How to find tenders

Where are tenders actually published?

There is no single place. A tender is directed to a different system depending on its value and who is issuing it:

• Public Procurement Bulletin (Biuletyn Zamówień Publicznych) — Polish tenders below EU thresholds.
• TED — all EU tenders above thresholds, from across the entire Union.
• Competitiveness Base (Baza Konkurencyjności) — tenders financed by EU funds, including those by private entities. It is often overlooked, yet it contains tenders without burdensome participation requirements.
• Procurement platforms — eB2B, Logintrade, Marketplanet, eZamawiający, and others. Large contracting authorities conduct commercial proceedings there that do not appear in any bulletin.
• National systems of other countries — the German central portal, the Dutch TenderNed, the Czech NEN. They contain tenders below thresholds that are not found in TED.

Why keyword searching fails

Tender titles are written in official, bureaucratic language, not industry terminology. "Service for conducting media content monitoring research" does not contain the word someone from media analysis would search for. Therefore, simply entering the name of your service causes you to miss a large portion of the market.

A more effective approach combines three layers:

1. CPV codes — classification of the subject of the contract. It is resistant to the style of the title, though it is sometimes set carelessly by the contracting authority.
2. Words in the description and documentation, not just in the title. The subject of the contract is usually only described in the specification.
3. Semantic search — matching based on the meaning of the query rather than the exact wording. In this case, a query for "disinformation analysis" hits an advertisement for media content monitoring.

Set filters that actually narrow down results

Keywords alone are not enough. In practice, the criteria that best narrow down results are those that describe whether you can participate:

• the bid bond threshold you are able to provide,
• the number of required references,
• the presence of certificate requirements,
• the submission deadline that you can realistically meet.

At this moment, there are 55 681 active proceedings in our database. Without filtering by participation requirements, reviewing such a number of advertisements is not a job for a human.

Monitor instead of browsing

Tenders have a short window. An advertisement you see a week after publication often leaves too little time to prepare a meaningful bid. That is why it pays to reverse the direction: instead of logging in and searching, set up an alert that will automatically send you new advertisements matching your profile.