Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder: UK portals

The UK has five official tender portals, and all are free to search. Find a Tender is the UK-wide Central Digital Platform. Since 24 February 2025 it has carried new procurements across the UK, except some smaller ones: Scotland’s below-threshold tenders, Northern Irish public bodies’ below-threshold tenders and Welsh tenders under £30,000. Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI cover England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each has its own alerts.

Terms are explained in our glossary.

The five portals at a glance

Portal	Covers	What is published	Free	Alerts	Quick Quotes
Find a Tender	Whole UK	New procurements above and below threshold, except below-threshold work in Scotland and by Northern Irish public bodies, and Welsh work under £30,000	Yes	Saved searches with email	No
Contracts Finder	England and non-devolved bodies	Contracts over £12,000 including VAT, including procurements started under the old rules	Yes	Saved searches with email	No
Public Contracts Scotland (PCS)	Scotland	Regulated procurements (£50,000+ for goods and services; £2 million+ for works), and lower-value notices	Yes	Alert profile by CPV code	Yes
Sell2Wales	Wales	Welsh public sector notices, many of them small	Yes	Alerts profile by product category	Yes
eTendersNI	Northern Ireland	Opportunities from departments, agencies, arm’s-length bodies and some councils	Yes	CPV codes saved to your profile	None in its published guidance

CPV codes are Common Procurement Vocabulary codes, the numbers buyers use to classify what they buy. Sources for each row are in the sections below.

Find a Tender

Find a Tender is where UK public buyers publish notices under the Procurement Act 2023. It became the Central Digital Platform on 24 February 2025, so you also register there as a supplier and store your core details for bids (gov.uk factsheet).

What is published: from 24 February 2025, both above- and below-threshold notices about new UK procurements, except below-threshold ones in Scotland. For older procurements, only above-threshold notices appear (Find a Tender). Welsh contracts under £30,000 and Northern Irish public bodies’ below-threshold contracts need no notice here (notice types; Procurement Act 2023, sections 84 and 87).
Below-threshold rule: in England and Wales, a buyer may advertise a contract worth at least £12,000 (UK central government) or £30,000 (councils, most other bodies and the Welsh Government). If it does, it must publish a notice here first (Procurement Act 2023, section 87).
Cost and alerts: free for everyone. With a GOV.UK One Login account you can save searches and get email notifications. Our alerts guide shows how to set them up.
Extras: a Summarised Search shows each procurement’s current stage, awarded contracts, and frameworks and dynamic markets.

Contracts Finder

Contracts Finder lets you search contracts worth over £12,000, including VAT, with the government and its agencies (gov.uk). Its publishing rules still apply to procurements that started under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, before the Act (PPN 019). Its search showed about 640 open notices on 2 November 2026 (Contracts Finder).

Stages: Early engagement, Future opportunity, Opportunity and Awarded contract.
Cost and alerts: free. You can search without an account. To save searches and get emails, you need a Supplier Registration account.

Public Contracts Scotland

PCS is Scotland’s national portal. Since 18 April 2016, Scottish public bodies have had to advertise all regulated procurements there: £50,000 and over for goods and services, and £2 million and over for works. Many also use it for Quick Quotes on lower-value work (PCS about us). Scotland has its own procurement laws, not the Procurement Act 2023.

Cost: free registration for suppliers and buyers (PCS).
Alerts: set up an Alert Profile with the CPV codes you work in.
Quick Quotes: sent only to suppliers the buyer selects. PCS has a Supplier Finder profile that buyers can search.

Sell2Wales

Sell2Wales is run by the Welsh Government. It says contracts worth over £6.3 billion a year on average are advertised there, and about 80% are smaller opportunities (Sell2Wales).

Cost: free registration. You need a Central Digital Platform unique identifier before you register.
Alerts: an Alerts Profile with product categories.
Quick Quotes: invite-only, like PCS, and not made public. Sell2Wales says a detailed Supplier Finder profile is the best way to be invited.
Link to Find a Tender: since 24 February 2025, advertised Welsh contracts from £30,000 must also have a notice on Find a Tender. This comes from section 87, which applies to devolved Welsh authorities directly (section 87). The Procurement (Wales) Regulations 2024 only send Welsh notices to Find a Tender through Sell2Wales (Wales regulations). Welsh tenders under £30,000 need no Find a Tender notice; when advertised, they are usually on Sell2Wales. Quick Quotes stay on Sell2Wales.

eTendersNI

eTendersNI advertises opportunities from Northern Ireland government departments, agencies and arm’s-length bodies. You must register as a supplier organisation to respond to tenders and to get notifications (eTendersNI). Registration needs a D-U-N-S number, which is free to get (Finance NI). Some councils use it too. Ards and North Down Borough Council runs all its tenders on eTendersNI, and says registration is free for all suppliers (Ards and North Down).

Alerts: save CPV codes to your profile to get email alerts (Finance NI questions).
Quick Quotes: eTendersNI’s published guidance describes no Quick Quote tool.
Other portals: for procurements that started before 24 February 2025, Find a Tender points to eSourcing NI as well as eTendersNI for Northern Irish public bodies’ below-threshold information.

Contracts Finder or Find a Tender: which do I need?

For new work, Find a Tender is the main source in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In England it carries advertised tenders from £12,000 or £30,000 upwards. In Wales it carries them from £30,000, and for Northern Irish public bodies only above the thresholds. Keep a Contracts Finder search too while older procurements and other notices are still listed there. If you work in Scotland, add PCS. In Wales, add Sell2Wales for Quick Quotes and work under £30,000. In Northern Ireland, add eTendersNI.

Questions people ask

Is Find a Tender free?

Yes. Gov.uk says it is free for everyone and you should not pay to view public sector opportunities.

What is a Quick Quote?

An online request for quotes on low-value work, used on PCS and Sell2Wales. It goes only to invited suppliers and is not published.

Which portal do Scottish public bodies use?

Public Contracts Scotland. Their above-threshold notices also appear on Find a Tender.

Do I need to register to search?

Not on Find a Tender or Contracts Finder. You need an account for alerts, and registration to bid.

How Tenderhooks helps

Tenderhooks reads Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and Public Contracts Scotland through their official data, and shows a notice published on more than one of them once. It does not read Sell2Wales or eTendersNI yet. So it does not cover Welsh tenders under £30,000, or Northern Irish public bodies’ tenders below the UK-wide thresholds. Your bid plan arrives every Monday at 7:00 UK time.

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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