Government tenders data: SAM.gov, TED and UK sources.

Use SAM.gov for US federal opportunity notices, TED for EU-level public procurement notices, and Find a Tender for current UK Procurement Act notices. Retain Contracts Finder for procurements begun under the previous UK regime, and add devolved or national portals when the required coverage extends beyond those central services. These sources overlap in purpose, but not in legal scope, notice taxonomy, identifiers, formats, or history.

The wrong comparison asks which portal has the most rows. The useful comparison asks which public bodies must publish there, which stages are included, how a bid-ready opportunity is identified, whether amendments can be reconstructed, and which official machine-readable route fits the workload.

Scale illustrates the problem. TED publishes more than 3,000 notices each weekday. The European Commission separately describes roughly 800,000 notices a year and procurement worth more than €815 billion. The notice count includes planning, competition, result, change, and other publications—not 800,000 live tenders. SAM.gov does not publish a stable headline opportunity count suitable for a timeless comparison; its result depends on the posted-date window, status, and notice types selected. The UK changed its central publication boundary on 24 February 2025, making a current count across Find a Tender and Contracts Finder particularly easy to misread. (About TED; European Commission: Tenders Electronic Daily; UK central digital platform factsheet)

SAM.gov vs TED vs UK sources: the short answer

There is no overall winner. Each source is authoritative within a different boundary.

• SAM.gov Contract Opportunities is the starting point for US federal presolicitations, solicitations, combined notices, sources sought, special notices, justifications, and related opportunity-stage records. It is not a state-and-local procurement portal and does not contain every federal purchase.
• TED is the EU’s online Official Journal supplement for cross-border public procurement. It is strongest for standardized above-threshold notice discovery across countries and languages. It does not replace national portals, e-sourcing systems, or buyer-hosted tender documents.
• Find a Tender is the central platform for notices under the UK Procurement Act 2023, subject to territorial and procedural exceptions. Its UK1–UK4 notices distinguish pipeline, engagement, planning, and competitive tender stages.
• Contracts Finder remains necessary for continuity on many procurements that began before 24 February 2025. It should not be treated as a second independent feed of current Procurement Act opportunities.
• Devolved portals close important UK gaps: Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, and eTendersNI can be necessary for lower-value coverage, tender documents, and operational workflows.

For a one-off search, use the relevant official interface and verify the full notice and documents there. For alerts, history, analytics, or a product, use the official API or bulk route and retain the source’s lifecycle semantics.

This article compares the opportunity-data sources themselves. The separate government contracts database guide explains how opportunities connect to awards, contracts, financial actions, and supplier identities after publication.

Compare legal scope before you compare volume

SAM.gov, TED, and the UK portals are not regional replicas of one database. Their observed populations are created by different procurement rules.

First define what counts as an opportunity

A source can publish several kinds of forward-looking signal:

• pipeline: a buyer expects future demand but is not inviting a response;
• market engagement: the buyer is gathering information or speaking with suppliers;
• planned procurement: a specific competition is expected later;
• bid-ready competition: tenders or requests to participate are invited before a stated deadline;
• direct-award transparency: the buyer intends a non-competitive route;
• result or award: the selection decision or contract outcome is being reported; and
• change or cancellation: an earlier notice, deadline, lot, or procedure has changed.

All can matter to procurement intelligence. Only some are opportunities that a new supplier can bid on now.

In SAM.gov, a Solicitation or Combined Synopsis/Solicitation is usually closer to “bid now” than Sources Sought or a Presolicitation. In TED, use the Competition family and then test the latest version, deadline, and change state rather than searching only for the words “contract notice.” In the UK, UK4 is the competitive tender notice; UK1–UK3 are earlier signals, UK5 is direct-award transparency, UK6 is the award decision, and UK7 follows contract entry. (SAM.gov Opportunities API; TED eForms schema; Find a Tender notice types)

Then state the publication universe

A useful coverage statement identifies:

• jurisdiction and level of government;
• buyer and procurement categories in scope;
• value thresholds and their tax basis;
• legal exceptions and voluntary publications;
• included notice families and lifecycle stages;
• the date range and whether history is complete; and
• whether tender documents and submission workflows are hosted or merely linked.

