How to find government contracts as a small business

You have heard that governments spend huge sums buying from outside suppliers, and that some of that work is meant for small firms. So you search for "government contracts", land on a dozen paid tender alert services, a forum thread from years ago and a portal that asks you to register before it shows you anything. An afternoon goes by and you still have no idea which notices are worth reading.

The good news is that the official sources are public, and most of them let you search before you commit to anything. This post walks through the main portals country by country, how to search them without drowning, and the route many small businesses and freelancers overlook: reading contract awards to find the companies that just won work and now need help delivering it.

Why public contracts are worth a small firm's time

Public buyers have to publish what they want to buy, and many have to publish who they bought it from. That makes public procurement one of the few markets where you can see demand in writing, with a deadline, a description of the work and a named contact. Compare that with private companies, where you usually have to guess whether anyone is buying at all.

Not every notice suits a small business. Some contracts are enormous, some need certifications you do not have, and some are frameworks where only a few firms will ever be chosen. The skill is not reading everything; it is filtering quickly to the notices that fit your size, your service and your location, and spotting the large awards where you could be part of someone else's delivery team.

The official portals, country by country

Go to the official source first. Paid alert services repackage these same notices, which can save time later, but you should know what the original looks like and what it costs (often nothing) before you pay for a copy.

Many countries also have regional or local portals for smaller contracts, so once you know the national one, check whether your state, province or council publishes its own.

United States: SAM.gov

SAM.gov is where federal contracting offices post their notices, and anyone can search them without an account. Filter by your industry code, the place of performance and notice type. If you want to bid directly, you will need to register your business; SAM.gov explains that registration assigns a Unique Entity ID, and that an ID on its own does not let you apply directly for federal awards.

United Kingdom: Find a Tender and Contracts Finder

The UK has two national services. Find a Tender carries notices for new procurements across the whole contract lifecycle. Contracts Finder lets you filter by early engagement, future opportunity, open opportunity and awarded contract, and it still holds lower value notices for older procurements. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also run their own services for some contracts, which Find a Tender lists on its home page.

European Union: TED

The European Commission points businesses looking for opportunities in any EU country to Tenders Electronic Daily, and notes that the notice data is also available as open data. TED is a good choice if you sell across borders, because one search covers many countries.

Canada and Australia

CanadaBuys groups tender notices into construction, goods and services, and also shows award notices and contract history. AusTender publishes all open approaches to market from Australian Government agencies, plus contracts awarded, and offers free email notifications that match the business interests you set when you register.

How to search without drowning

1. Pick one country to start with. The one where you already work, invoice and pay tax is usually the easiest.
2. Write down three to five plain phrases buyers would use for what you do, such as "website redesign", "translation services" or "cleaning". Buyers rarely use your marketing language.
3. Search each phrase on the official portal, then narrow by location and notice type. Read a handful of notices end to end to learn how buyers in your field describe the work.
4. Save the search or set up the portal's own email alerts, so new notices come to you instead of you going to them.
5. Keep a short list of buyers who publish relevant work often. Their future notices, and their awards, are where you will find the best fit.

Contract awards: the overlooked lead source

Bidding directly is not the only way into public money. When a company wins a large contract, it often has to hire, buy equipment, bring in specialists or hand parts of the job to smaller firms. If you design, write, build, translate, clean, train, test or deliver anything that a contract like that needs, the winner is a warm prospect for a few weeks after the award.

• In the United States, USAspending.gov lets anyone search federal award data and see who received it.
• SAM.gov includes award notices among its contract opportunity notices.
• In the UK, Contracts Finder has an "Awarded contract" filter.
• CanadaBuys shows award notices and contract history, and AusTender publishes contracts awarded.

This is the same idea as the other signals in our buying signals guide: a public, dated event that says a company is changing. A big contract is one of the strongest, because it comes with money already agreed and a delivery date that will not move.

Subcontracting in the United States

The US Small Business Administration has a page on prime contracts and subcontracting that is worth reading in full. It explains that subcontractors work for prime contractors rather than directly for the government, which suits firms not yet ready to bid alone. It also says that federal contracts awarded to large businesses above a set value must include a small business subcontracting plan, and that SBA publishes a directory of primes with these plans.

• SUBNet: SBA's subcontracting database, where large businesses post subcontracting opportunities and small businesses can search them.
• Prime contractor directories: several agencies publish lists of their large primes, which tells you who to approach.
• Your SBA profile: primes search for subcontractors with SBA's Small Business Search tool, so a complete profile makes you easier to find.
• Local help: SBA points small firms to APEX Accelerators for help finding subcontracting work.

How to approach a company that just won a contract

Finding the winner is half the job. The other half is reaching the right person with a message that makes sense to them in the busy weeks after an award.

1. Read the award and the original tender, so you know what the winner has promised to deliver and by when.
2. Pick the one part of that work you can take off their plate. Be specific: "the training materials", not "marketing support".
3. Find the person who will run delivery, such as an operations lead, project director or head of the relevant team, and their published work email.
4. Write a short email that names the contract and the date it was awarded, says what you can deliver and asks one easy question.
5. Follow up a few times, and stop the moment they reply. If the timing is wrong, ask when their next bid is due.

If you have not built an outreach list from public records before, our post on building a B2B lead list from public data covers the basics, and hiring signals from job posts explains a signal that often follows a big award: the winner starts hiring.

How FarLeads helps

FarLeads is a sales lead platform for freelancers, agencies and small sales teams in any country. It gathers new businesses, companies that are hiring, companies that just raised money and open public contracts, scores each one against your ideal client with AI, and runs email campaigns from your own mailbox until people reply. Its business data covers the United States today.

For public contracts, that means two things. Open tenders appear in the Public tenders tab on Leads. And big contracts won show up as dated events on each company's Why now tab in Find contacts, next to its people and their published emails, so you can go from "this company just won a contract" to a first email in a few minutes.