Most Advantageous Tender (MAT) Explained

The definition sits in section 19 of the Procurement Act 2023. In a competitive procurement, a contracting authority may award the contract to the supplier that submits the "most advantageous tender" - defined as the tender the authority considers (a) satisfies its requirements, and (b) best satisfies the award criteria, assessed by reference to the published assessment methodology and, where there is more than one criterion, the relative importance (weighting) of each.

In plain terms: the buyer publishes what it wants, publishes how it will score, and then awards to whoever scores best against that published rubric. Nothing about that says "cheapest". Price is one criterion among several, weighted alongside quality, social value and whatever else the buyer has chosen to reward. The winner is the best total score, not the lowest number - which is precisely why a well-argued, fairly priced bid can and does beat a cheaper rival.

Under the previous regime (the Public Contracts Regulations 2015), the test was the "most economically advantageous tender" - MEAT. The Procurement Act 2023 dropped the word "economically", leaving "most advantageous tender". The GOV.UK guidance on assessing competitive tenders describes this as a clarification rather than a change of policy: buyers could always look beyond bare price, and removing "economically" simply removes any lingering suggestion that the assessment is narrowly about cost.

• ·The name changed: MEAT became MAT, dropping "economically" to signal that award is about broad advantage, not narrow cost
• ·The substance is a clarification, not a reversal - GOV.UK is explicit that this is not a new policy direction
• ·Value for money is defined broadly: GOV.UK calls it "the optimal whole-life blend of economy, efficiency and effectiveness", not the lowest purchase price
• ·Buyers must still publish their award criteria, assessment methodology and weightings up front - MAT does not let them mark on a whim
• ·Price can still, in principle, be the sole criterion - but GOV.UK guidance says that is unlikely to suit most contracts, and buyers must weigh their wider duties first

The commercial takeaway from MAT is liberating once you internalise it: you are not in a race to the bottom on price, you are competing on total advantage against a published scoresheet. That reframes the pricing question. Instead of "how low must I go to win?", the question becomes "what is a defensible price for genuinely good delivery, and how do I make the buyer see it as good value?" - a question you answer with a sound cost build-up and a value-for-money case, not a guess shaded downward.

It also means the weightings tell you where the marks are. A 70/30 quality/price split rewards a strong, evidenced quality answer far more than a rock-bottom price; a 30/70 split says price discipline matters more. Read the split before you price, and let it set how hard you sharpen the number versus how much you invest in the quality response. Our guide on how tenders are scored covers the mechanics of the weightings; our guide on how to price a public-sector bid covers building the number itself.

Because MAT explicitly rewards advantage over cost, the bid that wins is usually the one that makes its value legible to the evaluator. Do not leave the buyer to infer why your price is good - argue it. Where the criteria weight whole-life cost, show the whole-life saving; where they weight quality or social value, cost those commitments in and show what the price funds. A number sitting alone on a page invites the crude question "is it the cheapest?"; a number wrapped in a value-for-money case invites the question the Act actually asks - "is it the most advantageous?"

That case is exactly what we help you build. BidSquirrel assembles the costed breakdown with you and drafts the value-for-money narrative against the buyer's published criteria, from your own evidence - so your price arrives as a case, not a bare figure. See the reasoning on our methodology page, or run it on a real tender via pricing a bid. For the wider regime around MAT - thresholds, conditions of participation, standstill - see our Procurement Act 2023 guide.