Do not compare raw source counts until those boundaries align. A feed containing market research and awards will appear larger than one restricted to open competitions. A source with aggressive below-threshold publication will appear more active than one whose legal mandate starts at a higher value. Corrections and repeated versions can inflate publication counts without representing new demand.

SAM.gov: US federal opportunity notices

SAM.gov Contract Opportunities is the US federal procurement-notice service. Anyone can search the public interface without an account; signing in adds saved searches, following, and other workspace features. Grants belong on Grants.gov, while state, county, municipal, and other non-federal opportunities require their own portals.

Coverage and thresholds

The current Federal Acquisition Regulation generally requires proposed federal supply and service actions expected to exceed $25,000 to be synopsized through the Governmentwide Point of Entry, SAM.gov. Proposed actions above $20,000 through $25,000 follow a public-display or appropriate electronic-display rule, and agencies may publicize actions of any value when advantageous. (FAR 5.101; FAR 5.201)

That does not make SAM.gov a complete inventory of every federal purchase above $25,000. FAR 5.202 includes exceptions covering circumstances such as national security, unusual and compelling urgency, specified statutory sources, some orders under existing vehicles, some overseas actions, and other defined situations. The simplified acquisition threshold is a separate concept and is currently $350,000 in the general case; it is not the basic SAM.gov synopsis threshold. (FAR 5.202; FAR 2.101)

Normal timing also varies. FAR 5.203 generally requires publication at least 15 days before solicitation, subject to commercial and other exceptions. Response time is reasonable for actions above $25,000 through the simplified acquisition threshold and for commercial acquisitions; at least 30 days generally applies to noncommercial actions above that threshold, 45 days to research and development above the threshold, and 40 days to covered trade-agreement acquisitions, with stated flexibilities. A dataset should preserve the reported deadline rather than infer one universal response window. (FAR 5.203)

Notice types and fields

The public feed mixes opportunity and non-opportunity stages. Current types include Presolicitation, Solicitation, Combined Synopsis/Solicitation, Sources Sought, Special Notice, Justification, Award Notice, Sale of Surplus Property, and consolidation or bundling notices. Retired codes can still appear in historical documentation, so retain the source code and label used at collection time. (SAM.gov public Opportunities API; SAM.gov Opportunity Management API)

Useful fields include:

• source notice ID and source URL;
• solicitation number;
• current and base notice type;
• organization hierarchy codes and full-parent paths;
• posted, response, and archive dates;
• active or archive state;
• set-aside code and description;
• NAICS and product or service classification;
• place of performance;
• description, contact, additional-information, and attachment links; and
• an optional award object on applicable notices.

Use noticeId as the returned source-record ID. It is not a universal procedure key: version history, parent and related IDs where available, and cautious agency-scoped solicitation-number matching are needed for lifecycle grouping. A solicitation number should not be assumed globally unique or one-to-one across the lifecycle. (SAM.gov Opportunity Management API)

API, bulk data, and history

The public Opportunities API returns JSON and requires a SAM.gov API key. postedFrom and postedTo are mandatory, use MM/dd/yyyy, and can span at most one year. The maximum page size is 1,000 records with offset pagination. Filters include notice type, notice or solicitation ID, title, organization, place-of-performance state or ZIP, set-aside, NAICS, classification, and response-deadline range.

The most important limitation is version behavior: the public API provides only the latest active version. GSA directs users to SAM.gov Data Services for all versions and bulk opportunity files. Active notices update daily in the API feed, while archived notices update weekly. A pipeline that starts today cannot recreate past amendment states from later API responses alone; it must save snapshots or ingest the versioned bulk/history route.

