Scoutee, the alternative to Tenders Direct that goes beyond the British Isles

About Tenders Direct

Tenders Direct is a British tender-alert service run by Millstream, part of the Proactis group, and one of the longest-standing in the market. It collects notices from the public portals of the United Kingdom and Ireland, classifies them by CPV code and sends daily alerts to subscribers. Its customers are British and Irish suppliers, from small contractors to large bid teams, who want notices qualified by a human editorial process rather than by keyword matching alone. The service publishes its prices: Basic at £1,359 a year, Core at £2,044 and Premium at £2,319, each on an annual contract of one to three years, with unlimited users on every tier, seven years of notice and award history, and a Freedom of Information request tool.

Why companies move from Tenders Direct to Scoutee

Reason 1: two countries, or thirty

Tenders Direct is built around the United Kingdom and Ireland. That is a deliberate and well-executed choice, and for a company that bids only in those two countries it is enough. It stops being enough the day a supplier follows a client into the Netherlands, bids on a French framework or looks at public buyers in Spain. Scoutee indexes more than 100 official sources in more than 30 countries of Europe and North America, collected every night and deduplicated into one row per tender. The United Kingdom and Ireland are two of those countries, not the boundary of the service.

Reason 2: 49 euros a month against £1,359 a year, committed

The cheapest Tenders Direct subscription is £1,359 a year, paid annually, on a contract of one to three years. A company decides for a year before it knows whether the notices suit it. Scoutee's Pro plan is 49 euros a month, or 490 a year, cancellable at any time, and the free plan below it never expires. The decision is reversible. Tenders Direct does give unlimited users on every tier, which Scoutee's Pro plan does not match; Scoutee's Team plan at 149 euros a month carries ten users.

Reason 3: no AI reading of the tender documents

Tenders Direct advertises no artificial-intelligence feature on its plans: the service classifies and alerts, and the reading of the specification is left to the bid team. On Scoutee the analysis is the product. It fetches the documents from the buyer's platform and extracts the deadlines, the budget, the requirements and the exclusion criteria on one page shared with the workspace. The free plan runs two a month, Pro a hundred, Team without limit. Extra analyses are ten for ten euros, and reading one somebody already ran costs nothing.

Reason 4: the API is not reserved for the upper tier

Tenders Direct gives a limited API on Basic and the full API from Core, at £2,044 a year. Scoutee includes the API and an MCP server from Pro, at 49 euros a month, so a bid team can pull notices into its own CRM or ask an assistant about them without moving up a tier. A public MCP server is available free and without an account for anyone who wants to try the index first.

Reason 5: keywords in the language of the notice

A British supplier searching "facilities management" on Tenders Direct finds British and Irish notices. Scoutee proposes keywords from the company profile and translates them into the 24 languages of its sources, so the same search reaches Dutch, German and Spanish notices without writing a word of those languages. The company memory keeps references, certifications and past bids so the next answer does not start from an empty page.

Where Tenders Direct is strong

• Human classification of every notice by CPV code, which keeps false positives low in the UK and Ireland.
• Seven years of notice and award history for both countries, useful for reading a buyer's habits.
• Unlimited users on every tier, including the £1,359 entry plan.
• A Freedom of Information request tool and bid training from £159, sold alongside the alerts.

FAQ

Does Tenders Direct cover tenders outside the UK and Ireland?

Its service is built on the public portals of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, including the above-threshold notices published there. Notices published only on the national portals of other European countries are outside its scope. Scoutee collects those national portals in more than 30 countries of Europe and North America, every night.

How much does Tenders Direct cost?

Prices are published: Basic £1,359 a year, Core £2,044, Premium £2,319, read on 13 September 2026. Each is an annual contract of one to three years, with a prepayment discount, and every tier carries unlimited users. Scoutee's Pro plan is 49 euros a month, monthly, cancellable, with ten users on Team at 149 euros.

Can I try Scoutee before paying?

Yes. The free plan never expires: search every source, save searches, receive one daily alert and run two tender analyses a month. No card is needed. Pro and Team are monthly and can be cancelled at any time, and a public MCP server is open without an account.

Does Scoutee classify notices by CPV like Tenders Direct?

Scoutee searches the full text of every notice and proposes keywords from the company profile, translated into 24 languages. The AI analysis then reads the actual documents rather than only the notice header. Tenders Direct's human CPV classification remains its own method and is a real strength in its two countries.

Is the coverage really included in every plan?

Yes. The free, Pro and Team plans search the same index: more than 100 official sources in more than 30 countries, collected every night and deduplicated. The plans differ by alerts, analyses, users and the award history on Team, never by geography.

Sources

• Tenders Direct, pricing and services pages, read on 13 September 2026: tendersdirect.co.uk.
• Proactis, Tenders Direct product page, read on 13 September 2026: proactis.com.
• Scoutee, pricing and coverage: scoutee.org/en/pricing and scoutee.org/en/sources.