A practical guide to finding UK government contracts, from Contracts Finder to Find a Tender and beyond.
If you're a business looking to win public sector work in the UK, the first step is knowing where to look. Government contracts worth billions of pounds are published every year, but many suppliers — particularly SMEs — miss out simply because they don't know where to find them.
Here's a breakdown of the main sources.
Contracts Finder is the UK government's free portal for contracts in England. All central government departments and their agencies must publish opportunities worth over £12,000 here (or £30,000 for sub-central authorities).
What you'll find: Contract notices, awarded contracts, and pipeline notices from English public bodies.
Tip: Set up email alerts by keyword or category, but be aware the filters are quite basic. Many relevant opportunities can slip through.
Find a Tender replaced the EU's OJEU for UK above-threshold procurements after Brexit. If a contract exceeds certain value thresholds (currently £139,688 for central government goods/services, or £5,372,609 for works), it must be published here.
What you'll find: Higher-value opportunities from across the UK public sector.
Public Contracts Scotland is the go-to portal for Scottish public sector procurement. It covers everything from local councils to NHS Scotland and Scottish Government agencies.
What you'll find: Opportunities from all Scottish public bodies, including lower-value Quick Quotes.
Sell2Wales is the equivalent portal for Welsh public sector procurement.
eTenders covers Republic of Ireland public procurement. While not UK-based, many UK suppliers — particularly those in Northern Ireland or with Irish operations — bid for these opportunities.
TED publishes procurement notices from across the EU and EEA. UK businesses can still bid for these opportunities, though the process may involve additional considerations post-Brexit.
Each of these portals has its own interface, search system, and alert mechanism. Checking them all daily is time-consuming, and it's easy to miss relevant opportunities — especially if a contract is categorised differently from what you'd expect.
This is where tender monitoring services like TenderSignal come in. Rather than checking five or six portals every day, you set your sectors, regions, and contract values once, and receive matched opportunities in a single daily digest.
Know your CPV codes. Common Procurement Vocabulary codes classify every type of goods, services, and works. Understanding which codes apply to your business helps you filter opportunities accurately.
Set realistic value ranges. Don't waste time on contracts that are too large for your business to deliver, or too small to be worthwhile.
Look beyond the obvious. Framework agreements, Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS), and sub-contracting opportunities don't always appear on the main portals.
Check regularly. New opportunities are published daily. A contract posted on Monday might have a deadline in two weeks — if you only check monthly, you'll miss it.
Use a monitoring service. Tools like TenderSignal aggregate multiple sources and match opportunities to your profile, saving hours of manual searching each week.
The best approach is to start with one or two portals relevant to your region and sector, learn how procurement notices are structured, and gradually expand your search. If you're serious about winning public sector work, automating your opportunity search is one of the highest-impact steps you can take.