Comparison 2026-09-21 6 min read
Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder vs TED: what each does not do
To find tenders in the UK you search two official registers, Find a Tender for regulated procurements and Contracts Finder for contracts over £12,000, and TED for the EU. Each one leaves out something the other two carry, and none of them tells you whether you should bid. This page lists the gaps, register by register.
From 24 February 2025, both above and below threshold notices about new UK procurements will be published on this service, except below threshold in Scotland.
Victano held 195,187 notices from 18 sources (TED, the EU Funding & Tenders portal and 16 national portals) at 17:30 UTC on 16 September 2026. Find a Tender and Contracts Finder are not among the 18.
Three registers carry most of what a UK supplier means by "find tenders". They overlap less than their names suggest, and the useful question is not which is best but what each one leaves out.
What does Find a Tender publish?
Find a Tender is the UK government's notice service under the Procurement Act 2023. Since 24 February 2025 it publishes both above and below threshold notices for new UK procurements, except below threshold work in Scotland. For procurements that started before that date it holds only the above threshold notices, usually over £139,688 including VAT. Notices now cover a contract's whole life, from pipeline to termination, and a summarised search folds every notice of one procurement into a single record.
What it does not do:
- It does not carry Scottish below threshold work. That stays on Public Contracts Scotland.
- It does not hold older below threshold contracts. Those sit on Contracts Finder.
- It publishes nothing from outside the UK.
- A CPV search returns every notice with that code, including the ones your turnover, insurance or certificates would rule you out of before anyone reads a bid.
What does Contracts Finder publish?
Contracts Finder, in GOV.UK's own words, "lets you search for information about contracts worth over £12,000 (including VAT) with the government and its agencies". You can search current opportunities, see what is coming up, and look up previous tenders and contracts. An account adds email updates and saved searches; searching needs no account at all.
What it does not do:
- It does not cover the devolved nations. Wales publishes on Sell2Wales, Scotland on Public Contracts Scotland, Northern Ireland on eSourcing NI and eTendersNI.
- It is not the place for high value work. GOV.UK sends contracts usually above £139,688 including VAT to Find a Tender.
- It carries nothing from the EU.
- It does not know your company. A saved search is a keyword, not a qualification.
What does TED publish?
TED, Tenders Electronic Daily, is the online version of the Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU. Its own about page says that "every day, from Monday to Friday over 3 000 public procurement notices are published on TED", from the EU, the EEA and beyond. It is the above threshold record for all 27 member states.
What it does not do:
- It does not carry below threshold national work, and that is most of the volume in many countries. On 15 September 2026 the German Bekanntmachungsservice published 1,086 notices; 843 of them, 78%, never appeared on TED. Latvia's register published 247 that day and 234 were national only.
- It does not carry current UK procurements. Those moved to Find a Tender when the UK left the EU regime. What remains is a thin cross-border layer: on 5 September 2026 Victano held 26 UK-linked TED notices, 4 of them open.
- It does not read the notice pack, translate the selection criteria out of 24 languages, or say whether you clear them.
Which register should you search first?
| Your job | Start here |
|---|---|
| A regulated UK procurement started in 2025 or later | Find a Tender |
| An English below threshold contract, or anything older | Contracts Finder |
| Below threshold work in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland | The devolved portal |
| Above threshold work in any EU member state | TED |
| Below threshold work in an EU member state | That country's national portal |
If you bid only in the UK, the two GOV.UK registers are the source of truth and nothing else is needed to find the notices. The gap they share is qualification: neither reads your company file, counts the working days to the clarification deadline, or opens the specification for the clause that disqualifies you.
Where does Victano fit, and where does it not?
Victano reads TED, the EU Funding & Tenders portal and 16 national portals, 195,187 notices at 17:30 UTC on 16 September 2026, and gives the AI you already use tools to search them and to qualify a notice against a stored company profile. It does not ingest Find a Tender or Contracts Finder, so a UK-only supplier should start with the portals above. A UK supplier that also bids in Ireland or on the continent gets one agent workflow across borders instead of a third tab. Add Victano to Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT in one row: /install.
Questions people ask
Is Find a Tender the same as Contracts Finder? No. Find a Tender is the notice service for procurements under the Procurement Act 2023 and, from 24 February 2025, carries both above and below threshold notices for new procurements outside Scotland. Contracts Finder holds contracts over £12,000 including VAT and the record of older below threshold work.
Do UK tenders still appear on TED? Not as a rule. UK contracting authorities publish on Find a Tender. A few cross-border programmes still surface on TED with a UK country code, which is why Victano held 26 UK-linked TED notices on 5 September 2026.
Is there one search across all three? Not an official one. Find a Tender and Contracts Finder are separate services with separate accounts, and TED is run by the EU Publications Office.
Victano puts this inside the AI you already use. Say “Read https://victano.com/start.md and follow the onboarding instructions” to Claude or ChatGPT and it connects itself. No form, no password, free during the Founding Beta.
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