Find open tenders

An open tender is a public procurement procedure in which any eligible supplier can submit a bid directly against a published notice, with no shortlisting stage. Under the Procurement Act 2023, the open procedure is one of two competitive tendering procedures, alongside the competitive flexible procedure. It's typically used for straightforward requirements where the buyer wants the widest pool of bidders.

The word "open" refers to two things: who can bid, and how long they have to do it.

Open tender. Any eligible supplier can submit a full bid, but only within the submission window set by the buyer. Once the deadline passes, the tender is closed and no further bids are accepted.

Closed tender. Suppliers must first pass a selection stage, and only the shortlist is invited to submit a full bid.

Open procedures favour speed and market breadth. Closed procedures suit complex requirements where the buyer needs to filter the field before evaluating detailed responses.

The contracting authority publishes a tender notice with the specification, evaluation criteria and submission deadline. Any eligible supplier can download the documents and submit a bid within the response window. The buyer evaluates all compliant bids against the published criteria and awards the contract on the basis of the Most Advantageous Tender. A Contract Award Notice is published, followed by the standstill period before signature.

Open tenders above the relevant thresholds are governed by the Procurement Act 2023, which went live in February 2025. The Act sets minimum tender periods, notice and transparency obligations, and the standstill period before contract signature. Buyers must publish through the Central Digital Platform and treat all suppliers equally throughout the process.

The two main sources are Find a Tender, the mandatory UK service for above-threshold notices under the Procurement Act 2023, and Contracts Finder, the service for below-threshold notices in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own portals (Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTenders NI), and Ireland uses eTenders.

Beyond these, hundreds of individual councils, NHS trusts, universities and framework operators publish through their own systems. That fragmentation is the real problem. Notices are misclassified, CPV codes are applied inconsistently, and the same opportunity can appear in different places with different metadata.

Stotles aggregates 2,211 open tenders from 100+ sources into one searchable feed, normalises the data, and lets you filter by buyer, framework, value or deadline.

The UK public sector publishes new tender notices every working day. Stotles adds around 0 new notices in the trailing seven days on average. Set keyword, CPV code or buyer-based alerts so relevant open tenders reach you the moment they're published.

Yes, and it solves a real problem. Traditional tender search relies on CPV codes, which buyers apply inconsistently: a cybersecurity consulting engagement might be filed under a generic IT services code, or a healthcare AI project under a broad software category. Keyword filters miss the same tenders for the opposite reason, since buyers rarely write notices using the language suppliers search with.

AI-driven semantic search matches on meaning, not codes or exact words. It understands that a notice about "clinical decision support tooling" is relevant to a supplier selling healthcare AI, even if neither phrase appears in the other. Stotles AI applies this across every notice in the platform so relevant open tenders surface even when the metadata doesn't cooperate.