Both are UK government procurement portals, but they serve different purposes. Here's when to use each one.
If you're new to UK public sector procurement, the existence of multiple government portals can be confusing. The two most important for English and UK-wide opportunities are Contracts Finder and Find a Tender Service (FTS). They look similar, but serve different purposes.
What it is: A free portal run by the UK government for publishing contract opportunities in England.
Value thresholds: Contracts over £12,000 (central government) or £30,000 (sub-central authorities like councils and NHS trusts) should be published here.
What's included:
Who publishes here: Central government departments, local authorities, NHS trusts, police forces, fire services, and other English public bodies.
Key features:
What it is: The UK's replacement for the EU's Official Journal (OJEU/TED) for above-threshold procurements, launched in January 2021 after Brexit.
Value thresholds: Only contracts exceeding specific values must be published here:
What's included:
Who publishes here: Any UK contracting authority with an above-threshold procurement.
| Feature | Contracts Finder | Find a Tender |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | England only | Whole UK |
| Minimum value | £12,000/£30,000 | £139,688+ |
| Post-Brexit role | Unchanged | Replaced OJEU |
| Registration | Optional | Optional |
| Contract types | All above threshold | Above-threshold only |
| Alert system | Basic email alerts | Email notifications |
The short answer: both.
If you only watch Contracts Finder, you'll miss higher-value UK-wide opportunities that appear on Find a Tender. If you only watch FTS, you'll miss the large volume of lower-value contracts on Contracts Finder.
In practice, some contracts appear on both portals — a council might publish an above-threshold contract on both Contracts Finder and FTS. But many contracts only appear on one.
Neither Contracts Finder nor Find a Tender covers Scottish or Welsh procurement comprehensively:
The fundamental problem for suppliers is fragmentation. A single business might need to check five or six portals daily to get complete coverage. Each portal has different search interfaces, different categorisation systems, and different alert mechanisms.
This is exactly the problem TenderSignal solves. We aggregate opportunities from Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland, and other sources into a single feed, matched to your business profile. Instead of checking multiple portals, you receive one daily digest with every relevant opportunity.
Register on both portals even if you use a monitoring service — it's useful to have direct access when you need to download full tender documents.
Understand threshold values so you know which portal is likely to have the contracts you're after.
Look at awarded contracts on both portals to understand who's winning work similar to yours, what prices they're achieving, and how contracts are structured.
Check pipeline notices on Contracts Finder — these give you early warning of upcoming opportunities, sometimes months before the formal tender is published.