EU Procurement Data Methodology
TenderMetric collects EU public procurement data directly from TED Europa — the Official Journal of the EU — via the TED REST API v3. All contract notices are sourced in real time, classified by CPV sector, and refreshed hourly. Here is exactly how the data flows from TED to your screen.
About TED Europa: The EU's Official Tender Database
TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) is the online version of the supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union, dedicated to European public procurement. It is published by the Publications Office of the European Union and contains all procurement notices that EU member state authorities are legally required to publish above the EU procurement thresholds.
Every working day, TED publishes approximately 2,500–3,000 new contract notices from contracting authorities across all 27 EU member states plus EEA countries and EU institutions. In a full year, TED publishes over 700,000 procurement notices representing trillions of euros in public contract value. TenderMetric accesses TED data through its official REST API to present live EU procurement opportunities in a fast, filterable interface.
The EU procurement thresholds that trigger TED publication (as of 2024) are: €143,000 for central government supplies/services, €221,000 for sub-central authorities, and €5,538,000 for works contracts. Below these thresholds, contracting authorities use national procurement portals.
Data Source: TED REST API v3
All data is fetched from the TED Europa REST API v3 — the official API of the Publications Office of the European Union. The endpoint used is:
No authentication is required. TED is a public European institution resource. We query for standard contract notices (notice-type=cn-standard) published within the last 30 days.
Data Fields
We extract and normalize the following fields from each notice:
Sector Classification
Tenders are automatically classified into sectors using the first two digits of their CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) code. CPV is the EU's official classification system for public procurement.
Tenders with unrecognized CPV prefixes are classified as "General". For a full explanation of the CPV code system and how to find your sector's codes, see our CPV Codes Explained guide.
Caching & Freshness
To ensure fast page loads without overloading the TED API, we use a two-tier caching strategy:
- In-memory cache: 5-minute TTL. Prevents redundant API calls within a single server instance.
- Cloudflare KV cache: 1-hour TTL. Shared across all edge nodes globally. A single cached response serves all users worldwide.
This means data is typically 0–60 minutes old. For time-sensitive decisions, always verify the original notice on TED Europa.
EU Procurement Thresholds (2024–2025)
Only contracts above the EU thresholds are legally required to be published on TED. Understanding these thresholds helps interpret which contracts appear in TenderMetric vs. national portals only:
Thresholds are revised every two years by the European Commission. The current thresholds apply from 1 January 2024. For full details see our EU Procurement Thresholds 2026 guide.
Limitations
- We display notices published in the last 30 days only (up to 250 records per fetch).
- Contract award notices (CAN) are not included — only contract notices (CN).
- Multilingual titles are shown in English when available; otherwise the first available language is used.
- Estimated values may be absent if not disclosed in the original notice.
- TenderMetric is for informational purposes only and does not guarantee completeness or accuracy.