Prozorro (Ukraine's public procurement system)
Prozorro is Ukraine's single electronic procurement system: one central database operated by the state, surrounded by commercial front-ends called authorised electronic marketplaces. Buyers publish once and the notice appears everywhere; suppliers, however, cannot bid on the central site at all. You choose a marketplace, register there, and submit through it — which is the part that surprises most newcomers.
One database, many front doors
Ukrainian law separates the parts of Prozorro that most people treat as a single website. The Law on Public Procurement (922-VIII) defines the electronic procurement system as an information and communications system with a certified information-security regime, and the web portal of the Authorised Body as the central database within it, populated by an administrator — a legal entity designated by the Authorised Body (the Ministry of Economy) and responsible for keeping the portal running and populated.
Around that central database sit authorised electronic marketplaces (авторизовані електронні майданчики). The Law defines one as an information and telecommunications system authorised by the Ministry of Economy; the operating rules, in Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 166 of 24 February 2016, define authorisation as connecting a marketplace to the web portal by decision of the Ministry, taken on the basis of a commission decision. A marketplace must either hold a state-attested comprehensive information protection system (КСЗІ) or an information-security certificate of conformity issued by a conformity assessment body before the administrator will connect it.
The practical effect is that all procurement data lives in one place while all user interaction happens somewhere else. Article 10 of the Law makes access to published information free and open, and requires buyers to publish through authorised marketplaces at no charge. As at 26 July 2026 the Prozorro portal listed thirteen authorised marketplaces, including SmartTender.biz, E-tender, Zakupivli.Pro, Держзакупівлі.Онлайн, zakupki.com.ua, Public Bid, Newtend, IZI.TRADE, PlayTender, ТЕНДЕР 360 and the Ukrainian Universal Exchange.
Which marketplace you pick barely matters — and where it does
Marketplaces compete on interface, support hours, analytics and hand-holding, not on the auction rules or the fee percentage. Resolution 166 fixes the bidder's fee at 0.3 per cent of the initial price offer, capped at three subsistence minimums for an able-bodied person as at 1 January of the year in which the bid is submitted, and states expressly that the percentage is identical for all operators and may not be set by operators themselves. That fee is refunded in full if the tender is cancelled, declared not to have taken place, or the bid is withdrawn before opening. If your bid is opened but you do not win the contract, the operator returns two thirds of the fee. No fee is charged for participating in a framework-agreement tender or in the first stage of a competitive dialogue.
So the choice of marketplace is a service choice, not a strategic one. What does differ is registration: Resolution 166 allows identification by qualified electronic signature under the electronic trust services law, by a bank's identification service, by a verified bank payment to the operator, through a mobile operator, or by signing a contract with the operator. Non-residents without a Ukrainian qualified signature will normally end up on the payment or contract route, and that takes days rather than minutes. Start it before you find a tender you want, not after.
What a supplier actually does
Register on one authorised marketplace. Because all marketplaces read and write the same central database, the tender you found on one operator's site can be bid on from any of them — but your documents, notifications and support relationship live with the operator you registered with, so consolidating on one is simpler than spreading across several.
Use the central portal for research and the marketplace for action. Notices, tender documentation, clarification threads, bid opening protocols, award decisions and contracts are all published in the system and are free to read without registration. Prozorro's own knowledge base, Infobox, is organised by procurement lifecycle stage — registration, market analysis and planning, preparing a tender, running the auction, qualification and appeals, contract conclusion — rather than alphabetically, so look for the stage you are in rather than for a term.
Budget the bid fee into your pricing. At 0.3 per cent of the initial offer it is small, but it is charged per bid submitted and only partly refunded when you lose, so a high-volume, low-hit-rate bidding strategy carries a real cost.
Finally, note that Prozorro is the delivery channel, not the rulebook. What a given tender must contain, how long you get to bid and on what grounds you can be rejected come from the Law and, during martial law, from the Cabinet's Особливості — not from the marketplace you happen to be using.
Related terms
- Відкриті торги з особливостями (open tendering with peculiarities, Ukraine)
- Law 922-VIII — Ukraine's Public Procurement Act
- Prozorro.Market / електронний каталог (Ukraine's electronic catalogue)
- АМКУ — the Antimonopoly Committee as Ukraine's procurement appeal body
See Otnox plans to track procurement opportunities across 56 markets.