Portal comparison 2026-09-05 4 min read
Find a Tender vs an EU-wide MCP agent
Find a Tender is the official UK above-threshold register. Here is what it does well, what it leaves to you, and a real example of the cross-border gap it does not cover.
CAWT PEACEPLUS Healthier Futures Project, Community-Based Early Intervention Health Improvement Programmes (WHSCT & SHSCT Areas)
One of 4 currently-open UK-linked TED notices in the corpus (of 26 held), measured live 2026-09-05.
What Find a Tender is
Find a Tender Service is the UK government's official register for contracts that cross the above-threshold value bands. It is free, official, and the legally required publication point for that class of work in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland runs Public Contracts Scotland for its own regime). Below-threshold opportunities sit on the sibling portal, Contracts Finder.
What it does well
- Authoritative and free. Every regulated above-threshold UK contract notice that must publish, publishes here.
- Structured search. CPV codes, buyer name, location, procedure type and deadlines are all searchable fields.
- No account needed to browse. Anyone can search notices without signing up.
What it does not do
- It does not match your company. A search for a CPV code returns every notice carrying that code, including ones your turnover, certifications or exclusion grounds would rule you out of on day one.
- It does not read across borders. Find a Tender is UK-only. A cross-border notice published to TED with
countries=['GBR'](a Northern Ireland buyer running a PEACEPLUS cross-border programme, for instance) is a separate publication event the UK portal does not carry. - It does not qualify or draft. Nothing on the portal writes a bid/no-bid memo, checks a turnover threshold against a stated minimum, or tracks ESPD gaps against your file.
A worked example of the gap
Measured live on 2026-09-05: Victano's corpus holds a TED notice, ted:575493-2026 *"CAWT PEACEPLUS Healthier Futures Project, Community-Based Early Intervention Health Improvement Programmes (WHSCT & SHSCT Areas)"*, published by the Regional Business Services Organisation Procurement and Logistics Service, a Northern Ireland cross-border health programme. It carries countries=['GBR'] and is one of 4 currently-open UK-linked TED notices in the corpus (of 26 held). This is exactly the shape of notice that a UK-only search misses: cross-border programme funding published through the EU/EEA channel rather than the domestic register, findable by an agent that reads both layers in the same session.
The honest split
| Job | Start here |
|---|---|
| UK above-threshold browse | Find a Tender Service |
| UK below-threshold browse | Contracts Finder |
| Cross-border / TED-linked UK notices, read by an agent | Victano MCP (connect guide) |
| Company-profile matching across TED + 15 EU national portals | Victano MCP |
If you only need UK above-threshold listings, Find a Tender is the source of truth and wins on coverage for that slice. If you also work cross-border or want an agent that reads notices against your company profile instead of a keyword list, that is a different, narrower job, and the one Victano is built for.
FAQ. Questions people ask
Does Victano replace Find a Tender?
No. Find a Tender is the authoritative UK above-threshold register and stays the source of truth for UK domestic work. Victano is an MCP agent that reads TED, fifteen EU national portals and the EU Funding and Tenders grants register, and connects that reading to your company profile. The two answer different questions.
Does Victano cover Find a Tender notices?
No. Find a Tender is not ingested as a live national feed. Cross-border UK notices that are published to TED with countries GBR are the only UK-linked layer Victano holds today, and that is disclosed as a separate, smaller slice rather than presented as full UK coverage.
What does Find a Tender do that Victano does not?
It is the legally required, free, official publication channel for regulated UK above-threshold contracts, run by the UK government. Nothing replaces that as the record of what was published.
What does a connected agent add that the portal does not?
Find a Tender is a catalogue: every notice matching your search terms is in scope, whether or not your turnover, certifications or past performance would qualify you. A connected agent can hold your company profile and read notice text against it, and it can do that across TED and fifteen national portals in one session instead of four browser tabs.
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.
See how it works