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Tenders Direct alternative: £1,359 a year of human review, compared.
Tenders Direct is the anti-AI tender service, and it is proud of it: people read every UK and Irish notice, rewrite misleading titles, and guarantee you will not miss one. That is a real product with a real price. This page compares it with a judged daily brief and says where each one is the better buy.
The short version. Tenders Direct sells complete, human-categorised coverage of UK, Irish and OJEU notices, including below-threshold and obscure portals, from £1,359 a year excluding VAT on an annual auto-renewing contract, with unlimited users and a written coverage guarantee. TenderVerdict sells the judgment: every relevant UK and EU notice from the four official feeds judged BID, STRETCH or SKIP against your firm each morning, reasons and skips shown, at €99 a month or free weekly. Tenders Direct answers "did we miss anything?". TenderVerdict answers "should we bid?".
At a glance
| Tenders Direct | TenderVerdict | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Human-reviewed tender alert service run by Proactis Tenders Limited, Aberdeen, operating since 1993 | A daily judged brief: which tenders to bid on, which to skip, and why |
| Published price | Basic £1,359, Core £2,044, Premium £2,319 a year, excluding VAT; bespoke packages on request | €99 a month; €49 a month for the first 20 accounts; free Monday digest |
| Trial | 7 days, form-gated | The free plan, without a clock; first brief covers the last 30 days |
| Contract | Annual, auto-renews; their terms state "no cooling off period" and a £299 excluding VAT charge for any mid-term cancellation they accept; renewals can rise up to 10% a year | Monthly, cancel from one email |
| Coverage | UK, Republic of Ireland and OJEU, including below-threshold; 500+ sources scanned daily; guarantee: £100 to a charity of your choice if they miss a tender | UK Find a Tender and Contracts Finder in full, every EU country above the EU thresholds via TED, France below threshold via BOAMP |
| How matching works | People read 1,700+ UK and Irish notices a week and assign 2,000+ in-house categories; CPV codes deliberately not relied on | Deterministic country and category filter, then a per-notice judgment against your capability profile |
| Automatic output | Daily alerts of notices in your chosen categories, with rewritten titles | A decision per notice with the reason: BID, STRETCH or SKIP |
| AI | None by design: "Precision Beyond Automation", "Algorithms lack nuance" | A large language model judges each surviving notice; the rules are published |
| Says no for you | No verdict per notice | Yes, most mornings, with the reason |
| Shows what it rejected | No | Yes, every skip listed, plus an audit line of what was read |
| Setup input | Categories and saved searches: 1 on Basic, 5 on Core, 100 on Premium | Your website domain and an email |
| Seats | Unlimited users on every plan | One account per firm, everyone who should get the brief |
| Beyond alerts | Advance alerts up to 18 months before contracts expire; Competitor Tracker with 10+ years of awards; freephone support; bid training | MCP endpoint so Claude or ChatGPT can ask the judge why |
Tenders Direct facts from tendersdirect.co.uk/product/, /product/sourcing-and-review/, /product/the-tenders-direct-guarantee/, /product/advance-tender-alerts/, /subscription-terms-and-conditions and /company/proactis-tenders/, read 6 September 2026.
What Tenders Direct does well
- Coverage you can hold them to. A written guarantee with a penalty is rare in this market. If the fear that keeps you on a tool is "we will miss one", Tenders Direct has built its whole product around that fear.
- Human categorisation. Rewriting misleading titles and assigning categories by hand removes a real source of noise. They are right that CPV codes alone mislead; our own Bid or Not? #2 is a £9m example.
- Below-threshold and obscure sources. They scan portals we structurally do not read, and they build and run Public Contracts Scotland and Sell2Wales.
- Unlimited users, advance alerts, award history. For a firm that plans pipeline a year out, the expiring-contract alerts are genuinely useful.
- Reputation. 4.6 from 228 Trustpilot reviews, the strongest public rating among UK alert services.