For historical analysis, profile the actual posted dates, fields, and completeness in the source files rather than inferring a clean time series from archive filenames. Preserve missing values and documentation changes. Some attachments or controlled material can require authentication even when the public notice is visible. (SAM.gov Opportunity Management API)

SAM.gov: strengths and weaknesses

SAM.gov is strongest as the authoritative source for covered US federal opportunity notices, US agency hierarchy, small-business set-asides, NAICS and PSC filters, detailed place-of-performance fields, source attachments, and an accessible search interface.

It is weak as a universal “open RFP” feed unless notice types and states are filtered. It excludes state and local procurement, contains legal coverage exceptions, mixes market research and award-related notices with competitions, exposes only the latest active version through the public search API, and applies one-year date-window and quota constraints. An Award Notice in Contract Opportunities is not a substitute for SAM.gov Contract Awards or USAspending when the question concerns complete award actions or money.

TED: EU-level procurement notices

Tenders Electronic Daily is the online Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union. It provides free access to opportunities from the EU, European Economic Area, and notices published under other eligible legal bases. New UK procedures have not been published there since 1 January 2021, although later notices for older UK procedures can still appear. (European public procurement on TED)

Coverage, thresholds, and scale

TED’s core legal strength is higher-value procurement. Current 2026–27 headline thresholds, calculated on estimated value net of VAT, are €140,000 for central-government supplies and services, €216,000 for sub-central supplies and services, €432,000 for utilities supplies and services, and €5,404,000 for works. Social and other specific services, concessions, defence, and other categories have their own thresholds. Below-threshold procurement follows national rules; buyers can voluntarily publish certain lower-value notices on TED, so coverage is useful but uneven. (European Commission procurement thresholds; Directive 2014/24/EU, Articles 5 and 51; Directive 2014/25/EU, Article 16)

TED publishes more than 3,000 notices Monday to Friday, with information made available in the EU’s 24 official languages. The approximately 800,000 annual notice count spans multiple publication stages rather than unique procedures or currently open tenders. Separately, the Commission describes procurement worth more than €815 billion. The full authentic notice is in the buyer-selected official language or languages; other language views and machine translation should not be mistaken for buyer-authored equivalent text. (About TED; European Commission: Tenders Electronic Daily; Directive 2014/24/EU; eForms FAQ)

Competition notices are broader than one form

Current eForms families include Consultation, Planning, Competition, Direct Award Prenotification, Result, Contract Modification, Completion, and Change. A useful opportunity filter considers the complete Competition family, which can include prior information used as a call for competition, qualification systems, standard or light-regime contract and concession notices, subcontracting notices, and design contests. (TED eForms schema)

TED’s website “Active” filter is a convenience definition, not a legal guarantee of bid readiness. It can include planning notices sent within 364 days, competition notices whose deadline has not passed, and recent result notices. The “All notices” web-search scope covers the last ten years. A data product should derive actionability from the notice family, latest version, lot-level deadline, change or cancellation state, and linked procurement documents. (TED search and browse help)

TED generally publishes the notice, not the complete tender pack or bid-submission workflow. Follow the procurement-document and buyer-portal links for specifications, questionnaires, updates, and submission. (Directive 2014/24/EU, Article 53)

eForms identifiers and versions

Current eForms XML is based on UBL and contains several different identifiers:

• Notice ID: a globally unique UUID shared by editorial versions;
• VersionID: starts at 01 and increases for later versions;
• OJ S publication number: assigned when the publication is released;
• Procedure ID: a globally unique UUID linking the procedure where present; Consultation and Planning notices do not carry an EU Procedure ID; and
• lot, organisation, tender, and contract technical references within the notice or procedure.

