TedScout Documentation

EU public procurement intelligence for AI assistants — covering 14 countries, ~8M award notices, and 15 tools for finding tenders, researching buyers, and winning more public contracts.

What is TedScout?

TedScout is an EU public procurement intelligence platform with two ways to use it: a browser portal at tedscout.eu/app that works immediately without any setup, and an MCP server at https://tedscout.eu/mcp that connects directly to Claude, Cursor, Le Chat, and other AI assistants.

Both entry points give you access to the same 15 tools: search for open tenders, match them to your company profile, monitor watchlists, summarise notices in any EU language, research buyer purchasing history, benchmark contract values, and find subcontractor leads.

TedScout covers both above-threshold notices published on TED (the EU's official procurement journal) and below-threshold notices from national portals in Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Italy, UK, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Romania, Ireland, and more.

With ~8M historical award notices, TedScout serves two distinct user types: bid writers and BD teams who want to find and win public contracts, and B2B sales teams who want to identify companies that just won large contracts and now need subcontractors, suppliers, or specialist delivery partners.

Quick start

Two ways to get started — choose the path that suits you:

Path 1 — Browser portal (no setup)

1. 1
   Create a free account

   Go to tedscout.eu/signup/free. Enter your email — we send a magic link, no password needed.

2. 2
   Open the portal

   Go to tedscout.eu/app. The AI chat interface opens immediately — no installation, no API key needed.

3. 3
   Ask your first question

   "Find IT consulting tenders in Germany closing in the next 30 days" — TedScout searches TED and 13 national portals and returns live results.

Path 2 — MCP connector (works inside Claude, Cursor, Le Chat)

1. 1
   Create a free account

   Same as above — tedscout.eu/signup/free.

2. 2
   Get your API key

   Your API key is shown once after sign-up. Copy it and store it safely — if you lose it, rotate it from the Security tab in your account.

3. 3
   Connect your AI assistant

   Follow the instructions for your client in the Connecting your AI section. The MCP server URL is https://tedscout.eu/mcp.

Browser portal

The browser portal at tedscout.eu/app gives you full access to TedScout's 15 tools through a chat interface — no AI subscription, no MCP setup, no installation required. The AI runs on TedScout's servers.

Chat interface

Ask questions in plain English. TedScout searches the right portals, runs the right tools, and streams results back in real time. Pre-tool reasoning is shown in a collapsible disclosure so you can see what the AI is doing without it cluttering the response.

Conversations

Every conversation is saved automatically. From the sidebar you can:

• Star important conversations to pin them at the top
• Rename conversations (they auto-title from your first message)
• Add to a project to group related conversations together
• Delete conversations you no longer need
• Resume any past conversation by clicking it in the sidebar — the full history loads and you can continue where you left off

Projects

Projects let you organise conversations by client, sector, or campaign. Create a project from the sidebar — conversations can be added via the context menu (⋯). Projects are designed to support instructions and file attachments in a future update.

Intelligence pages

The sidebar also gives direct access to structured data views that don't require a chat query:

• Watchlists — your active watchlists and their match counts
• Deadlines — tender matches from your watchlists sorted by date
• Subcontractor Leads — filter by sector and days back, results from the award notices database
• Benchmarks — price benchmarks by sector and country, direct DB query

Account management

API keys, connect instructions, usage stats, plan details, and security settings are all accessible from the sidebar — no separate dashboard needed.

Connecting your AI assistant

Claude (web & desktop)

Go to Settings → Connections → Add custom connector. Enter https://tedscout.eu/mcp as the server URL. In advanced settings, enter https://tedscout.eu/oauth/claude-client as the Client ID. You will be redirected to TedScout to log in and authorise access.

On Claude Desktop, fully quit and relaunch the application after connecting.

Claude Code

claude mcp add tedscout \
  --transport http \
  --url https://tedscout.eu/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Le Chat (Mistral)

1. 1
   Open Context → Connectors
2. 2
   Click + Add Connector → Custom MCP Connector
3. 3
   Connector Server: https://tedscout.eu/mcp
4. 4
   Authentication method: API Token Authentication
5. 5
   Header Name: Authorization  ·  Header type: Bearer
6. 6
   Header Value: your TedScout API key
7. 7
   Click Create

Cursor

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tedscout": {
      "url": "https://tedscout.eu/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

TED — EU-wide procurement

TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) is the official EU procurement journal, publishing 2,000–3,500 notices every weekday. TedScout queries the TED Search API v3 in real time, covering all 27 EU member states plus Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland.

TED publishes notices above the EU procurement thresholds — typically contracts worth €140,000+ for central government, €215,000+ for other public bodies, and €5.35M+ for works contracts. All results include a direct link to the official TED notice and, where available, the PDF procurement document.

National portals — below-threshold

Most public contracts are below the EU thresholds and never appear on TED. TedScout integrates national procurement portals to cover these opportunities, updated daily:

When you search for tenders in a specific country, TedScout automatically fans out to both TED and the relevant national portal, deduplicating results before returning them. A source field on each result indicates where it came from.

