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How to set up free Find a Tender and Contracts Finder alerts

Set up free email alerts on Find a Tender and Contracts Finder step by step, see what free alerts miss, and when a paid tender alert service helps.

Last updated 2 November 2026

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Find a Tender and Contracts Finder are free, and both let you save a search and get an email when new notices match it. Find a Tender needs a GOV.UK One Login account, and Contracts Finder uses a Supplier Registration account. Set up both. Add alerts on Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales or eTendersNI if you work in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Terms are explained in our glossary.

Set up Find a Tender alerts

Find a Tender is the UK’s Central Digital Platform. It is free for everyone, and you should not pay to view public sector opportunities (gov.uk factsheet). With an account you can save searches and get email notifications (Find a Tender). These steps follow the official guidance (gov.uk guide to the platform):

  1. Sign in. On Find a Tender, choose “Sign in”. If you have no GOV.UK One Login, create one with your work email. You enter a 6-digit code sent to your email and choose a password. Then you pick text message or an authenticator app for security codes (gov.uk registration guide).
  2. Open the search. Select “Search” on the home page to see all notices.
  3. Choose notice types. Under “Notice type”, choose the tender notice (UK4) for live tenders. Add UK1, UK2 and UK3 if you want early notices too.
  4. Narrow it down. Use “Suitability” to show notices marked as suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Use “Contract location” and “Select regions” for the areas you cover. Add keywords or Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) codes.
  5. Update results. Check that the list looks right.
  6. Save the search. Select “Save search”, give it a name and choose how often you want the email.

If you registered on the old Find a Tender before 24 February 2025, you must register again. If you use the same email address, your saved searches come across.

Set up Contracts Finder alerts

Contracts Finder covers contracts worth over £12,000, including VAT, with the government and its agencies. You can search without an account, but you need one to save searches and get emails (gov.uk Contracts Finder).

  1. Register. Contracts Finder uses Supplier Registration accounts. Choose “Supplier” as your organisation type (Contracts Finder registration).
  2. Search. Enter keywords. By default, a search finds any of your words. Join words with + (no spaces) to find only notices with all of them, and use quotes for an exact phrase.
  3. Filter. Pick a procurement stage: Early engagement, Future opportunity, Opportunity or Awarded contract. You can also filter for SME or VCSE (voluntary, community and social enterprise) suitability, a region or postcode radius, and a value range.
  4. Save the search. Select “Save search”. It goes into your saved searches, and you can choose to get emails when new matching notices are published (Contracts Finder).

Alerts on the other three portals

  • Public Contracts Scotland (PCS): in the Suppliers Area, set up an Alert Profile with the CPV codes you work in (PCS user guides).
  • Sell2Wales: complete your Alerts Profile with the product categories you work in. You need a Central Digital Platform unique identifier before you register (Sell2Wales).
  • eTendersNI: save CPV codes to your profile under “EO administration”, then “EO management” and “Edit CPV codes” (Finance NI).

Our guide to UK tender portals compares all five.

What free alerts miss

The free tools are good, and their data comes straight from the source. But they leave some work to you.

  • You build the filter. Keywords miss notices with unusual titles. CPV codes depend on the codes the buyer chose. Research work is spread across many codes. In our data, the common ones include research services (73110000), market research (79310000), survey services (79311000), evaluation consultancy (79419000) and management consultancy (79400000, 79411000).

  • More than one site. Since 24 February 2025, new tenders go on Find a Tender. In England and Wales, that includes advertised low-value tenders. The starting point is £12,000 for UK central government, and £30,000 for councils, most other bodies and the Welsh Government (Procurement Act 2023, section 87; Procurement (Wales) Regulations 2024). Some smaller tenders appear elsewhere:

    • Scotland’s smaller tenders are only on PCS;
    • Welsh tenders under £30,000 need no Find a Tender notice and, when advertised, are usually on Sell2Wales;
    • Northern Irish public bodies’ below-threshold tenders are outside these rules, so they go on eTendersNI and other Northern Irish portals (section 84; Find a Tender notice types).

    Contracts Finder still lists notices too, including procurements that started under the old rules. Its search showed about 640 open notices on 2 November 2026. So most firms need two or more sets of alerts, and some notices arrive twice.

  • Quick Quotes are invisible. In Scotland and Wales, Quick Quotes go only to suppliers the buyer invites, and they are not made public. No alert, free or paid, can show them. Complete your Supplier Finder profile on PCS and Sell2Wales instead.

  • No buyer history in the email. Award data is public. Find a Tender’s Summarised Search has a “Contracts” view of awarded contracts (Find a Tender help). But you look up each buyer yourself.

  • Volume. In our count, about 30 research and consulting tenders a week are published across the UK (Tenderhooks reports). Someone has to read them and decide.

When a paid service helps

Free alerts may be all you need if you bid a few times a year, in one nation, with a short list of codes. A paid service can save time in other cases: you cover several nations, you share the work across a team, or you want each tender ranked and shown with the buyer’s past awards. Before you pay, ask which official sources a service reads and which it does not.

Questions people ask

Is Find a Tender free?

Yes. Find a Tender is free for everyone, including searching and alerts.

How do I get Find a Tender notifications?

Sign in with GOV.UK One Login and run a search with your filters. Then select “Save search” and choose how often to get emails.

Do I need both Find a Tender and Contracts Finder alerts?

For England, it helps for now. New procurements go on Find a Tender, while Contracts Finder still lists other notices, including older procurements.

Do I need to register my organisation to get alerts?

No. You need an account to save searches. You register your organisation as a supplier when you bid.

How Tenderhooks helps

Tenderhooks reads Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and Public Contracts Scotland through the day, so you do not set up keywords on three sites. Your firm’s bid plan arrives every Monday at 7:00 UK time. When a new tender fits, you get a same-day email, at most two a day. Both come by email, and in Slack or Microsoft Teams if you like. Each pick shows the buyer’s record from award data where there is one.

Tenderhooks does not read Sell2Wales or eTendersNI yet. So it misses Welsh tenders under £30,000 and Northern Irish public bodies’ below-threshold tenders on eTendersNI. It also cannot see call-offs sent only to framework members, or Quick Quotes.

Sources

All checked on 2 November 2026.

This page explains official rules and guidance in plain English, checked on the date above. It is not legal advice. The official sources it links to are what apply.

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