Technical values such as ORG-0001 or LOT-0001 are not global company or lot identifiers. A separate organisation business term can contain a national or EU registration identifier, but supplier and buyer resolution still requires scheme-aware matching. (TED identifier documentation; eForms Organisation Identifier)

Change notices have their own notice identity and point to the notice and version they change. Preserve those publications and references rather than overwriting the earlier XML. Historical ingestion must also support legacy TEDXML, which lacked the modern Procedure ID, as well as current eForms and their schema versions. (TED eForms schema; eForms transition regulation)

Search API, packages, and reuse limits

Published-notice retrieval through the TED Search API is anonymous. Page-number mode retrieves at most 15,000 matching notices, up to 250 notices and 10,000 requested fields per page. Iteration or scroll mode can retrieve all matching notices while retaining the 250-notice and 10,000-field page limits. Results include the requested fields and links to available formats and languages. (TED Search API reuse guide)

For durable history, TED publishes daily and monthly XML packages containing all notices for the selected day or OJ S issue, or for the selected month, plus direct XML, HTML, PDF, and signed-PDF downloads. RSS is available, and registered users can save searches and alerts. The OJ S publishes Monday to Friday; TED documents website availability during the publication morning and daily XML packages by 09:30. That is a scheduled publication feed, not a real-time event stream. (TED data reuse help; TED developers’ corner)

Documented fair-use limits include 700 HTTP requests in the previous minute, 600 notice views or downloads from one IP in under six minutes, and three concurrent package downloads. The CSV collection is a smaller subset rather than the broad historical source, while TED’s linked-open-data layer has its own coverage limitations. Use XML as the broadest official replay source, the Search API for targeted discovery, and each specialized layer only within its documented scope. (TED developers’ corner; European Commission: Tenders Electronic Daily; TED Open Data availability)

TED: strengths and weaknesses

TED is strongest for cross-country above-threshold discovery, standardized modern notice structure, CPV and geographic filtering, lot-aware procurement, multilingual access, anonymous API use, and reproducible XML editions.

It is weak as a complete low-value EU market, a universal tender-document repository, a simple one-schema historical archive, or a clean global supplier registry. Corrections can create multiple publications, fields can be withheld or missing, organisation names vary, raw notice values retain their stated currencies, and national portals remain operationally important. (TED Open Data known issues; TED contracts dashboard notes; eForms FAQ)

UK: Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and devolved portals

The UK needs a source-routing rule, not one portal name.

Find a Tender leads for the current regime

The enhanced Find a Tender became the central digital platform for Procurement Act 2023 notices on 24 February 2025. New above- and below-threshold notices under that regime publish there, subject to territorial and procedural exceptions. The Act does not require duplication on Contracts Finder. (Central digital platform factsheet; Contracts Finder transparency guidance)

Current 2026–27 thresholds include VAT: £135,018 for central-government goods and services, £207,720 for sub-central goods and services, £415,440 for non-works utilities contracts, and £5,193,000 for works and ordinary concessions. Light-touch thresholds are £663,540 outside utilities and concessions, £884,720 for utilities, and £5,372,609 for concessions. (UK 2026 threshold amounts)

For notifiable below-threshold contracts, the general publication values are £12,000 including VAT for central government, now including NHS bodies, and £30,000 for other contracting authorities. A UK4 must be published before a buyer advertises such a contract publicly, but no UK4 is required when only selected suppliers are invited and the procurement is not advertised elsewhere. Exemptions include specified schools, utilities, concessions, and ordinary transferred Northern Ireland arrangements. This is still not a database of every small purchase. (UK below-threshold contracts guidance)

Read UK1–UK4 as different commercial signals

• UK1 pipeline notice: broad future demand. Its mandatory rule applies only to authorities expecting more than £100 million of relevant annual spend and planned contracts worth more than £2 million in the defined 18-month window, so it is structurally incomplete. (UK pipeline notice guidance)
• UK2 preliminary market engagement: supplier engagement or market intelligence, not an invitation to bid.
• UK3 planned procurement: an optional early signal for a particular competition and a possible shortened tender period when correctly timed.
• UK4 tender notice: the actual competitive opportunity under an open or competitive flexible procedure, including specified framework or dynamic-market activity.