Award intelligence

TedScout maintains a database of ~8M historical contract awards across TED and 13 national portals. This powers three distinct intelligence tools:

• get_buyer_intelligence — research any public buyer before deciding to bid: incumbents, market openness, historical spend patterns.
• get_price_benchmark — understand what contracts in your sector are actually worth: medians, value distributions, competition intensity, and year-by-year trends drawn from real EU award data.
• get_subcontractor_leads — find companies that recently won large public contracts and are mobilising for delivery. Use this to identify warm leads: firms that need subcontractors, specialist suppliers, or delivery partners right now.

Award data covers winner names, contract values, CPV codes, and award dates going back to 2023–2024 depending on the source.

Tools — search & discovery

search_tenders

The primary discovery tool. Searches TED and all relevant national portals simultaneously based on country filter.

get_tender_detail

Retrieves the full structured content of a single TED notice by tender_id. Returns eligibility criteria, award criteria, lot breakdown, contact details, submission URL, and PDF link. Handles both eForms (2022+) and legacy TED XML formats. Results cached for 24 hours.

list_cpv_codes

Searches the EU CPV vocabulary (9,452 codes) by keyword. Use this before search_tenders when you know the sector but not the exact code. Returns matching codes with labels and division.

get_deadline_summary

Returns a chronologically sorted list of deadlines for given tender IDs or all active watchlist matches. Each entry includes an urgency label: critical (<7 days), soon (7–21 days), or comfortable (>21 days).

Tools — profile & matching

save_company_profile

Saves your company profile for automatic use in matching and bid outlines. Once saved, match_tenders_to_profile and draft_bid_outline use it automatically without needing to re-supply it each time.

For best matching results, provide: company name, detailed description of what you do, CPV codes for your service areas, countries where you operate, min/max contract values, and key strengths or differentiators.

get_company_profile

Retrieves your saved company profile and shows a completeness checklist — which fields are populated and which are missing.

match_tenders_to_profile

Scores a list of tender IDs against your company profile using a weighted model: CPV alignment (35%), geographic fit (20%), value range (20%), keyword relevance (15%), procedure suitability (10%). Returns ranked matches with a fit score, strengths, gaps, and plain-language match summary.

qualify_tender

Go/No Go analysis for a single tender. Assesses three dimensions: eligibility (do you meet the formal requirements?), capability (can you deliver?), and strategic fit (is it worth pursuing?). Returns a clear GO / NO GO / CONDITIONAL GO recommendation with confidence score and next steps.

rate_tender

Rate a tender as relevant, not_relevant, won, lost, or declined. Ratings are stored and used to improve future matching accuracy over time.

Tools — watchlists

watch_tenders

Creates, updates, lists, or deletes saved watchlists. Each watchlist stores a search configuration (CPV codes, countries, keywords, value range) and runs automatically every morning at 07:00 UTC. New matches trigger an email digest and/or webhook to your configured destination.

Watchlist notifications support both email digests (HTML + plain text, deadline urgency colour-coded) and webhooks (structured JSON, compatible with Zapier, Make, and custom CRM integrations).

Tools — AI-powered

These tools call the Anthropic API internally to generate language outputs tailored to the tender and your profile.

summarize_tender

Generates a plain-language summary of any TED tender in the requested language — available in all 24 EU official languages regardless of the original notice language. Returns either a brief (3–5 sentence) or full structured summary covering what the buyer needs, who can apply, key requirements, and deadline.

draft_bid_outline

Generates a section-by-section bid response framework tailored to the tender's award criteria and your company profile. Includes key win themes and a compliance checklist. This produces a working structure for your team to populate — not a finished bid.

Tools — buyer intelligence

get_buyer_intelligence

Research any public buyer (contracting authority) before deciding to bid. Returns:

• Historical award patterns and total spend
• Ranked incumbent winners with win counts and average contract values
• Market openness score (1–10)
• Plain-language verdict on whether outsiders can realistically win

Filter by cpv_prefix (e.g. "72" for IT services) to focus on a specific category. If multiple buyers match the name, returns a disambiguation list with buyer IDs.

Tools — price benchmarking

get_price_benchmark

Benchmarks EU public procurement contract values using ~8M historical award notices. Use this before setting your bid price, sizing an opportunity, or understanding a market segment's competitive dynamics.

Returns:

• Median, mean, and p25/p75 value range (the "sweet spot" where most contracts land)
• Value distribution across buckets from under €50k to over €10M
• Competition intensity — average number of bids per contract where data is available
• Top incumbent winners with win counts and average contract values
• Year-by-year trend showing contract volume and median value
• Plain-language interpretation of what the numbers mean for your bid strategy

Example: understanding the German IT services market

Benchmark IT services contracts in Germany — what are typical contract values,
who are the main incumbents, and how competitive is the market?

This calls get_price_benchmark with cpv_prefix="72" and countries=["DEU"], returning median values, the p25/p75 range, competition intensity, and top winners for Germany's IT procurement market.

Tools — subcontractor leads

get_subcontractor_leads

Finds companies that recently won large EU public contracts and are currently mobilising for delivery — making them likely to need subcontractors, specialist suppliers, or delivery partners. TedScout's ~8M award notices make this possible: the same data that powers buyer intelligence and price benchmarking also surfaces recent winners as warm, signal-rich leads.

