7 Tussell Alternatives, Priced, and When to Stay

The short answer: Tussell is the research-grade view of who buys what from whom in the UK public sector, and if that is the question you are paying to answer, it is hard to beat. Teams look for an alternative for three reasons: they want a published price rather than a sales call, they need alerts more than research depth, or they have already found the tender and need something that reads the pack. This guide matches each reason to an option and says plainly when Tussell is still the right call.

Full disclosure: Lucius AI is our product. It appears once, in the section on what to do after you have found the tender, and it is not a Tussell replacement for market intelligence. Prices are the vendors' own published figures; where there is none, we say not published.

What Tussell is, and what it is not

Tussell is a London company, founded in 2015, that describes itself as an all-in-one UK public sector market intelligence platform: in its own words, a complete view of the UK public procurement landscape, from early buying signals and live tenders to contracts, framework agreements and spending data. On top of the data sit Early Opportunities, which scans government documents such as meeting minutes, strategy papers and procurement pipelines for buying signals months before a tender goes live, each one checked by its data experts; a Frameworks Finder; contact details for over 80,000 public sector decision-makers; an analyst service; and an API with a Salesforce integration. It says three-quarters of the UK Government's Strategic Suppliers use it.

Three plans are listed, Starter, Plus and Pro, told apart by contact credits, FOI requests and support level. No price appears on any of them; each ends in Talk to Sales.

What Tussell is not is a bid tool. Its page for bid and tender coordinators covers alerts when relevant tenders go live, bid or no-bid intelligence (the incumbent, what the buyer paid for similar contracts before, which of its contracts expire soon), sharing opportunities with a team and exporting them to a CRM, and it now displays the award criteria of tenders. Nowhere does it claim to read the tender pack, extract the requirements, check your compliance or write a response. That is a different job, and most searches for a Tussell alternative are really about it.

The alternatives at a glance

1. Stotles: the closest like-for-like, with a free plan

Stotles is the nearest thing to Tussell with a published price list. Its Sales Studio covers the same ground: tender tracking, pre-tender signals, expiring contracts, buyer and competitor intelligence, framework and spend data, and decision-maker contacts at the upper tier. The Free plan is £0 a month and includes tender tracking and pre-tenders. Growth is from £475 a month; Expert is custom. A second product, Bid Studio, gives three AI bid or no-bid reports free for life and has a Growth tier from £990 a month.

Who it suits: a team that wants Tussell-shaped intelligence but needs to start free and grow into a bill it can see in advance. Where Tussell keeps the edge: the analyst service, the FOI requests and the research standing that gets its numbers into the press. If it is Stotles you are really weighing, we wrote a separate piece on Stotles alternatives.

2. Contracts Advance: published annual prices

Contracts Advance publishes its prices. Three annual packages: Search at £1,399 a year for new notices, exportable data and masterclasses; Discover at £2,099 a year, which adds active contracts and a dedicated account manager; and Explore at £2,999 a year, which adds competitor and buyer analysis. All prices are in pounds excluding VAT. It also sells bid reviews, £750 for one day on a bid up to 10,000 words and £1,495 for two days, offers bid writing through a partner, and has a free trial.

Who it suits: an SME that wants notices, expiring contracts and some competitor analysis on a bill it can budget for. Where Tussell keeps the edge: spend data, early buying signals and decision-maker contacts are not what Contracts Advance is built around.

3. Tenders Direct: verified alerts with a starting price

Tenders Direct is an alert service first. It says it scans more than 500 sources daily and covers every UK, Ireland and OJEU opportunity plus below-threshold notices, and it describes its alerts as verified and personalised. Around the alerts sit an Opportunity Manager for tracking bids, a Competitor Tracker, and Advance Tender Alerts for contracts due to expire. The pricing page lists tender alert subscriptions from £1,359 a year, bid writing training from £159 a course, and bid support on tailored fees. A free trial is offered.

Who it suits: a team whose real need is not to miss a notice. Where Tussell keeps the edge: everything upstream of the notice. Tenders Direct does not present itself as a spend or buyer intelligence product.

4. Tracker by BiP Solutions: the widest coverage claim, quote only

Tracker is BiP Solutions' intelligence platform. It claims 95 percent or better coverage of UK public procurement, drawing on the major UK portals and the EU's TED database, and it says around half of its clients are SMEs bidding for contracts in the £1m to £5m range. Four plans are listed, Iconiq with one licence, Logiq with three, Dynamiq and AnalyticIQ with five, covering the UK and Ireland as standard, with spend analysis, decision-maker contacts and an open API at the upper tiers and AI contract summaries under the Aria Intelligence name. No price is published for any plan. Like Tussell, it is a demo and a sales conversation.

