What it is, and who runs it
A notice service, not a bid portal: buyers publish the notice here, and the notice tells you where the documents and the submission live. An account lets you save searches, turn on email notifications and watch individual notices.
Its fields are more structured than a plain listing — estimated value excluding VAT, duration in months, extension options, whether the contract is subject to renewal, and the procedure type. The award criteria, the service is explicit, are stated only in the procurement documents.
Open Find a Tender — the portal’s own site.
What it does well
- One national service rather than one portal per buyer, covering above-threshold work and, for new procurements, below-threshold work outside Scotland.
- The structured fields are genuinely useful: duration plus extension options tells you what a contract is worth over its life, which the headline figure does not.
- Saved searches, email notifications and “watch this notice” cost nothing, and a watched notice is the simplest way to keep track of the two or three you are deciding on.
- Free and official — there is nothing to apply for and no charge to search.
Where it falls short for a small bidder
- Above-threshold work skews to larger contracts and framework call-offs, where a small supplier is often a subcontractor rather than a bidder. The volume is not the same thing as the opportunity.
- Estimated values are stated excluding VAT and in the buyer's own terms, so a figure here cannot be set against a figure on another portal.
- Award criteria are not on the notice. You have to open the procurement documents to find out whether you can win, which is the expensive part.
- Below-threshold Scottish work is not here, and the notice does not tell you which of the other portals you need for it.
- Like every notice service, it matches your search words. It has no view on whether the contract suits a firm of your size.
How many open notices from it we hold
69 open notices from Find a Tender are in the snapshot behind this site, checked against the clock as this page was built.
Every notice below was still open when we last checked the official feeds, 2 days ago (11 November 2026 at 17:43 UTC).
We check every closing date each time this page is loaded, so a notice whose deadline has passed is never shown here — the dates you can see are still open. Check the official notice itself before you plan any bid work.
A notice being open is not the same as it being worth your time — and the portal has no view on that. What we add is the shortlist: the ones that plausibly suit a small supplier, each with a reason, plus what comparable contracts were actually awarded for.
The shortlist, not another feed
One email a week, every Tuesday: the live notices worth your time, each with the buyer, the closing date, the published value where the buyer published one, one line on why it fits a small supplier, and a link to the official notice. It is a subscription, billed monthly through Stripe, and you can cancel any time. We add no markup to anything.
The other portals we read
- SAM.gov
SAM.gov is the US federal contract opportunities site. What it does well, where a small bidder gets stuck, and the federal notices in our snapshot.
- Contracts Finder
Contracts Finder is the UK government's notice service for below-threshold work. What it does well, where it costs a small bidder time, and our live count.
- the local US feeds
Where New York City, Los Angeles and Illinois publish their own bids, what each does well, and why a small supplier ends up with three logins and no shortlist.
- The free sample brief and the price
The offer page: what the weekly brief contains, the founding rate, the FAQ, and the sample.