How to Search TED for EU Tenders
TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) publishes over 700,000 EU procurement notices per year — but finding the right ones requires understanding its search system. Between CPV codes, NUTS regions, notice types, and multi-language results, the learning curve is steep. This guide walks you through TED's search interface step by step, from basic keyword queries to advanced filtering strategies.
Understanding TED notice types
TED publishes several types of notices, and knowing which to focus on saves time. Contract notices are live opportunities — these are active tenders you can bid on. Prior information notices (PINs) signal upcoming procurements, giving you early warning to prepare. Contract award notices reveal who won past contracts, providing competitive intelligence. Voluntary ex-ante transparency notices indicate intended direct awards. For opportunity discovery, focus primarily on contract notices. Use PINs for pipeline planning and award notices for competitive analysis and relationship-building.
Using CPV codes to filter by sector
CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) codes are the most effective way to narrow TED results. The system uses an 8-digit hierarchical structure: the first two digits define the division (e.g., 72 = IT services, 45 = construction), and subsequent digits add specificity. Start broad — searching division 72 captures all IT-related tenders — then narrow as you learn which sub-categories match your services. You can combine multiple CPV codes in a single search. For IT companies: 72200000 (software services), 72300000 (data services), 72400000 (internet services), and 72600000 (support and consulting) cover the main categories.
Filtering by NUTS geographic regions
NUTS codes specify where the contract work will be performed. NUTS 0 is the country level (DE = Germany, FR = France), NUTS 1 is major regions (UKC = North East England), NUTS 2 is smaller regions, and NUTS 3 is specific areas. Use NUTS filtering to target markets where you can deliver: if you need local presence, filter to your NUTS 2 region; if you serve an entire country, use NUTS 0. Combining CPV codes with NUTS regions dramatically reduces noise — instead of 700,000 annual notices, you might see 200-500 highly relevant opportunities per year.
Ready to see it in action?
Set up in minutes. No credit card required.
Advanced search strategies
TED's advanced search supports Boolean operators and wildcards. Use quotation marks for exact phrases ("cloud migration"), combine terms with AND/OR, and exclude irrelevant results with NOT. Free-text search checks the full notice text, not just the title — so it catches relevant tenders even when the title is generic. Filter by estimated contract value to focus on opportunities that match your capacity. Filter by submission deadline to exclude tenders closing within days. Save useful searches as profiles to run them again without rebuilding the query.
Setting up TED alerts and saved searches
Registered TED users can save up to five search profiles and receive email notifications when new matching notices are published. This is TED's built-in monitoring feature — it's free and sends daily emails. However, TED alerts have limitations: only five profiles, no filtering by contract value within alerts, results only from TED (not national portals), and email-only delivery. For many companies, TED's native alerts are a reasonable starting point, but they leave significant gaps in coverage.
Beyond manual TED search: automated monitoring
TED's search interface is powerful but time-consuming. Constructing effective queries, reviewing results, and tracking deadlines across multiple searches takes hours per week. Jorpex automates this entire workflow — monitoring TED alongside 50+ additional procurement sources that TED doesn't cover. Your keyword, CPV, geographic, and value filters are applied continuously to every new publication. Matching tenders are delivered to Slack or email with formatted summaries in your preferred language, regardless of the source language. This covers both the above-threshold TED tenders and the below-threshold national portal opportunities that TED misses entirely.