Find a Tender alternative
Every GB tender in one place, scored to your business
Find a Tender is now the government's central portal, Contracts Finder still carries notices from older procurements, and both are excellent as the source of record. But searching them yourself, alongside every regional and council system, is slow and they cannot tell you what is worth bidding for. BidSquirrel is the intelligence layer on top.
Why the portals alone are hard work for an SME
The work is still split across many portals
Find a Tender, the public face of the government's Central Digital Platform, now carries new notices at every value. But Contracts Finder still holds notices from procurements begun under the previous rules, and Scotland, Wales and individual councils run their own systems. To see everything relevant you still have to check several sites, repeatedly.
You search, they do not match
The portals return keyword results. They do not know your capabilities, scale, location or growth goals, so they cannot tell you which tenders are a strong fit, which are a stretch, or which you are not eligible for.
No help to actually win
They list the notice and the documents. There is no eligibility check, no read of the scoresheet, no guidance on what the evaluator rewards, and no way to pressure-test your draft before you submit.
The sub-£30k council work is hard to see
A lot of winnable, lower-competition council work sits below the publication threshold on local quote portals that never reach the headline feeds.
Find a Tender / Contracts Finder vs BidSquirrel
| Capability | Gov portals | BidSquirrel |
|---|---|---|
| Free to use | From £24.99/mo (then £49.99) | |
| Every major GB source in one place | ||
| Sub-£30k council quotes (ProContract) | ||
| AI fit-scoring to your business | ||
| Pass/fail eligibility check | ||
| Procurement-regime classification | ||
| "How to win" guidance | ||
| Guided bid writing + panel-style scoring | ||
| Trained procurement expert AI (regime-aware, evaluator-calibrated) | ||
| Daily alerts ranked to you | Keyword only |
The official portals remain free and authoritative. Always verify an opportunity against its official notice before bidding.
Questions, answered
Is Find a Tender free?
Yes. Find a Tender and Contracts Finder are official UK government services and are free to search. BidSquirrel does not replace them as the source of record, it sits on top: it pulls every major source into one place, scores each tender to your business, and adds the eligibility checks and guidance the portals do not provide.
What is the difference between Find a Tender and Contracts Finder?
Find a Tender is now the central service: since the Procurement Act 2023 went live in February 2025, new public contracts above and below threshold (from £12,000 for central government) are published there through the Central Digital Platform. Contracts Finder remains live for procurements begun under the previous rules, such as awards and call-offs under older frameworks, so it still publishes thousands of notices. Scotland uses Public Contracts Scotland and Wales uses Sell2Wales. BidSquirrel scans all of them, plus council quote portals, together. (Welsh above-threshold notices flow live via Find a Tender; the dedicated sub-threshold Sell2Wales feed is currently limited while an upstream fault is fixed.)
What happened to Contracts Finder?
It has not been switched off, but its role has changed. New procurements now publish on the enhanced Find a Tender service, the public face of the government's Central Digital Platform, rather than on Contracts Finder. Contracts Finder still carries the long tail of procurements run under the old rules, including awards and call-offs under pre-2025 frameworks, and it continues to publish thousands of notices a week. BidSquirrel ingests both, alongside the Scottish, Welsh and council portals, so nothing slips through while the two systems run side by side.
Do I still need Find a Tender if I use BidSquirrel?
You can keep using the free portals as much as you like, and you should always verify an opportunity against its official notice before bidding. BidSquirrel is the intelligence layer that saves you trawling them: it finds the right tenders for you, tells you whether you qualify, and helps you win them.
What is the best tender alert service for a small business?
For SMEs the deciding factors are coverage (every major GB source, including sub-£30k council work), relevance (tenders scored to your business, not keyword noise), and help to win (eligibility and bid guidance), at a price a small business can pay. That combination is exactly what BidSquirrel is built for, from £49.99/mo.
Stop trawling portals. Start winning.
Every major GB source, scored to your business, with eligibility checks and how-to-win guidance. From £49.99/mo.
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