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Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder — which one to use, and when
If you're new to UK public procurement, the two main portals look almost interchangeable. They aren't. Picking the wrong one means missing whole classes of opportunity.
Here's the practical split.
The 60-second summary
| Contracts Finder | Find a Tender | |
|---|---|---|
| Run by | Cabinet Office | Cabinet Office (replaced OJEU/TED for UK in 2021) |
| Scope | Central government + wider public sector | Higher-value opportunities, all UK contracting authorities |
| Threshold | Above £12k for central government, £30k for wider public sector | Above the UK procurement regulation thresholds (broadly £139k goods/services, £5.37m works, £441k utilities, as of 2024) |
| Notice types | Future, open, awarded | Full lifecycle: prior info, contract notice, contract award, contract modification |
| Who's mandated to publish | UK central government must publish | All UK contracting authorities must publish above-threshold notices |
Both portals are run by the Cabinet Office. Many notices appear on both. Find a Tender is the higher-value, regulated-procurement portal; Contracts Finder is the broader catch-all. If you only check one, you'll miss real work.
Common misunderstandings
"Find a Tender replaced Contracts Finder"
No. Find a Tender replaced the EU's OJEU/TED portal after Brexit. It carries the above-threshold notices that used to go to OJEU. Contracts Finder predates it and continues to carry the below-threshold notices.
"Above-threshold means £100k+"
The actual thresholds are higher than most people think and they're updated every two years. As of 2024:
- Goods and services: £139,688 (central government), £214,904 (sub-central — councils, NHS, etc.)
- Works: £5,372,609
- Light-touch services (social, health, education): £663,540
- Utilities: £429,807
If a contract is above these, the buyer must publish on Find a Tender. They can additionally publish to Contracts Finder, and many do.
"Public Contracts Scotland is the same thing"
Public Contracts Scotland is run separately by the Scottish Government. Scottish contracting authorities publish there as well as, or instead of, Find a Tender. If you bid in Scotland and you only watch FTS, you'll miss a chunk of Scottish public-body work.
(There's also Sell2Wales for Wales and eTendersNI for Northern Ireland — separate again.)
How to monitor both efficiently
Doing this by hand is painful. The two portals have different filters, different update cadences, different export formats, and you need to deduplicate notices that appear on both.
A practical workflow:
- Define your sector in CPV terms first (e.g. CPV 72 = IT services, CPV 45 = construction). Both portals search on CPV.
- Set a value floor, ideally well below the FTS threshold so you catch Contracts Finder-only notices.
- Save searches on both with email alerts.
- Watch the daily inbox and deduplicate by buyer + title — same notice will appear in both inboxes within a day or two if it crosses threshold.
Or pull both into one place — TenderForge ingests both portals (plus Public Contracts Scotland), deduplicates by source ID, and scores against your industry profile. But the deduplication step matters wherever you do it.
The one thing to remember
If a contract is below threshold, it'll only be on Contracts Finder. Above threshold, it'll be on Find a Tender — and often on Contracts Finder too. Watch both. Deduplicate by buyer + title.