Contracts Finder

Contracts Finder

UK Government procurement portal providing public contract notices, tenders, and awards in Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) format.

Data Model

• Release — An OCDS release representing a procurement event (tender, award, contract). Contains buyer, supplier, value, dates.
• Notice — A published procurement notice with title, description, CPV classification, and status.
• Tender — Details of a procurement opportunity: description, value range, submission deadline, CPV codes.
• Award — Contract award details: supplier name, value, date.

Key Fields

• ocid — Open Contracting ID, unique per contracting process
• tender.title / tender.description — What's being procured
• tender.classification.id — CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) code
• tender.value — Estimated contract value range
• awards[].suppliers[].name — Who won the contract
• awards[].value.amount — Awarded value in GBP
• buyer.name — The procuring public authority

Gotchas

• The API returns OCDS-format releases which can be verbose. Key data is nested in releases[].tender and releases[].awards.
• Search results default to 100 per page. Use size to control pagination.
• Published dates are in ISO 8601 format with timezone offset.
• Some older notices may lack structured award data.
• The keyword search matches against title and description fields.