unsuccessful bid, or a decision you or anyone else made in reliance on the Data;
(c) loss or corruption of data, or wasted management or staff time; or
(d) indirect or consequential loss.
17.3 Subject to clause 17.1, our total liability to you under or in connection with these terms, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise, for all claims arising in any period of 12 months is limited to the greater of £500 and the total fees you paid us for the API in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the first claim in that period.
18. Your liability to us
18.1 You will indemnify us against all losses, damages, costs (including reasonable legal fees) and expenses we incur as a result of any claim by a third party, or any investigation or action by a regulator, arising from your breach of clauses 4 to 10, or from your use of Contact Data.
18.2 We will tell you promptly of any claim under clause 18.1, take reasonable steps to limit our losses, and not settle the claim without consulting you.
18.3 The exclusions in clause 17.2 apply to your liability as well as ours, except that they do not apply to your liability for breach of clauses 2, 4 to 10 or 15, under clause 18.1, or to pay our fees. Clause 17.3 does not apply to your liability.
19. Changes to these terms
19.1 We may update these terms. We will email you at least 30 days before a material change takes effect, and publish the new version at tendersignal.co.uk/api-terms with its version number. We may make changes that are not material, or that are needed for legal or security reasons, with shorter notice.
19.2 We may ask you to accept the new version before you create new keys or change Plan. If you keep using the API after a change takes effect, the new version applies. If you do not agree, you may cancel before the change takes effect, and if you have paid for a period after that date we will refund the fees for it.
20. Events outside our control
Neither of us is liable for any failure or delay in performing these terms (other than a payment obligation) caused by events outside our reasonable control, including failures of third-party hosting, network or payment providers, changes to or withdrawal of source websites, cyber attacks we could not reasonably have prevented, industrial action, epidemic, war, or acts of government. If such an event stops us providing the API for more than 30 days in a row, either of us may end these terms by email, and we will refund any fees paid for the period after that date.
21. General
21.1 Transfer. You may not transfer, assign or subcontract your rights or obligations under these terms without our written consent. We may transfer our rights and obligations to another organisation that takes over the API or our business, and will tell you if we do.
21.2 Entire agreement. These API Terms, our Terms of Service and the Plan details shown when you subscribe are the whole agreement between us about the API and the Data. Neither of us has relied on any statement that is not set out in them, but nothing in this clause limits liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
21.3 Third-party rights. No one other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms, whether under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 or otherwise.
21.4 Notices. We will send notices to the email address on your account, and you must keep it up to date. You must send notices to [email protected]. A notice sent by email is treated as received at the time of sending if that is between 9:00 and 17:00 UK time on a Business Day, and otherwise at 9:00 on the next Business Day. Notices of a legal claim must also be sent by post to the other party's registered office.
21.5 Waiver. If we do not insist on our rights straight away, we have not given them up.
21.6 Severance. If any part of these terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, it will be treated as modified to the minimum extent needed to make it enforceable, and the rest of these terms stays in force.
21.7 Relationship. Nothing in these terms creates a partnership, joint venture or agency between us.
21.8 Governing law. These terms, and any dispute or claim (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of or in connection with them, are governed by the law of England and Wales.
21.9 Jurisdiction. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with these terms. This does not stop either of us from seeking urgent interim relief in any court.
22. Contact
Questions about these terms: [email protected], or by post to KK London (Designs & Fashion) Limited (trading as TenderSignal), 1 Davies Meadow, East Hanney, Wantage OX12 0GG.