If you are starting to bid for public-sector work in the UK, you will quickly run into two official websites: Contracts Finder and Find a Tender. They look similar, they both list government opportunities, and it is easy to assume you only need one of them. In practice, they cover different slices of the market, and the suppliers who win most consistently tend to watch both.
This guide explains what each portal does, how they fit together, and how to set them up so the right opportunities land in front of you without endless manual searching.
The two portals in plain English
Both Contracts Finder and Find a Tender are run by the government to make public spending more open. The simplest way to think about them is by the value of the contracts they tend to carry.
Contracts Finder is the home for a huge range of lower-value opportunities, plus some higher-value ones, and it also publishes details of contracts that have already been awarded. It is where many councils, NHS trusts, schools and central government bodies advertise everyday work — the kind of contracts a small business can realistically win.
Find a Tender is the service for higher-value notices, typically those that sit above the public procurement thresholds. If a contract is large enough that wider rules kick in, you will usually find its notice here. Larger framework agreements and major service contracts often appear on Find a Tender first.
Crucially, the two are not mutually exclusive. A single high-value opportunity can be advertised on both, while a smaller local contract may appear only on Contracts Finder. That overlap is exactly why checking just one can mean missing work.
What are procurement thresholds?
You will hear the word "threshold" a lot in public procurement. A threshold is simply a financial level set in the rules. When the estimated value of a contract is above the relevant threshold, the buyer has to follow more formal advertising and process requirements, and the opportunity generally has to be published more widely.
The thresholds differ depending on whether the contract is for goods, services or works, and on the type of organisation buying. They are reviewed periodically, so the exact figures change over time. Rather than memorising numbers that may be out of date by the time you read them, treat the threshold as a concept: above it, expect a higher-value, more structured process advertised on Find a Tender; below it, expect lighter-touch local procurement that often lives on Contracts Finder. Always confirm the current figures and rules on GOV.UK.
You do not need to calculate thresholds yourself to bid. The buyer decides which route applies. Your job is to make sure you can see opportunities wherever they are published, which brings us back to using both portals.
What each one actually lists
It helps to know what kinds of notice you will see, because that shapes how you read them.
- Opportunity notices — live contracts you can bid for right now, with deadlines and instructions on how to respond.
- Pipeline and early-engagement notices — signals that a buyer is planning to go to market soon, which give you time to prepare.
- Award notices — records of who won a contract and, often, the value. These are gold for research even when you are not bidding.
Contracts Finder is especially useful for that last category. By reading award notices you can see which suppliers keep winning in your sector, roughly what contracts are worth, and which buyers are active. That intelligence helps you price more realistically and decide where to focus.
Find a Tender, with its higher-value notices, is where you watch for the bigger frameworks and longer contracts. Even if a single contract feels too large for you today, spotting it early lets you consider partnering or subcontracting rather than walking away.
How to use both together
The winning habit is to treat the two portals as one system rather than competing tools. Here is a straightforward routine you can adopt.
- Register on both services so you can save searches and receive alerts. Registration is free.
- Decide how you describe what you sell, using the buyer's language as well as your own. This is where understanding CPV codes for tenders pays off, because buyers tag contracts with these codes and good code selection sharpens your alerts.
- Set up saved searches on each portal using your key terms, codes and locations.
- Turn on email alerts so new matching notices come to you. Review them on a fixed day each week so nothing slips.
- When something promising appears, read the full documents early and note the deadline straight away.
For a step-by-step walkthrough of the higher-value service in particular, our guide on how to find contracts on Find a Tender covers the search filters and alert settings in detail.
Practical tips for getting more from your alerts
Alerts are only as good as the searches behind them. A few small adjustments make a big difference.
Use several saved searches rather than one catch-all. A narrow search for your core service plus a couple of broader ones for adjacent work will catch opportunities you would otherwise miss. If you only ever search for the exact phrase you use internally, you will miss buyers who describe the same need differently.
Watch award notices, not just live opportunities. When a contract you would have liked is awarded to someone else, note the winner and the buyer. When that contract comes up for renewal — often years later — you will be ready and informed.
Do not ignore opportunities that look slightly too big. Many can be tackled by teaming up. Reading larger notices early gives you time to find a partner.
Contracts Finder and Find a Tender are not rivals — used together, they are a single early-warning system for public-sector work.
Which should a small business start with?
If you are new to public-sector bidding and your contracts are likely to be modest in value, Contracts Finder is usually the more productive starting point, simply because more low and mid-value opportunities pass through it. It is also a gentle way to learn how notices are written and what buyers ask for.
As you grow, or if you operate in a sector dominated by large contracts and frameworks, Find a Tender becomes essential. The honest answer for most ambitious small businesses is "both, from the start" — registration costs nothing, and the only real expense is a few minutes setting up sensible alerts.
If you are at the very beginning of this journey, it is worth pairing this with our broader guide on how to win your first government contract as an SME, which covers the documents and groundwork buyers expect.
Frequently asked questions
Are Contracts Finder and Find a Tender free to use?
Yes. Both are official government services and you can search them, register an account and set up alerts without paying anything. The cost of bidding is your time and effort in writing strong responses, not access to the portals themselves.
Will the same contract appear on both portals?
Sometimes. Higher-value opportunities are often published on Find a Tender and may also appear on Contracts Finder, while many lower-value local contracts appear only on Contracts Finder. Because the overlap is partial, checking both is the safest way to avoid missing work that suits you.
Do I need to understand procurement thresholds before I bid?
No. The buyer decides which process and threshold applies and publishes accordingly. It helps to grasp the general idea so you understand why a contract is advertised the way it is, but you do not need to calculate anything. For the current threshold figures and the rules behind them, check GOV.UK.
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