Contracts Finder is a good place to start, but it only shows part of the picture. TenderSignal brings Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and over 140 more sources into a single feed, matched to your business and delivered to your inbox.
Contracts Finder is the UK government's free portal for public sector contract opportunities, run by the Cabinet Office. It publishes notices for contracts worth over £12,000 with central government and its agencies, and over £30,000 for the wider public sector in England. It is a genuinely useful, free service, and every supplier bidding for government work should have an account. TenderSignal is not a replacement for it in the sense of hiding it from you: we pull from Contracts Finder ourselves, alongside dozens of other sources.
The question most suppliers really have is not "what is the alternative to Contracts Finder", but "how do I stop missing relevant tenders when the opportunities are spread across so many different websites". That is the gap TenderSignal fills.
Contracts Finder does one job well: it lists England-focused public sector notices above the thresholds. But relying on it alone leaves real gaps.
This is the point that trips up most new suppliers. The UK actually has two central government portals, and you need both. Contracts Finder carries lower-value England notices (from £12,000). Find a Tender carries higher-value, UK-wide notices above the procurement thresholds (broadly £139,688 and up for most goods and services, with higher figures for works). A contract that is too big for Contracts Finder appears on Find a Tender instead, and vice versa. Watching only one of the two means missing a whole tier of opportunities. TenderSignal reads both, plus the devolved portals, so you never have to remember which site a given contract should be on.
TenderSignal is an aggregation and matching layer that sits on top of the whole market. We scan Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTenders Ireland and over 140 further sources every night, normalise the notices, and match them against your business profile. You describe what you do once, and we do the daily checking for you.
| Feature | Contracts Finder | TenderSignal |
|---|---|---|
| Sources covered | Contracts Finder only | Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, PCS, Sell2Wales and 140+ more |
| Nations | England-focused | England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland |
| Matching to your business | Keyword search only | Scored against your CPV codes, region and value range |
| Alerts | Basic saved-search emails | Personalised daily digest of matched tenders |
| Frameworks and DPS | Partial | Framework and DPS notices surfaced and tagged |
| Awards and competitor data | Limited | Awards database and pipeline intelligence |
| Price | Free | Free plan, with Pro and Business tiers |
If you are set on using the free contract finder on its own, a few habits help. Search by CPV code as well as by keyword, so you catch notices that describe the work in unexpected language. Save several narrow searches rather than one broad one, to keep the email alerts readable. Check Find a Tender separately for anything above the thresholds, and add your two or three most important buyers' own portals to your morning routine. It works, but it is a lot of manual checking, which is exactly the routine TenderSignal is designed to remove.
You can keep your Contracts Finder account, and to submit a bid you will often go through the buyer's own portal anyway. But you no longer need to check Contracts Finder, Find a Tender and your regional portal by hand every morning. TenderSignal reads all of them for you and only surfaces the opportunities that fit your business, so nothing relevant slips past while you are busy delivering work. If alerts are all you want, our free tender alerts cover the same ground without the daily logins.
TenderSignal is built for SMEs that bid for public sector work and do not have time to monitor a dozen procurement websites. Whether you are a cleaning contractor in Manchester, an IT consultancy chasing G-Cloud call-offs, or a care provider watching for local authority DPS openings, you set your profile once and let the matching do the work. You can start free and browse every tender, and upgrade when you want matched opportunities delivered to your inbox with AI relevance scoring.
Create a free account to see how many live tenders match your business right now, compare plans, set up free tender alerts, or see how it works.
Not exactly. TenderSignal includes Contracts Finder as one of its sources, alongside Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and more than 140 other portals. It replaces the need to check those sites by hand, and adds matching and alerts, but you can still keep your free Contracts Finder account.
Yes. Contracts Finder is a free UK government service run by the Cabinet Office, and it is free to search and to register. TenderSignal also has a free plan, so you can compare the two at no cost. The difference is coverage and time saved: TenderSignal watches Contracts Finder plus 140+ other portals and only surfaces the tenders that match your business.
Contracts Finder carries lower-value England public sector notices (from £12,000), while Find a Tender carries higher-value, UK-wide notices above the procurement thresholds. You generally need to watch both, because a contract that is too large for Contracts Finder appears on Find a Tender instead. TenderSignal aggregates both, so you see the full range in one place.
Contracts Finder is England-focused and shows notices above the thresholds with keyword search only. If you also want Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish notices, Find a Tender opportunities, framework and DPS call-offs, and alerts matched to your business rather than raw keyword hits, an aggregation tool saves significant time and reduces missed opportunities.
You can search and view notices on Contracts Finder without an account, but you need to register to save searches and receive email alerts. With TenderSignal you register once, describe your business, and receive a matched daily digest that already spans Contracts Finder and every other major UK and Irish portal.
Yes. TenderSignal aggregates Find a Tender (for higher-value UK-wide contracts) together with Contracts Finder and the devolved portals, so you see above-threshold and below-threshold opportunities in one place.
Yes. The free plan lets you browse every tender and receive a daily email when there are new matches to log in and view. Paid plans deliver matched tenders straight to your inbox with AI relevance scoring and additional intelligence features.