Is Find a Tender free to use?

Yes. Both Find a Tender and Contracts Finder publish as open data in OCDS format and are free to search. Paid tender-alert services repackage these same feeds and charge for filtering, not for access.

Which one should a small builder watch?

Contracts Finder is usually where a smaller firm finds winnable work, because it carries the lower-value and sub-threshold contracts. But watching Find a Tender as well tells you which main contractors are winning frameworks near you, and those contractors then let subcontract packages.

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Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder: which carries the work you can win

Q: How often should I check?

Weekly at minimum. A meaningful share of open notices close within days, and those are rarely winnable from a standing start. The value is in catching contracts while there are still weeks left to price them.

Supreme Building Services · in Winning UK construction tenders

Both are official, both are free, and they carry different work. Find a Tender Service publishes contracts at or above the UK procurement thresholds — the large frameworks and multi-year contracts. Contracts Finder publishes lower-value opportunities and most sub-threshold public work, which is where a small or mid-sized firm usually finds something winnable. Searching only one is the commonest reason a builder concludes "there's nothing out there".

What each one is for

Public buyers in the UK have to advertise. Where they advertise depends on what the contract is worth.

	Find a Tender (FTS)	Contracts Finder
Carries	At or above procurement thresholds	Lower-value and sub-threshold work
Typical work	Frameworks, multi-year maintenance, major civils	A school roof, a car park resurface, a drainage programme
Who wins it	Larger contractors, framework incumbents	Regional and specialist firms
Format	OCDS open data	OCDS open data
Cost to read	Free	Free

Why you should watch both anyway

Even if you are certain the big frameworks are out of reach, they tell you who the buyer is, how often they go to market, and which main contractors are winning in your area. Those main contractors then need subcontract packages — and a framework award notice is an early signal that packages are about to be let.

Read the other direction too. If you are a main contractor, the sub-threshold feed shows you which specialists are active near a site before you need them.

The part that actually costs firms work

Neither source is hard to search. The problem is that reading them properly is a weekly job nobody has time for, so it gets done when work goes quiet — which is exactly when everything winnable has already closed. A meaningful share of what is "open" on any given day closes within a few days, and those are rarely winnable from a standing start.

The notices worth your attention are the ones with weeks left, and you only ever see those if you are looking regularly. That is the whole argument for a filtered feed rather than a bookmark.

Doing it without paying anyone

Paid tender portals repackage these same two feeds and charge for the filtering. There is nothing behind their paywall you cannot read yourself. Our live tender feed pulls both sources, filters to construction and trade categories, sorts soonest-deadline-first and links every item back to its original government notice — free, and with no account.

The one thing worth paying attention to instead of a subscription: filter by CPV category rather than keyword. It is the single biggest improvement you can make to what you find.

Want the feed filtered to your trade?

Tell us the trade and region and we will come back with what is open in it — and flag the ones actually worth pricing.