Who it suits: a company that wants one system for alerts, buyer data, spend analysis and pipeline, and is content to negotiate the price. Where Tussell keeps the edge: research standing; Tussell says its data was cited over 350 times in the press in 2024.

5. Spend Network and Open Opportunities: global data, published prices

Spend Network is a procurement data company rather than a sales tool. It says it covers 160 countries from 743 sources, sells that data through an API, and runs a search product called Open Opportunities. The prices sit on openopps.com: Solo at £120 per user a month, or £1,440 a year; Team at £259 a month, or £3,108 a year, for unlimited users. There is a seven-day free trial with no card, and the API is pay as you go from a £100 minimum.

Who it suits: anyone whose market is wider than the UK, and data teams that want the contracts in their own database. Where Tussell keeps the edge: UK depth. Spend Network is broad by design; Tussell is deep on one country.

6. Find a Tender and Contracts Finder: the free official sources

Most of what the platforms above resell starts as a free government notice. Find a Tender is where UK public sector buyers publish notices about procurement opportunities and contracts. For procurements started on or after 24 February 2025 under the Procurement Act 2023 it carries both above and below-threshold notices, except Scotland's below-threshold ones; for earlier procurements, only above-threshold notices, usually over £139,688 including VAT. With a GOV.UK One Login you can save searches and get email notifications. Contracts Finder covers contracts worth over £12,000 including VAT with the government and its agencies in England; you can search without an account and create one for email updates and saved searches. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own portals. GovSpend.org.uk, a free analyser of G-Cloud spend, is also out there; its own note says the data runs to the end of October 2019.

Who it suits: a company that bids rarely, or one that wants to check what a paid tool is actually adding. Where Tussell keeps the edge: the notices are raw. No cleaned supplier names, no spend lines, no contacts, no early signals. That gap is the whole Tussell business.

7. Lucius AI: for the half Tussell does not do

Lucius is not a Tussell alternative for intelligence, and we would rather say so than pretend. It starts where Tussell stops: you have found the tender, the pack has landed, and someone has to read it. Upload the documents and Lucius returns every requirement cited to the page it came from, the eligibility gaps that could disqualify you, and a bid or no-bid verdict. The free scan needs no signup and cites every requirement to its page. The Pack is EUR 149 per tender, and Team is EUR 2,400 a year.

Who it suits: any team that keeps Tussell, Stotles or a free portal for discovery and loses bids on qualification and compliance rather than on finding out too late. Where it does not compete: buyer intelligence, spend data, contacts and early signals. If those are the problem, this section is not about you.

When to stay with Tussell

Stay if your work depends on the research. Account managers building the case for a strategic supplier, consultancies sizing a market, anyone who needs a clean spend line for one buyer or the decision-maker behind a framework: that is Tussell's home ground, and the free portals and alert services do not touch it. Stay, too, if Early Opportunities is producing conversations before the tender exists; nothing else on this page claims to do that with a person checking each signal.

Look elsewhere when the invoice is out of proportion to how often you bid, when the part you actually use is the alert, or when the losses in your pipeline happen after the tender is found rather than before. In that last case the answer is not a different intelligence platform. It is a tool for the pack.

Frequently asked questions

Does Tussell publish its prices?

No. The plans page lists Starter, Plus and Pro and each ends in Talk to Sales. Of the platforms here, Stotles, Contracts Advance, Tenders Direct and Open Opportunities publish a price. Tracker does not.

What is the cheapest Tussell alternative?

Find a Tender and Contracts Finder are free. Among paid tools with a published price, Stotles has a free plan and Growth from £475 a month, Tenders Direct alerts start at £1,359 a year, and Contracts Advance at £1,399 a year.

Can I use Tussell and an analysis tool together?

Yes, and that is the normal setup. Tussell tells you which tender to chase and who you are up against. An analysis tool reads the pack once you have it. The two jobs barely overlap, which is why this page lists Lucius as a complement and not as a replacement.

Updated September 2026. Prices are vendor-published figures in the vendor's currency; where none is published we say so. Verify with each vendor before buying. The wider market map is in our 2026 tender software comparison.