Where are public contracts published in the United States and the United Kingdom?
In the United States, federal contract opportunities above certain thresholds are published on SAM.gov, the System for Award Management; in the United Kingdom, on the Find a Tender service. The notice then points to the buyer's e-procurement portal, the online platform where the buyer makes the tender documents (the full set of papers issued for the contract) available and receives bids. The publication service announces the contract; the buyer's portal gives access to the file and is used for submission.
Finding a contract therefore takes two separate steps: spotting the contract notice, then reaching the buyer's portal that hosts the full file.
Where do you find contracts at the European Union level?
At European Union level, contracts above the EU publicity thresholds are published on TED, Tenders Electronic Daily, the supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union dedicated to public procurement. TED lists tenders from public buyers across member states above these thresholds, making it the entry point for cross-border contracts.
A single high-value contract can therefore appear both on a national portal in an EU member state and on TED for the Union: dual publication is the rule above the EU thresholds.
Where do you look in other markets?
Beyond these, each market has its own official procurement portal, and the exact channel depends on the country and the level of government. Other countries and sub-national levels of government (states, provinces, municipalities) generally maintain their own portals. These names, and the thresholds that trigger publication on them, should be verified for the market and level of government in question before you rely on them.
What is a buyer's e-procurement portal, and what is it for?
A buyer's e-procurement portal is the platform through which a public buyer publishes its tenders, makes the tender documents available, and receives applications and bids. It is where the response actually happens: downloading the documents, asking the buyer questions, submitting the bid before the deadline. Each buyer uses an e-procurement portal, sometimes shared across several public bodies.
The notice published on a national portal or on TED gives the address of the buyer's e-procurement portal: that is where the tender documents to work from are found, not in the notice itself.
Where should you look, depending on the type and value of the contract?
The publication channel depends on the contract's value and the required level of publicity. The table links each case to where to look and what you find there, using the United States, United Kingdom, and EU frameworks as the illustration.
| Case | Where to look | What you find there |
|---|---|---|
| Contract above the EU thresholds | TED and the buyer's e-procurement portal | the EU-level notice and the tender documents |
| Contract above national publicity thresholds | the national gazette and the buyer's e-procurement portal | the national notice and the tender documents |
| Simplified or lower-value procedure | the buyer's e-procurement portal, or a channel the buyer chooses | the notice and the tender documents |
| Contract with no prior publicity | direct contact from the buyer | an invitation to bid |
The thresholds that determine the required level of publicity are set by the applicable procurement rules and are revised periodically: check them against their official source for the market in question at the time you respond, rather than relying on memory.
Do you need a monitoring tool to find tenders?
For a one-off need, checking national portals, TED, and known buyer portals directly is enough, with no special tool. For a company that responds to public contracts regularly, a monitoring service saves time by centralizing the relevant notices. The line is not the availability of the information, which is public, but the time it takes to find it: the official sources are open to everyone, and monitoring only speeds up the sorting.
Mistakes that cause you to miss contracts
- Stopping at the notice: the notice announces the contract, but the tender documents are on the buyer's e-procurement portal.
- Ignoring TED for large contracts: a contract above the EU thresholds appears there, even if you only follow national sources.
- Underestimating simplified procedures: below the thresholds, the buyer chooses its own publicity channel, which varies from one contract to the next.
- Relying on memorized thresholds: thresholds are revised; recalling them from memory leads to misjudging a contract's publicity requirement.
- Not registering on the buyer's e-procurement portal: without an account, you can neither ask a question nor submit a bid.
On the Optivalue.ai platform, which publishes this site, tenders are one of 5 use cases (tenders, security questionnaires, customer questionnaires, non-financial reporting, supplier analysis), handled once the tender documents have been retrieved.
Frequently asked questions
Are these tender notices free to consult?
Notices published on official services such as SAM.gov and Find a Tender are open to the public. The tender documents themselves are retrieved from the buyer's e-procurement portal indicated in the notice.
What is the difference between a national publication service and TED?
A national publication service, such as SAM.gov in the United States or the Find a Tender service in the United Kingdom, is the official record for public contracts within that country; TED is the supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union for contracts above the EU thresholds. A large contract can appear on both.
Do you need an account to access a tender file?
Access to the tender documents, and especially submitting a bid, goes through the buyer's e-procurement portal, where registration is generally required. The account also lets you receive amendments to the file.
Do these channels differ by market?
The official publication services differ by market (SAM.gov in the United States, the Find a Tender service in the United Kingdom); TED covers the European Union. Each country has its own official publication channels, to be checked for the market in question.
Find and process a real contract on your own documents
Bring a real set of tender documents retrieved from a buyer's e-procurement portal. You will see requirement-extraction coverage, sources cited on every page, and a gap analysis of your response, not a prepared demo.
Written by the compliance and presales team at Optivalue.ai. Last reviewed: 5 September 2026. This page does not constitute legal advice.
Sources cited
- Official tender-publication services (SAM.gov in the United States; the Find a Tender service in the United Kingdom).
- TED, Tenders Electronic Daily, the supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union dedicated to public procurement.
- Public procurement rules setting the publicity regime by threshold (in the United States, the Federal Acquisition Regulation; in the United Kingdom, the Procurement Act 2023); thresholds are revised periodically and should be checked against their official source in each market.