Find a Tender Service (FTS): How to Use the UK's Central Tender Platform

Find a Tender is now the single home for every UK public sector contract. Learn how to search, register, and set alerts so the right tenders come to you.

Find a Tender is the UK’s central platform for public sector contract opportunities — and since 24 February 2025 it is the single place every regulated government tender must be published. With around 14,800 UK searches a month for “find a tender”, knowing how to use it is essential for any supplier chasing public work. This guide covers what it is, what changed under the Procurement Act 2023, and how to search, register, and set alerts.

What Is Find a Tender?

Find a Tender (FTS) is the official UK government service for advertising and viewing public sector contracts. It is run by the Cabinet Office and is free to search, with no account needed to browse live opportunities. Contracting authorities — councils, NHS trusts, government departments — are legally required to publish their regulated notices there.

The web address is find-tender.service.gov.uk.

One geographic caveat: the Procurement Act 2023 covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scottish contracting authorities work under the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 and advertise on Public Contracts Scotland, though their above-threshold notices still surface on Find a Tender. There is no Central Digital Platform supplier record or share code on the Scottish side. If Scotland is a target market, PCS belongs in your routine alongside FTS.

What you'll find on FTS

• Pipeline and planned procurement notices — early signals that a contract is coming, often months before the formal tender.
• Tender notices — live opportunities you can bid for, with links to the invitation to tender (ITT) documents.
• Award notices — who won what, and at what value. Underrated competitive intelligence for your bid/no-bid decisions.
• Contract change notices — modifications to live contracts, which can flag re-procurement timing.

What Changed Under the Procurement Act 2023?

On 24 February 2025, Find a Tender became the Central Digital Platform (CDP) — an integrated system where noticing, sign-in, and supplier registration work together. Two changes matter most for suppliers:

• Single supplier registration — enter your core business details, financial standing, and certifications once, then reuse them across every bid instead of re-keying.
• 13 notice types — a structured set of 13 notice types now covers the full procurement lifecycle, including early planning notices that flag contracts before they go live.
• Share codes. You don't submit bids inside Find a Tender. You generate a share code (or file) for your stored information and submit it however the buyer specifies.

The information you'll store is broader than a company profile. The platform asks for your basic details (name, registered address, Companies House or charity number, VAT registration), financial records from recent years, information on connected persons with influence over the business, and details of anything that could trigger exclusion under the Procurement Act 2023. Gathering that once, carefully, beats reconstructing it under deadline pressure — and because buyers receive it via your share code, errors propagate to every bid until you fix them.

How to Search Find a Tender

You can search without an account. To cut the noise fast:

1. Search by keyword — use the words a buyer would use, not your internal jargon.
2. Filter by CPV code — CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) codes classify what is being bought; filtering on the two or three that match your services is the single most effective filter.
3. Filter by status — open, planned, or awarded notices (awarded notices are useful for competitor research).
4. Filter by location and value — narrow to regions and contract values you can realistically deliver.

How to Register and Set Alerts

To bid, register via the Supplier Registration Service linked from Find a Tender. Complete your core information once — company details, financial standing, certifications such as ISO 9001 or Cyber Essentials — and keep it current, as expired certificates and old accounts are a common cause of avoidable rejections.

Then save your best keyword-plus-CPV searches and subscribe to alerts, so new matching notices come to you instead of relying on manual daily checks.

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Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder

For procurements starting on or after 24 February 2025, Find a Tender carries both above- and below-threshold UK opportunities (except below-threshold in Scotland) — making it your primary feed. Contracts Finder still carries some below-threshold information (contracts over £12,000 for central government, £30,000 for the wider public sector) and older notices, but it is no longer the main place to look.

Public contracts often run for three to five years or more, so procurements advertised under the old rules kept generating notices (extensions, modifications, re-openings) on Contracts Finder. From 1 October 2026, the Procurement (Amendment) Regulations 2026 redirect legacy-regime publication to the Central Digital Platform, so Find a Tender is now the single front door and Contracts Finder is becoming an archive rather than a live source.

The threshold figures matter here. From 1 January 2026, under The Procurement Act 2023 (Threshold Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, the main thresholds are:

• Goods and services (central government): £135,018
• Goods and services (other contracting authorities): £207,720
• Works (all authorities): £5,193,000

All figures are inclusive of VAT — a change under the Act that catches out teams used to the old ex-VAT sums. Thresholds are revised roughly every two years, so always check the current figures before advising on a specific opportunity.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Find a Tender?

Find a Tender is the UK government’s central digital platform for public sector contract opportunities. Since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, it is the single service where contracting authorities publish regulated notices and where suppliers register once and reuse their details. It is free to search.

Is Find a Tender free to use?

Yes. Searching and viewing opportunities is free and needs no account. You only register to bid and to use supplier features such as the single supplier registration, which lets you store and reuse your core business information across multiple tenders.

What is the difference between Find a Tender and Contracts Finder?

Historically Contracts Finder held lower-value contracts and Find a Tender held higher-value ones. For procurements from 24 February 2025, Find a Tender carries both above- and below-threshold UK opportunities (except below-threshold in Scotland). Contracts Finder still carries some below-threshold information and older notices, but Find a Tender is now the primary place to look.

How do I find relevant tenders quickly?

Use CPV codes that match your services, combined with keyword, region, and value filters. Save those refined searches and subscribe to alerts, so new matching notices are pushed to you automatically rather than relying on manual daily checks of the platform.

What replaced OJEU in the UK?

The Find a Tender Service replaced OJEU/TED for UK public contracts on 1 January 2021, following Brexit. Above-threshold UK opportunities that once appeared in the Official Journal of the European Union are now published on FTS, which became the UK's Central Digital Platform in February 2025.

What are the UK procurement thresholds for 2026?

From 1 January 2026: £135,018 for central government goods and services, £207,720 for other contracting authorities, and £5,193,000 for works — all inclusive of VAT. Contracts at or above these values must be advertised on the Find a Tender Service. Figures are revised roughly every two years.

Make Find a Tender Work for You

Find a Tender is now the front door to UK public sector work. Register properly, build precise CPV-based saved searches, and have your response process ready, and you stop missing opportunities you could win.

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