Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder: UK Procurement Portals Compared

Find a Tender Service (FTS) is the UK government's platform for publishing above-threshold public procurement notices. Launched in January 2021 to replace the EU's OJEU/TED system following Brexit, FTS is operated by the Cabinet Office and serves as the UK's central platform for high-value public contracts. All UK contracting authorities — central government, local authorities, NHS bodies, and arms-length organisations — are legally required to publish contract notices on FTS when the estimated value exceeds the relevant threshold.

FTS publishes several notice types: prior information notices (PINs) signal upcoming procurement, contract notices formally invite tenders, and contract award notices report completed procurements. The platform also publishes transparency notices for contracts awarded without competition and dynamic purchasing system notices. Under the Procurement Act 2023, FTS will also publish pipeline notices — planned procurement up to 18 months in advance — giving suppliers unprecedented visibility into future opportunities.

Contracts Finder is the UK government's platform for publishing below-threshold public procurement opportunities. It covers English public sector contracts valued above £12,000 for central government bodies and above £30,000 for other public bodies (including local authorities and NHS trusts), up to the relevant thresholds where FTS publication becomes mandatory. Contracts Finder is also operated by the Cabinet Office and has been running since 2011.

Contracts Finder publishes opportunity notices, closed notices for completed competitions, and awarded contract notices. Unlike FTS, which focuses on formal procurement notices in a structured format, Contracts Finder often includes more accessible tender documents — many opportunities link directly to specification documents, making it easier for suppliers to quickly assess relevance. For SMEs especially, Contracts Finder is the more important portal: below-threshold contracts typically have simpler procurement procedures, shorter timelines, and fewer bidders than the larger contracts on FTS.

The key distinction between FTS and Contracts Finder is the value threshold. As of January 2024, the UK procurement thresholds that trigger FTS publication are: £139,688 for central government goods and services, £215,000 for sub-central authority goods and services (including local authorities, NHS, and most public bodies), £5,372,609 for works contracts, and specific thresholds for utilities and concessions.

Contracts below these thresholds but above £12,000 (central government) or £30,000 (other public bodies) should appear on Contracts Finder. In practice, this means Contracts Finder covers thousands of contracts annually that never appear on FTS — typically smaller service contracts, local authority purchasing, and routine procurement. These below-threshold contracts are strategically important for SMEs and new market entrants because they attract fewer bidders, use simplified procedures, and often have faster procurement timelines (10-21 days versus 30-45 days for above-threshold).

FTS notices follow a structured format inherited from the EU's standard forms, now being replaced by UK-specific forms under the Procurement Act 2023. Notices include detailed fields for CPV codes, NUTS region codes, estimated values, qualification criteria, award criteria and weightings, lot structures, and procedural information. This structured data makes FTS notices highly searchable but sometimes difficult to parse for the key information a supplier needs to make a bid/no-bid decision.

Contracts Finder notices are generally simpler and more accessible. They include the opportunity title, contracting authority, a description of requirements, submission deadline, and links to tender documents. The format varies more between contracting authorities, and the level of detail depends on the buyer. Some Contracts Finder notices include full specifications directly; others link to e-procurement portals where suppliers must register before accessing documents. The trade-off: FTS provides more structured, comprehensive information; Contracts Finder is more accessible but less consistent.

There is some overlap between FTS and Contracts Finder. Above-threshold contracts published on FTS are also required to appear on Contracts Finder, meaning the largest UK procurement is theoretically visible on both platforms. In practice, compliance with this dual-publication requirement is inconsistent — some contracting authorities publish on FTS but forget or delay the Contracts Finder listing, and vice versa.

The significant gap is geographic: Contracts Finder covers only English public sector procurement. Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish below-threshold procurement is published on devolved portals — Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, and eTendersNI respectively. FTS covers above-threshold procurement UK-wide, regardless of which nation the contracting authority is in. For complete UK coverage below threshold, you need Contracts Finder plus all three devolved portals. Jorpex monitors all five UK procurement portals (FTS, Contracts Finder, PCS, Sell2Wales, eTendersNI), eliminating these geographic and threshold-based gaps entirely.

Monitoring only FTS means missing the thousands of below-threshold contracts published on Contracts Finder — contracts that are often easier to win, faster to close, and provide the past performance needed to compete for larger FTS-published tenders later. Monitoring only Contracts Finder means missing the larger, higher-value above-threshold opportunities and the pipeline notices that FTS will publish under the Procurement Act 2023.

Jorpex monitors both FTS and Contracts Finder (plus devolved portals) continuously, delivering matching opportunities to your Slack workspace with the title, contracting authority, estimated value, deadline, source portal, and a direct link. Your team doesn't need to know whether a tender was published on FTS or Contracts Finder — they simply see a unified stream of UK opportunities filtered to their keywords, regions, and value ranges. One notification profile covers the full spectrum of UK procurement, from £12,000 Contracts Finder opportunities to multi-million-pound FTS tenders.