Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder 2026: UK Supplier Guide

UK public buyers publish opportunities on two official notice boards. Confuse them, and you miss contracts. Here's the clear distinction — and why serious bid teams monitor both.

1. Find a Tender Service (FTS)

find-tender.service.gov.uk is the UK's replacement for OJEU/TED post-Brexit. It carries above-threshold notices that all contracting authorities (central government, NHS, councils, universities, utilities) are legally required to publish.

• Goods & services (central gov): £139,688+
• Goods & services (sub-central): £214,904+
• Works: £5,372,609+
• Light-touch services: £663,540+

2. Contracts Finder

contractsfinder.service.gov.uk is for central government below-threshold contracts over £12,000 (ex VAT) and wider public sectorcontracts over £30,000 (ex VAT). High-value contracts also appear here in addition to FTS.

3. Side-by-side

4. Common mistakes

• Only watching FTS. You miss every sub-threshold contract — and these are exactly the ones SMEs can win without competing with multinationals.
• Only watching Contracts Finder. You miss every above-threshold tender from NHS trusts, universities and large councils.
• Searching by free text only. Both platforms support filtering by CPV code, region, deadline and authority — use them.

5. The unified approach

rTenders ingests both feeds in real time (and historical data back to 2019), de-duplicates notices that appear on both, normalises CPV codes, and pushes new matches to your alerts. One search, one inbox, zero missed opportunities.