UK4 is not published for call-offs under an existing framework, where the competition can be visible only to framework members. UK5 signals a direct award, UK6 records the award decision before contract entry, and UK7 records contract details after entry. A current-opportunity count should normally rank UK4 as bid-ready, UK1–UK3 as prepare or engage, and UK5–UK7 outside the open-competition population. (Find a Tender notice types and sequences)

Find a Tender offers open OCDS data

The public OCDS release-package API maps notices to OCDS 1.1.5 with extensions. It supports update-date, stage, notice-ID, and OCID filters, returns 1–100 records per page, and uses cursor pagination. The record-package endpoint returns the releases, compiled current state, and versioned history for an OCID. Public output does not document an API key; the authenticated submission API is a separate service. (UK open contracting guidance; Find a Tender API documentation)

Daily bulk ZIP files contain one XML file per published notice. Preserve the notice ID, release ID, OCID, source notice type, update time, and raw release. Release IDs are unique only within an OCID, and party IDs are unique only within a release. Since 1 April 2026, unique PPON identifiers are mandatory in UK7 notices for below-threshold contracts. Across other notice types and historical data, use a published PPON or official organisation identifier for cross-notice party matching where available, not the release-local party ID. (New Procurement Act legislative requirements)

Contracts Finder remains a legacy source

Contracts Finder remains important for procurements begun under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 before 24 February 2025, including later awards, legacy framework call-offs, and dynamic purchasing system activity. Those records are not automatically duplicated from Find a Tender. For current Procurement Act notices, a new pipeline should not assume Contracts Finder is an additional statutory opportunity source.

Its public OCDS search, record, and release routes are based on OCDS 1.0 with some 1.1 enhancements. Search supports planning, tender, award, and implementation stages, a maximum page size of 100, and cursor pagination. A daily flat OCDS CSV is also available. Publication-date filters can reflect edits as well as first publication in the current stage, so an edited legacy notice may reappear in an incremental window. (UK open contracting guidance; Contracts Finder API documentation)

Keep the Contracts Finder OCID, internal notice GUID, source release identifier, and any buyer reference. Do not assume a Find a Tender OCID and Contracts Finder OCID identify the same real procurement, and do not deduplicate the portals by title and buyer name alone.

Devolved portals close material gaps

Find a Tender’s own guidance says Procurement Act notice types do not apply where Scottish rules apply or where Northern Irish rules apply to a below-threshold contract.

• Scotland: Public Contracts Scotland is the primary operational portal for devolved Scottish procurement. Above-GPA notices also reach Find a Tender, while regulated lower-value opportunities and Quick Quotes remain important on the Scottish service. Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act thresholds remain £50,000 for goods and services and £2 million for works, excluding VAT; the separate 2026 GPA-derived thresholds are stated inclusive of VAT. (Scottish procurement threshold update)
• Wales: Sell2Wales supports the operational publication and tender workflow for devolved Welsh authorities and forwards required notices to Find a Tender. The source notice may be visible centrally while documents and response activity remain on Sell2Wales.
• Northern Ireland: eTendersNI remains critical, particularly for below-threshold activity outside the Procurement Act’s ordinary Part 6 rules for transferred authorities.

(Find a Tender notice rules; Scottish procurement thresholds and portals; Welsh digital platform guidance; Northern Ireland procurement)

The practical UK architecture is Find a Tender first for current central notices, Contracts Finder for legacy continuity, then devolved and buyer e-sourcing portals according to the coverage requirement.

Crosswalk the fields without erasing the source

A common schema should make cross-market discovery possible while leaving the original legal and technical meaning recoverable.

