Free tender alerts vs paid tender software: which do you need?
Free government tender alerts are enough if you bid occasionally and your work fits a few clear keywords. Contracts Finder and Find a Tender are both free to search, and Contracts Finder lets you save searches and get email updates.
Paid tender software earns its place when sorting alerts becomes the bottleneck: when you need several portals at once, when keyword alerts bury the good tenders in noise, or when you want help deciding what to bid and drafting the response.
Facts checked against each company's own website. See sources
Free portals vs paid tender software
| Free government portals | Paid tender software | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | From free plans to several thousand pounds a year |
| Coverage | One portal per account; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish separately | Usually several portals in one list — check each tool's coverage |
| How matches are found | Your keywords and filters | Keywords, codes, and in some tools AI ranking |
| Tells you which tenders to prioritise | No | Some tools rank or score tenders |
| Tracks your bids | No | Most include a pipeline |
| Helps write the response | No | Some tools draft, some sell bid-writing services |
What the free portals give you
Contracts Finder lists UK government contracts over £12,000 including VAT. You can search without an account, and creating one lets you save searches and get email updates. You can also look up past tenders and contracts.
Find a Tender carries higher-value contracts. Since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, it has been the central digital platform for public procurement, where suppliers register and buyers publish notices.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own procurement portals, so a supplier bidding across the UK needs more than one account.
Where free alerts fall short
- •Noise. Keyword alerts match words, not fit. "Training" matches a fire safety course and a leadership programme alike, so you read a lot of tenders to find the few that matter.
- •Several inboxes. Bidding across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland means separate searches on separate portals.
- •No priority. Every alert looks equally important. Nothing tells you which tender you're most likely to win.
- •No memory. Free portals don't track which tenders you're bidding on, what's due when, or who won last time.
When paid software is worth it
Stay with free alerts if you bid a handful of times a year, in one part of the UK, for work that's easy to describe in keywords.
Look at paid tools when any of these are true:
- •Sorting alerts takes you more than an hour or two a week.
- •You've missed a tender you should have bid for.
- •You bid across more than one UK nation, or in Ireland.
- •You regularly bid on tenders you later realise you couldn't win.
- •Writing the response, not finding the tender, is what stops you bidding more.
Where RevnIQ fits
RevnIQ's Free plan puts every tender matching your search terms, from UK and Ireland public sector sources, into one list, with a pipeline and deadline alerts. It costs nothing and needs no card. Insight (£299 a month) ranks each tender by fit with a written reason and drafts responses from your own past bids.
Frequently asked questions
Are UK government tender alerts free?▼
What's the difference between Contracts Finder and Find a Tender?▼
Do free alerts cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?▼
Sources
Checked 26 October 2026. Plans and prices change, so check each company's site before you buy.
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Try it yourself
See which tenders RevnIQ puts at the top of your list.
Start on the Free plan with your own search terms. No card needed.