UK Contracts Finder OCDS API
UK Contracts Finder OCDS API
The UK Cabinet Office exposes Contracts Finder procurement notices through keyless Open Contracting Data Standard JSON endpoints and daily or date-specific CSV downloads. Releases carry OCIDs, stages, buyer and supplier parties, titles, descriptions, classifications, values, dates, locations, awards, documents and source URLs; no key is needed for published-notice retrieval.
Required Attribution:
When no specific provider statement is supplied: "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0."
Coverage
Contracts Finder covers government and agency opportunities and past contracts, principally for England and non-devolved bodies; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have separate procurement sites. The OCDS search filters ISO 8601 publication dates and planning, tender, award or implementation stages, returning at most 100 releases per cursor page; a current-day CSV is also available.
Verdict
This is a procurement pipeline and award signal for buyer demand, supplier wins, contract values and category activity. Notice publication and later edits reflect buyer submissions, not transaction settlement, and coverage is not a complete replacement for the devolved procurement portals or Find a Tender. Use OCID for procurement identity and release ID plus date for changes because a process can emit multiple releases. Cursor pagination is capped at 100 releases per response and the provider can return HTTP 403 when its unstated request-rate threshold is exceeded.
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Use in your agent
Load today's Contracts Finder releases into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 2, 2026.
Access
- Published-notice OCDS search and harvester CSV endpoints work without an account or key.
- Authentication described in the API help applies to publishing and other protected operations, not the checked public retrieval endpoint.
Request
curl -O 'https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Harvester/Notices/Data/CSV/Daily'Format
Flattened OCDS CSV release rows with package metadata and slash-delimited columns for OCID, release ID and date, planning, tender, buyer, supplier, award, value, location, classification and document fields.
Load into pandas and Parquet
Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.
"""Current-day Contracts Finder OCDS releases -> pandas -> Parquet. No key."""
import io
import requests
import pandas as pd
URL = "https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Harvester/Notices/Data/CSV/Daily"
r = requests.get(URL, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
df = pd.read_csv(io.BytesIO(r.content), low_memory=False)
df.to_parquet("contracts_finder_daily.parquet", index=False)
dates = pd.to_datetime(df["releases/0/date"], utc=True)
print(len(df), "release rows", df["releases/0/ocid"].nunique(), "unique OCIDs",
dates.min().isoformat(), "to", dates.max().isoformat())Run by us on 2026-11-02 (python 3.13.5 | pandas 3.1.0 | pyarrow 26.0.0 | requests 2.34.2). Result: 143 release rows 143 unique OCIDs 2026-11-02T07:47:51+00:00 to 2026-11-02T20:37:05+00:00
Limits
- Rate limit: Not stated.
- OCDS search pages return at most 100 releases and use a cursor for later pages.
- The Daily CSV endpoint covers the current date; use the dated CSV path or bounded OCDS search for other dates.
Quirks
- The CSV is a flattened OCDS representation with slash-delimited column names and many optional blank fields.
- Use OCID to group a contracting process and retain release ID and release date to preserve successive publications or amendments.
- publishedFrom and publishedTo refer to publication date, including the latest edit and first publication in the current stage.
Terms and attribution
- OCDS packages declare Open Government Licence v3.0.
- Reuse requires source acknowledgement and remains subject to OGL exclusions such as personal data and unlicensed third-party rights.
Sources
- https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/apidocumentation/Notices/1/GET-Published-Notice-OCDS-Search: “Searches for published notice OCDS releases package with optional search criteria.”
- https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/apidocumentation/Notices/1/GET-Published-Notice-OCDS-Search: “Default: 100. Values: 1 to 100.”
- https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/apidocumentation/Notices/1/GET-Harvester-Notices-Data-CSV-Daily: “Get the current days OCDS releases in CSV format.”
- https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/: “The Licensor grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information subject to the conditions below.”
Information and education only. Not financial, investment, legal or tax advice. Listings can be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date and are provided "as is". Free tiers, limits and licenses belong to each provider and can change, so check the provider's own terms before you rely on them. Terms & Disclaimer