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How to find UK government tenders after the Procurement Act 2023
The question
You sell to businesses and want to sell to the UK public sector. Where do tenders actually live now, what changed in 2025, and how do you watch them without making it a part-time job?
What is true, verified
- Find a Tender is the official central platform. Under the Procurement Act 2023 — in force for procurements started on or after 24 February 2025 — the Find a Tender Service became the Central Digital Platform where regulated UK notices are published across the whole procurement lifecycle. Suppliers needed to (re)register on the new platform.
- Contracts Finder carries the below-threshold volume for England — smaller contracts that never reach the central thresholds. If you only watch Find a Tender, you miss the long tail where SMEs actually win.
- The data is genuinely open. Both services publish notices in the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS); Contracts Finder's read API needs no key. That's what makes third-party radars possible — and it means any honest tool should link you straight to the official notice, never a paywalled summary of public data.
- The incumbent tools price for mid-market and up (Tussell, Stotles and similar sell procurement intelligence suites). The gap at the SME end is a simple profile-filtered alert with the deadline visible.
How to search yourself
- Search find-tender.service.gov.uk and contractsfinder.service.gov.uk by keyword; sort by publication date and always check the submission deadline.
- Keep the exact keywords buyers use (their vocabulary, not yours) — that list is your real filter.
- Verify every opportunity on the official notice before investing hours in a bid.
The honest shortcut
OppRadar does exactly that filtering — your profile (keywords, location) against official sources, every opportunity linking to the official notice with its deadline, nothing invented. It runs live for Colombia (SECOP II) today; the UK opens if demand is real: signing up on the probe is the vote.