Radar: every public tender in Portugal on one free page

There were public tenders that were a perfect fit for us. Museums that needed an exhibition, councils that wanted a new website, theatres that needed their season recorded. It was never a lack of work. It was not noticing it in time.

Searching by hand is a job in itself. Different portals, each with its own registration. Notices written in administrative language that rarely uses the words we use. And when you finally find one, half the deadline has gone.

So we built a radar for ourselves. It reads the official sources every hour, puts everything in one place, and scores each tender by subject, by CPV code, by value and by how much time is left to write the proposal. It always explains the score, line by line, so we can disagree with it. It decides nothing for us; it just makes sure nothing slips past while we are working. We told the story of its first day, when it found nothing.

Today we are opening the public side of it. It is called Radar, and it is free.

What Radar is

One page with every notice our radar read in its latest snapshot: 1,399 tenders published between 3 and 29 September, from Portal BASE, Diário da República and TED.

• Search titles and buyers, in the words the notices actually use.
• Filter by any of 41 sectors, or by the digital & communication group: IT, software, telecoms, equipment, marketing, design, events and printing.
• Click a district on the map to read only its notices, or look at the national bodies on their own.
• Sort by newest, by closing soonest or by value, and hide the ones that have already closed.
• Open the official notice from every card, where the documents and the rules live.

A map that moves with you

Portugal is drawn in ridge lines. Each line is a slice of the country, and its peaks rise with the tenders in view: Lisbon and Porto are the mountains. Choose a sector or type a word and the landscape redraws itself, so you can see at a glance where the country is buying what you sell. How it works is in the lab page.

What 1,399 tenders taught us

• Deadlines are short. The median notice gives 15 days between publication and deadline; digital and communication notices, 12. Almost a third close within 10 days. Find one a week late and half your time is gone.
• Four in ten come from national bodies: ministries, agencies, health units, the armed forces. Watching your own council is not enough.
• The rhythm is daily. Between 120 and 170 notices on a weekday, a handful at weekends. Checking once a week means reading hundreds at once.
• One in five is digital or communication: 260 notices, most of them IT, software and telecoms, with marketing, events and design behind.
• Most are open to anyone who qualifies. 1,133 of them are public tenders ("concurso público"), not invitations.
• There are three places to watch. Diário da República carried 885 notices, Portal BASE 280 and TED 234. Missing one of them means missing part of the market.

Who it is for

We built it for studios and agencies like ours: the digital, creative and technology teams who are right for a public project and never see it in time. But anyone who sells to the state, or should, can use it the same way, especially small companies without someone reading the Diário da República every morning.

How to get the most out of it

• Search in Portuguese. The notices are written in it: «sítio na internet», «conteúdos», «vídeo», «plataforma», «evento».
• Start with a sector, or with the digital & communication group, then narrow down by district.
• Sort by closing soonest to see what still needs an answer this week.
• Always read the official notice. The procedure, the documents and the requirements are there, and they are what counts.

What it is not

Radar detects; it never submits anything. It does not bid, sign or register on your behalf. What you see is a dated snapshot, not a live feed, and the deadlines are counted from the day it was taken, so check the official notice before you commit to anything.

The page and its code are open source, under the MIT licence, on GitHub, and the data behind it is public information. The engine that reads the sources every hour and scores the tenders is still ours.

If you have questions about Radar, or ideas for what it should do next, talk to us.

FAQ

Is Radar free?

Yes. There is no sign-up and no account: open the page and use it.

Where does the data come from?

From the official sources where Portuguese public tenders are published: Portal BASE, Diário da República and TED, the European Union's tenders journal. All of it is public information.

How up to date is it?

Radar shows a snapshot, and the date of the snapshot is on the page. Deadlines are counted from that date. For anything binding, the official notice is the reference.

Can I use the code?

Yes. The page is open source under the MIT licence, on GitHub, including the ridge-line map.

Does Radar submit proposals?

No. It only helps you find tenders. Everything else, from registering on the platforms to submitting a proposal, is done by you, on the official portals.