Where teams outgrow it, in their own words
Reviewer accounts, quoted, not our findings:
- Price against the market. "They charged me £1400.00 Plus VAT for a years subscription ... I now have the same service for all of the above for a fraction of the cost with another provider." (Trustpilot, September 2024)
- Small-business fit. "Do not feel this is for small business its more for big industry." (Trustpilot, November 2020)
- Labelling after the Procurement Act. "We have notice adverts categorized wrongly, like PINs hidden as Awards and vice versa." (Trustpilot, October 2025)
Note what is absent: nobody says the alerts are irrelevant. The complaint is cost and who the product is for. And the thing a categorised alert still does not do is decide. Somebody at your firm opens each notice and asks "is this actually ours?". Tenders Direct's people made the list better. The reading is still yours.
The question no alert tool answers
"What did you throw away, and why?" Tenders Direct guarantees you see everything in your categories. TenderVerdict tells you, notice by notice, whether it is worth your afternoon, and lists the ones it skipped with the reason so you can audit the judgment. They are different promises. One is completeness; the other is a decision you can check.
Pricing, honestly
| Tool | Entry price | Billing | Seats | Trial or free tier | Approx. annual cost, one small agency | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tenders Direct Basic | £1,359 a year excl. VAT | Annual, auto-renews, £299 excl. VAT mid-term cancellation charge at their discretion | Unlimited | 7 days | £1,359 plus VAT | 6 Sep 2026, tendersdirect.co.uk/product/ |
| Tenders Direct Core / Premium | £2,044 / £2,319 a year excl. VAT | As above | Unlimited | 7 days | £2,044 or £2,319 plus VAT | 6 Sep 2026 |
| TenderVerdict Pro | €99 a month | Monthly, cancel any time | Whole firm | Free Monday digest, no clock | €1,188 (€588 on the founding deal) | This site |
Bespoke Tenders Direct packages exist, so what a small agency actually pays may differ from the published tiers. We have not been quoted one.
Choose Tenders Direct if
- Missing a single UK or Irish notice, including small and obscure ones, would be a real business problem.
- You want human-categorised alerts and distrust AI on principle.
- You plan pipeline against contract expiry dates and want award history.
- An annual contract with unlimited users suits how you buy.
Choose TenderVerdict if
- You are a 2 to 20 person digital, marketing, software or consultancy firm and the reading, not the finding, is what costs you evenings.
- You want a decision on each relevant tender, with the reason, before you open anything.
- You want to see what was skipped so you can trust what was not.
- You want a monthly price and to cancel from an email.
Where TenderVerdict does not fit
We read four official feeds and no more, so a notice published only on an obscure regional portal is not in our brief. We judge the notice, not the tender pack. We offer no coverage guarantee, no award archive and no expiring-contract alerts yet. The coverage page lists what we read; the judge page lists how we fail.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Tenders Direct cost?
Basic £1,359, Core £2,044 and Premium £2,319 a year excluding VAT, all with unlimited users, plus bespoke packages on request. There is a 7-day free trial. Subscriptions auto-renew annually and must be cancelled within 30 days of the renewal invoice date.
Does Tenders Direct use AI?
No, by design. Their position is "Precision Beyond Automation" and "Algorithms lack nuance". People read every notice and assign categories. It does not issue a bid or no-bid verdict.
Does Tenders Direct cover below-threshold contracts?
Yes, UK, Republic of Ireland and OJEU including below-threshold notices, with a written guarantee. TenderVerdict covers UK below-threshold via Contracts Finder and France via BOAMP, and above-threshold EU via TED.
Can I cancel Tenders Direct mid-year?
Their terms say there are no rights to cancel during the subscription period and no cooling-off period; any cancellation they accept carries a £299 excluding VAT administration charge. Check the current terms before you sign.
Which is better for a small digital agency?
Tenders Direct if guaranteed completeness and award history matter most. TenderVerdict if you want the judgment done and shown, at a monthly price. Many firms could sensibly run our free Monday digest alongside an existing subscription and compare mornings.
How long does TenderVerdict take to set up?
Your domain and an email. We draft a capability profile from your public website and you correct it, countries first.
Related
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