Returns for each lead:

• Prime contractor name and consortium members (where multiple firms won together)
• Contract title, value, public buyer, and country
• Days since award and mobilisation status: Actively mobilising (0–30 days), Recently mobilised (31–60 days), or Mobilised (61+ days)
• Subcontracting signals: value threshold, consortium flag, procedure type
• Sector-specific description of what subcontractors are typically needed
• Suggested next steps for outreach

Subcontracting thresholds by sector

Example: finding IT subcontractor leads in Germany

Find IT systems integrators in Germany that won public contracts in the last 30 days
and are likely to need subcontractors. Focus on contracts over €500k.

This calls get_subcontractor_leads with cpv_prefix="72", countries=["DEU"], days_back=30, and min_value=500000.

Example queries

Copy these prompts directly into your AI assistant once TedScout is connected.

Price benchmarking

What are typical contract values for IT services in Germany? Who are the main incumbents
and how many bids do these contracts typically attract?

Benchmark construction contracts in Poland and France — give me the value distribution
and year-on-year trend since 2023.

We're about to price a cybersecurity consultancy bid. What does the EU market pay
for CPV 72220000 contracts? What's the p25–p75 range?

Subcontractor leads

Find IT systems integrators that won large public contracts in Germany in the last 30 days.
I want to approach them as a cybersecurity subcontractor.

Show me construction firms that won contracts above €1M in France and Spain in the last
60 days — I'm looking for subcontracting opportunities in civil engineering.

Find consortium winners of EU IT contracts awarded in the last 45 days.
I want the ones actively mobilising — 0 to 30 days post-award.

Finding tenders

Find open IT consulting tenders in Germany closing in the next 30 days.

Search for healthcare software tenders in France and the Netherlands above €200,000.

Find construction tenders in Poland using CPV code 45000000.

Profile setup and matching

Set up my TedScout company profile. We're a 12-person cybersecurity consultancy
based in Berlin, operating across the EU, focused on contracts between €100k and €2M.

Match these tender IDs to my company profile and rank them by fit:
[paste tender IDs from a search]

Buyer research

Who has won IT services contracts from the European Commission in the last 2 years?
Is this a competitive market or dominated by a few incumbents?

Research the procurement history of "Bundesagentur für Arbeit" for IT contracts.

Tender analysis

Summarise this tender in English and give me a go/no go recommendation:
[paste a TED tender ID]

Draft a bid outline for tender [ID] based on my saved company profile.

Watchlists

Create a watchlist for IT security tenders in Germany and France,
between €50k and €500k, and email me daily at alerts@mycompany.com.

Show me all my active watchlists and their match counts from the last 7 days.

CPV codes guide

The Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) is a classification system used across all EU procurement. Getting the right CPV codes significantly improves search quality — wrong codes mean missing tenders that match your services.

Finding your CPV codes

Use the list_cpv_codes tool with a keyword to find matching codes:

Find CPV codes for cybersecurity services

Or browse the full vocabulary at simap.ted.europa.eu/cpv.

Common CPV codes by sector

You can search with a prefix — e.g. "72" will match all IT service CPV codes. This is useful when you want broad sector coverage rather than a specific service.

Troubleshooting

Tools not appearing after connection

Fully restart your AI client — closing the window is not always sufficient. On Claude Desktop, quit the application entirely from the system tray.

Authentication errors

Check that your API key is correct and begins with etf_. API keys are shown once at signup — if you have lost yours, rotate it from the Security tab in your dashboard and update your client config with the new key.

Search returning no results

• Try broader keywords or remove filters one at a time.
• Check that your CPV codes are correct using list_cpv_codes.
• TED publishes Monday–Friday; searches run on weekends may return fewer results.
• Some national portals have a 24-hour data lag — very recently published notices may not appear until the next morning's import.

Watchlist not sending alerts

Watchlists run once daily at 07:00 UTC. Check your spam folder. Verify your notification email is correctly set on the watchlist. Check the Watchlists page in the portal or list watchlists via watch_tenders action=get.

Getting help

Email support@tedscout.eu with your account email and a description of the issue. Include the tool name and any error message returned.

Authentication

API key

Every account has an API key in the format etf_{64 hex chars}. Pass it as a Bearer token in the Authorization header:

Authorization: Bearer etf_your_api_key_here

Only the SHA-256 hash of your key is stored — the raw key is shown once at signup and never stored. Rotate your key from the Security tab in your dashboard at any time.

OAuth 2.0 (Claude.ai web)

Claude.ai web uses OAuth 2.0 with PKCE and Client ID Metadata Document (CIMD). The client ID is https://tedscout.eu/oauth/claude-client. After authorising, TedScout stores an access token (valid 90 days) and refresh token (valid 180 days). Tokens refresh automatically on expiry.

Plans & limits

Rate limits use a sliding window algorithm — burst requests are smoothed rather than hard-cut at window boundaries. Upgrade your plan from the Account tab at tedscout.eu/app.