Finding public tenders in Europe should be simple. There’s €2 trillion in procurement spend out there every year, and most of it is published online.

But for SMEs, the reality looks very different.

You don’t just check one website. You check TED. Then your national portal. Then maybe a few regional platforms (if you know they exist). Some are in English. Most aren’t. Filters are inconsistent. Alerts don’t work. And half the tenders you find are either too big, too vague, or too far outside your scope. Right?

By the time you’ve actually found a relevant opportunity, you’ve already lost hours, and that’s before you’ve even opened the documents.

This is the first barrier SMEs face in public procurement: visibility.

In this article, we’ll walk through where tenders are published, why the system feels so fragmented, and how smart suppliers are using tools like Tendify to skip the chaos and focus on the tenders that actually matter.

Let’s start with where public tenders are supposed to live and why that’s only half the story.

Where public tenders are published in Europe?

Public tenders in the EU are meant to be transparent and accessible, and technically, they are. But the reality is that the information is scattered across hundreds of platforms, each with its own rules, languages, and quirks.

Here’s where tenders are published and what you need to know about each one.

Tenders Electronic Daily (TED)

This is the official EU-wide platform. 

Any tender above a certain value (e.g., €215,000 for most services) must be published here.

• Pros: Centralised, searchable, multi-language support
• Cons: Poor filters, slow search experience, hard to tell which tenders are actually relevant to your business

You can access TED here.

National procurement portals

Each EU country has its own portal. These usually include lower-value tenders that don’t appear on TED, which means they’re often more SME-friendly.

Examples:

• BOAMP (France)
• Bund.de (Germany)
• Acquisti in Rete (Italy)
• Plataforma de Contratación del Sector Público (Spain)

These platforms vary widely in how easy they are to search and most are available only in the local language.

Regional and sector-specific portals

Municipalities, hospitals, universities, and utilities often publish tenders separately, especially for works or services under threshold.

These tenders are highly relevant for SMEs, but easy to miss unless you’re checking every source manually.

In theory, all these platforms ensure open competition. In practice? They make tender discovery a full-time job, unless you have a system that helps you cut through the noise.

Next, we’ll look at exactly why this process feels so broken and what it costs you.

The problem: Fragmentation, complexity, and missed opportunities

If you’re an SME trying to stay on top of public tenders, here’s what your day might look like:

You check TED. Then your national portal. Maybe two or three regional ones. Some load slowly. Some don’t offer proper filters. One has the tender in PDF only. Another requires a login just to see the details. You spot five tenders… and after opening them, you realise none of them apply to you.

Sound familiar?

This is the real problem: tender discovery is fragmented, manual, and often a huge waste of time.

Here’s why it doesn’t work for most SMEs:

• There’s no single, centralised source - tenders are spread across hundreds of portals
• Most platforms lack proper filtering - you can’t easily filter by business size, language, delivery region, or relevance
• Many tenders are poorly described - titles often don’t reflect scope, and CPV codes are inconsistently used
• Alerts (when available) aren’t reliable - they’re often too broad, too late, or include irrelevant tenders
• Language barriers add complexity - especially when bidding cross-border

The result?

SMEs either miss opportunities entirely or waste hours reviewing tenders they were never going to win in the first place.

But this doesn’t have to be the norm. Let’s look at how smart suppliers are changing the way they approach tender discovery and how platforms like Tendify make that possible.

Smarter tender discovery: How tools like Tendify help?

For years, finding tenders has meant checking portal after portal, scanning badly formatted documents, and building your own spreadsheets to keep track of deadlines. Most SMEs either burn out or give up.

But that’s exactly the kind of work technology should handle.

Tendify was built to solve this first, critical problem: visibility.

Instead of forcing you to hunt across 10+ sources, Tendify pulls tenders from over 2,000 official platforms across Europe, including TED, national procurement sites, and regional portals.

But it doesn’t stop at aggregation.

Here’s what makes it actually useful:

• AI-based matching - you don’t get a firehose of tenders. You get the ones that actually fit your profile, scored by relevance.
• Smart filters - you can sort tenders by country, sector, CPV code, language, value, and more, without jumping between tabs.
• Daily alerts that make sense - no spam. Just timely notifications based on your real criteria.
• Tender summaries at a glance - skip the 50-page PDFs. See what matters in seconds.

Tendify doesn’t just help you find more tenders. It helps you focus on the right ones, faster.

Next, let’s look at what you can do right now (even without any platform) to improve how you find and track tenders.

How to improve tender visibility today?

Not every SME is ready to adopt new tools from day one and that’s fine. But if you’re going to keep searching for tenders manually, you’ll need to be more intentional about it.

Here are a few simple, practical ways to improve your visibility and reduce wasted effort:

1. Bookmark the right portals - start with your country’s national procurement site and add key regional or sector-specific portals relevant to your niche. Check them daily or set calendar reminders.
2. Understand your CPV codes - Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) codes are used to classify tenders. Learn the codes relevant to your services and search using those terms. This can dramatically improve your results.
3. Sign up for email alerts (where available) - some portals offer tender alerts, though they’re often limited. Subscribe, but be ready to sift through broad or irrelevant results.
4. Track tenders in a simple spreadsheet - use a basic template to record:
   
   1. The tender title
   2. Deadline
   3. Source
   4. Relevance score (your own judgment)
   5. Status (e.g. “reviewed,” “in progress,” “skipped”)

It’s not perfect, but it’s better than scanning aimlessly.

5. Don’t ignore early signals - keep an eye out for PINs (Prior Information Notices) and RFIs (Requests for Information). These show what’s coming — and give you a chance to prepare early or even influence the scope.

Of course, the best time to adopt a smarter system is before you burn out. But even these small shifts can save you hours and make the tenders you do find more relevant.

Let’s close this out.

It’s not about finding more tenders, it’s about finding the right ones

For SMEs, the biggest challenge in public procurement often comes before the bid is even written: finding the right opportunity.

The system isn’t broken, but it’s not built with small teams in mind. Fragmented portals, inconsistent filters, language barriers, and irrelevant alerts all add friction to a process that should be far simpler.

And that friction has a cost — in time, in focus, and in missed opportunities.

But things are changing.

With the right strategy (and the right tools) SMEs can stop reacting and start being more selective, strategic, and successful. Whether you use Tendify or take the first steps manually, the goal is the same:

Spend less time chasing, and more time winning.