At minimum, retain:

• source, jurisdiction, source URL, source-license URL, and retrieval method;
• source notice ID, source version or release ID, procedure or lifecycle ID, and related-notice references;
• raw notice type, normalized notice family, and normalized opportunity state;
• source publication, update, response-deadline, archive, first-seen, and last-seen times;
• buyer name, source buyer ID, organization hierarchy, and buyer geography;
• title, description, language, lot, place of performance, and document links;
• classification scheme and codes;
• estimated value, currency, tax basis where known, and value scope; and
• status, change or cancellation evidence, content hash, and quality flags.

The normalized column should never replace the source column. classification_codes = 541512 is meaningless without classification_scheme = NAICS; a CPV code is not a direct translation of NAICS or PSC. A UK OCID, TED Procedure UUID, and SAM solicitation number can all help group lifecycle records, but they do not have identical construction or reliability.

Treat freshness and history as separate requirements

“Daily data” can describe collection cadence, source publication cadence, archive packaging, or delivery. Those are not the same promise.

Current discovery

For monitoring, poll the documented update or publication fields with an overlap, follow every page or cursor, and keep the source’s newest accepted version. Use a content hash to distinguish a repeated record from a change. Measure source publication-to-collection lag and collection-to-delivery lag separately.

• SAM.gov documents daily active-notice updates and weekly archived-notice updates. Its public API filters on posted dates, not a modified timestamp, so a narrow last-update poll can miss revisions to older notices. Re-harvest the active population in bounded posted-date partitions and compare snapshots, or ingest Data Services versions.
• TED publishes OJ S editions Monday to Friday and documents its daily XML package by 09:30 on publication days.
• Find a Tender exposes updatedFrom and updatedTo; Contracts Finder’s publication filters can also surface later edits.

An overlap is necessary because late source updates, clock boundaries, retries, and edit semantics can otherwise create gaps. Deduplicate using the complete source key, not a title or URL alone.

Reproducible history

History needs immutable raw publications or releases:

• capture SAM.gov snapshots or Data Services versions because the public search API is latest-active only;
• preserve TED XML packages, Notice ID, VersionID, change references, publication number, and schema version; and
• retain Find a Tender and Contracts Finder releases, record packages, version data, and OCIDs.

Then derive a current view from the history. Do not overwrite the only copy of an earlier deadline, lot, value, or cancellation state. A user should be able to answer both “what is open now?” and “what did the notice say on this date?”

Source availability versus accepted delivery

A collector can finish while a source is incomplete. Publish source-level counts, time windows, pagination completion, HTTP status, latest source timestamp, parse failures, quarantine counts, and checksums with every edition. When a source fails, mark the edition partial rather than silently carrying forward stale rows as current.

Normalize government tenders data without false equivalence

Use a small common opportunity taxonomy and preserve the source mapping behind it:

prepare  = pipeline or early planning
engage   = sources sought or preliminary market engagement
bid      = a competitive notice with an actionable response route
direct   = non-competitive intention or justification
result   = award or outcome publication
change   = amendment, correction, cancellation or termination

The mapping still needs source-specific rules. A TED Competition notice can contain several lots with different deadlines. A SAM.gov Combined Synopsis/Solicitation compresses stages that another system publishes separately. A UK4 can invite tenders or requests to participate in a multi-stage procedure. Store the raw notice type and lot grain so the normalized state can be revised without losing evidence.

Apply the same discipline to the other hard fields:

• Deadlines: distinguish response, request-to-participate, clarification, and document-access deadlines; keep timezone and missing-time behavior.
• Status: calculate open_as_of at an explicit cutoff from the accepted version, deadline, and cancellation evidence. Do not map every source “active” flag directly to open.
• Values: retain original currency, value type, range, lot or procedure scope, and VAT basis. Do not convert silently or use a missing value as zero.
• Classifications: preserve CPV, NAICS, and PSC as separate schemes. Any crosswalk is an analytical enrichment with its own version and confidence.
• Buyers: retain agency hierarchy in SAM.gov and source organisation identifiers in TED and UK OCDS. Normalize names for search, not as proof of identity.
• Documents: distinguish an official notice URL from procurement-document and bid-submission URLs. A searchable record without the current tender pack is not ready for a bid decision.
• Languages: preserve the official source language and label machine-translated text. Do not use translated strings for silent legal interpretation.

