Contracts Finder (UK)
Contracts Finder is the UK government's older public procurement portal, live since February 2015 and still online today. Since the Procurement Act 2023 took effect on 24 February 2025, new UK procurements are advertised on Find a Tender instead, and Contracts Finder carries only procurements that began under the previous rules. For a supplier looking for work in 2026 it is a research archive and a place to follow legacy contracts through to award, not the place to find new opportunities.
What Contracts Finder is
Contracts Finder is a free UK government website that has published public sector contract opportunities and award information since 26 February 2015. It was built under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015) as a transparency measure: contracting authorities in England, and reserved and non-devolved bodies across the UK, had to publish their tender opportunities and resulting contract awards in one searchable place so that smaller suppliers could see them without paying for a subscription service.
For a decade it was the default first stop for anyone selling to UK central government departments, local authorities, NHS bodies, schools and universities. That role has now largely moved.
What changed on 24 February 2025
The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, repealing PCR 2015 along with the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016, the Concession Contracts Regulations 2016 and the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011 for new procurements.
The Act designates a central digital platform as the single place where contracting authorities publish procurement information. That platform is an enhanced version of Find a Tender, which went live in its new form on the same day. The practical rule is set out by Find a Tender itself:
> For procurement processes starting 24 February 2025 or later, the notices specified by the Procurement Act 2023 must be published, except if Scottish rules apply.
and
> If a notice was published before 24 February 2025 under earlier legislation, on Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales or eTendersNI, then all further notices published about the same procurement process must be of the types specified under the same legislation.
So the split is by start date of the procurement, not by contract value. A procurement that began under PCR 2015 stays on Contracts Finder for its whole life, including its award and any later modification notices. A procurement that began on or after 24 February 2025 goes on Find a Tender from the first notice to the last.
The threshold split is no longer what it was
The old division of labour — Contracts Finder for below-threshold, Find a Tender for above-threshold — no longer describes the current regime. Under the Procurement Act 2023 both above-threshold and below-threshold notices for new UK procurements are published on Find a Tender. The one significant carve-out is Scotland, where below-threshold notices continue to go to Public Contracts Scotland.
Contracts Finder's own guidance page on GOV.UK still describes it as covering contracts worth over £12,000 including VAT and points readers to Find a Tender for higher-value work. That description reflects the PCR 2015 arrangement it was built for, and the £12,000 figure survives in the Act in a different guise: section 87(4) defines a "notifiable below-threshold contract" as one worth not less than £12,000 for a central government authority that is not a devolved Welsh authority, and not less than £30,000 otherwise. Those contracts now require a contract details notice on Find a Tender.
What Contracts Finder is still good for
It has not been switched off, and no closure date has been announced. Three uses remain genuine:
- Legacy procurements. Long-running PCR 2015 competitions, frameworks awarded before February 2025 and their call-offs still generate notices there. If you are tracking a framework awarded in 2023, that is where its award and modification notices live.
- Award history. Roughly ten years of UK award notices sit on Contracts Finder — who won, at what value, for how long, and when the contract expires. This is the raw material for identifying incumbents and working out when a contract will next come to market. Find a Tender's own award history only begins in 2021 for above-threshold work and 2025 for the rest.
- Buyer behaviour. Because publication was mandatory for a wide range of authorities, the archive gives a reasonable picture of which buyers actually advertised, how often, and at what values.
Practical guidance for suppliers
Set your alerts on Find a Tender, not Contracts Finder, if you want to see new work. Keep Contracts Finder for research and for contracts you are already following.
Be careful when comparing figures across the two services. A supplier who searches Contracts Finder for "current" opportunities in a sector and finds it quiet may conclude the market has dried up, when in fact the notices have simply moved. Equally, a supplier relying on Contracts Finder award data alone will have a picture that stops in early 2025 for anything newly tendered.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own portals — Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI — and the Act interacts with each differently. If you sell across the UK you need to watch more than one service regardless of which regime applies.