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Where do I find European public tenders?

The usual answer is "on TED". For most public contracts that is wrong: TED starts at the EU thresholds. Here is what each source shows — with measured numbers, and with each source's limits, ours included.

The dividing line: EU thresholds

Above €221,000 (supplies and services) or €5.538m (works), contracts must be tendered EU-wide and appear on TED. Below that, national procurement law applies and the notice exists only on that country's or region's portal.

By count, most public contracts sit below the thresholds. In our corpus: 23,630 of 90,231 open procedures — around 26% — never appear on TED.

The sources compared

SourceShowsLimit
TED (ted.europa.eu)All EU countries above the thresholds, free, officialNothing below the thresholds; descriptions in the original language; no eligibility guidance
National portalsComplete for their country, including below threshold, free75+ separate portals, each with its own search and language; some require registration
Commercial providersCurated alerts, support, often sector depthPaid, usually annual contracts; sub-threshold coverage rarely evidenced
Friedrich & Clement90,231 open procedures from 27 countries in one search, 23,630 of them below threshold; titles and descriptions in four languages; eligibility criteria in plain languageAn aggregator, not a submission point — you always submit on the buyer's portal. Coverage varies by country; the gaps are listed openly on /fakten

Which portals sit behind the search

Selected portal families read daily — the full list with volumes per source is on the facts page:

cosinex-Vergabemarktplätze (DTVP, Brandenburg, Rheinland-Pfalz, Niedersachsen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) · service.bund.de · evergabe.NRW · oeffentlichevergabe.de · meinauftrag.rib.de (Berlin, Bayern Staatsbau, GMSH Schleswig-Holstein, Kommunen) · HAD — Hessische Ausschreibungsdatenbank · AI Vergabeplattform (Sachsen, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saarland) · evergabe-online.de (Thüringen)

Frequently asked

Does TED show all public tenders in Europe?
No. TED publishes contracts from the EU thresholds upwards — currently €221,000 for supplies and services and €5.538m for works. Everything below follows national law and appears only on that country's portals. Measured in our corpus (2 September 2026): 23,630 of 90,231 open procedures are not on TED.
Where do I find tenders below the EU thresholds?
On national and regional procurement portals — in Germany service.bund.de, the cosinex marketplaces of the federal states, RIB meinauftrag; in France BOAMP, in Spain PLACSP including contratos menores, in Poland BZP, in Italy ANAC. That is over 75 portals across 27 countries, each with its own search and language. Friedrich & Clement brings them into one search.
Is there a free search across all EU countries?
Yes. TED is free but covers only above-threshold procedures. Friedrich & Clement is freely searchable (no account needed) and additionally covers the sub-threshold procedures of national portals — currently 90,231 open procedures from 27 countries.
Can a small company or sole trader bid at all?
Yes. Legal form is explicitly not a ground for rejection (Art. 19 Dir. 2014/24/EU). What gets checked is suitability — competence, capacity, reliability. Sub-threshold procedures run under lighter rules, often with self-declarations instead of certificate stacks.
May I bid on tenders in other EU countries?
Yes — that is the core of European procurement law: home-country evidence and references count across the single market. In practice it is rare: in German construction awards over the past three years, 649 of 238,564 recorded contracts went to foreign firms, mostly from Austria, Poland and France. Rare is not impossible, and we show those numbers on every tender page.

All figures are measured and updated daily; methodology and known gaps: /fakten. Statements on procurement law are general information, not individual legal advice.

All sources in one search — free to browse, updated daily at 7:30 CET.
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Friedrich & Clement — European public tenders, collected and searchable — 73 portals, 27 countries.Signup, search and the morning edition are available in English. Legal pages are provided in German.