Cross-posting also needs evidence. Old UK procedures can have later notices on both TED and Find a Tender. Welsh notices can be forwarded to the central platform. Contracts Finder can hold the legacy process while another portal hosts related documents. Keep both source records and create a relationship with method and confidence; do not delete one because titles look similar.

Choose the source stack for the use case

Supplier opportunity alerts

Start with bid-ready notice families and a strict deadline rule, then add planning and engagement as separate alert tiers. Use classifications, buyer, location, text, set-aside or procedure rules appropriate to the market. Always link to the current official notice and tender documents, and alert again when a material amendment changes the deadline or scope.

Public-demand research

Include planning, competition, direct-award, result, and change stages—but report them separately. Count unique procedures and lots as well as publications. State the thresholds, authorities, years, and national sources in scope before comparing markets.

Historical tender archive

Prefer bulk packages and immutable releases. Store source schema versions and raw files, then build normalized views by processing date. APIs optimized for current search can seed discovery, but they are not automatically sufficient for retrospective amendment history.

Cross-market product or internal feed

Use source adapters feeding one versioned model. A robust ingestion sequence is:

1. collect overlapping source publication or update windows;
2. follow all pages, cursors, and iteration tokens;
3. retain raw payloads and source metadata;
4. assign stable source and canonical keys;
5. map raw types into a documented opportunity taxonomy;
6. validate deadlines, values, classifications, buyer fields, and document links;
7. derive the current actionable view from immutable history; and
8. publish source-level status, counts, checksums, and known gaps.

WebTruffle’s free government tenders and RFP dataset publishes daily normalized editions from SAM.gov, TED, Find a Tender, and Contracts Finder in CSV, JSON, and JSONL. Each is a target-date edition built from source-specific publication or update windows; the UK OCDS windows intentionally overlap the prior day. It is not a complete live master list of every open tender. The free SAM.gov edition currently selects Solicitation, Combined Synopsis/Solicitation, Presolicitation, Sources Sought, and Special Notice records rather than every SAM notice type. Review the dataset methodology for the published scope. Backfilled or replayable source history, additional national portals, custom qualification, enrichment, alerts, and managed API delivery require a defined scope.

Evaluate a cross-market tender feed

Run the same source comparison against any normalized dataset or provider. Six pieces of evidence expose most coverage errors:

1. A publication-boundary matrix: jurisdiction, level of government, thresholds, buyer categories, legal exceptions, territorial portals, notice types, and covered dates.
2. A source-to-state mapping: show exactly which raw types become prepare, engage, bid, direct, result, or change—and how version, deadline, lot, and cancellation determine “open.”
3. A replay demonstration: reconstruct one amended SAM.gov notice, one versioned or changed TED notice, and one UK OCID from raw releases. A current row alone is not proof of history.
4. A key and pagination audit: retain the available notice, version, procedure, release, lot, buyer, and relationship identifiers; prove exhaustion of every page, cursor, and iteration token.
5. A source-specific document trail: lead each normalized row back to the official notice, current procurement documents, access conditions, and response route. Show how cross-posted records are linked without deleting evidence.
6. A partial-edition example: identify the missing source and time window, prevent stale rows from appearing current, publish the affected counts, and show the replay and notification process.

For the broader opportunity-to-award, supplier-identity, and financial-value checks, use the government contracts database guide. Apply the web scraping data-quality framework to make the comparison measurable, and the monitoring runbook to monitor accepted data rather than only the collectors.

The best government tenders data source is the one whose publication boundary matches the question. SAM.gov, TED, and UK portals become comparable only after their differences remain visible in the model. Normalize for discovery; preserve the source for truth.

Frequently asked questions