AusTender: How to Find and Win Australian Government Tenders

AusTender is the starting point for anyone selling to the Australian Government. It is also one of the richest public records of how a government actually buys, because every Commonwealth contract above the reporting threshold ends up there as a contract notice.

This guide covers what AusTender publishes, how to set it up so relevant tenders find you, how to work through an approach to market, and what a full year of contract data says about where the opportunities are. If you are new to tendering, start with our explainer on what a tender is and the stages of the tender process, then come back here for the Commonwealth specifics.

What is AusTender?

AusTender is the Australian Government’s procurement information system, managed by the Department of Finance. Commonwealth entities (departments, agencies and many corporate entities) use it to publish four kinds of information:

• Annual procurement plans. What each entity expects to buy in the coming financial year. These are the earliest signal you will get.
• Approaches to market (ATMs). Live opportunities: requests for tender, requests for quote, expressions of interest and similar invitations, with the documents attached.
• Contract notices (CNs). Awarded contracts, including the supplier, value, contract period and the procurement method used.
• Standing offer notices (SONs). Panels and other standing arrangements that entities buy from repeatedly once suppliers are appointed.

Purchasing by Commonwealth entities is governed by the Commonwealth Procurement Rules, which make value for money the core test. That principle shapes how responses are evaluated, so it is worth reading the rules once before your first bid.

How the Commonwealth buys: FY2025-26 in numbers

We analysed every new contract notice published on AusTender in the 2025-26 financial year, using the Department of Finance’s open data feed (source: AusTender, Department of Finance, licensed under CC BY 3.0 AU). Amendments are excluded, so each contract counts once at its original value. The patterns are useful for deciding where to spend bid effort.

The two figures above explain why suppliers who only watch the list of open opportunities can feel they are seeing a fraction of the market. Limited tenders, where an entity approaches one or more suppliers directly, account for most contracts by number. Open tenders still carry most of the money, because the largest contracts are usually competed in the open.

Most Commonwealth contracts are modest in size. For a small or mid-sized supplier, that is encouraging: a large share of the work is within reach, and a track record on smaller contracts is how you build the past performance that larger evaluations ask for.

Spending is concentrated. Defence publishes more contract value than any other entity by a wide margin, followed by Home Affairs, Social Services, Health, Disability and Ageing, and Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Many contracts are also short, so a lot of the work comes back to market regularly. Both facts reward suppliers who watch contract notices as closely as they watch new tenders.

How to register and set up AusTender alerts

Searching AusTender does not require an account, but registering (free) is what makes it useful day to day.

1. Register as a user on the AusTender site with your business details and ABN.
2. Prepare a capability statement. Panel applications and some approaches to market ask for one, so keep a current capability statement ready to tailor.
3. Choose your categories. AusTender classifies procurements with UNSPSC codes. Pick the codes that describe what you sell, starting broad and narrowing once you see what comes through. Too narrow, and you miss tenders that buyers coded differently.
4. Turn on notifications so new approaches to market in your categories are emailed to you.
5. Save searches for contract notices in the same categories. These show who is winning the work today and when each contract ends.
6. Review your categories every quarter. Buyers do not code consistently, and the tenders you lose track of are often the ones filed under a neighbouring code.

How to respond to an AusTender approach to market

Each approach to market sets its own rules, so read the documents before anything else. The process usually runs like this.

Qualify the opportunity first. Before committing a team, check the mandatory requirements, the evaluation criteria, the contract terms and the timeline against your capacity. A structured go/no-go decision saves more bids than any amount of late-night writing.

Map every requirement. Pull the conditions for participation, mandatory requirements, evaluation criteria and response schedules into one list, so nothing is missed and every answer has an owner. A compliance matrix is the standard way to do this.

Use the question period. ATMs name a contact officer and a deadline for questions. Answers are usually published to every registered participant as an addendum, so watch for addenda right up to the closing date.

Write to the evaluation criteria. Evaluators score what the criteria ask for, in the order they ask for it. Our guide to addressing selection criteria shows how to structure each answer. For the wider response, writing a tender response covers structure, evidence and tone, and the tender writing best practices guide covers the craft.

Lodge early. Responses are lodged through AusTender or as the ATM directs, by the stated closing time. Late responses are generally not accepted, and upload problems on the final afternoon are a common way to lose a bid you could have won.

This is the stage where AutoRFP.ai helps tender teams most. It screens each tender against your own go/no-go criteria with an answer and source for every question, then drafts responses from the content your team has already approved, so reviewers can see where each answer came from.

Using contract notices to plan your pipeline

Contract notices are the most under-used part of AusTender. Each one records the buyer, the supplier, the value, the procurement method and the contract period. Read together, they tell you:

• Who buys what you sell, and how often.
• Who you are competing against, and which incumbents hold the contracts you want.
• When work will come back to market, from the contract end dates. A contract ending in nine months is a conversation to start now, well before the next approach to market appears.

Pair contract notices with the annual procurement plans, and you can build a forward pipeline months before the tenders open. Our guide on how to win a bid covers turning that pipeline into wins.

AusTender and the state tender portals

AusTender only covers Commonwealth procurement. State and territory governments, and most councils, publish through their own systems:

• New South Wales: buy NSW (formerly NSW eTendering)
• Queensland: QTenders
• Western Australia: Tenders WA
• Victoria: Buying for Victoria Supplier Portal (formerly Tenders VIC)
• South Australia: SA Tenders and Contracts
• Tasmania: Tasmanian Government eTendering (tenders.tas.gov.au)
• Australian Capital Territory: ACT Government tenders (tenders.act.gov.au)
• Northern Territory: Quotations and Tenders Online

Suppliers who sell into more than one level of government usually end up monitoring several of these alongside AusTender. Our guide to finding RFPs and tenders covers how to keep that manageable.

Make AusTender part of a repeatable bid process

AusTender gives every supplier the same information. Teams that win consistently use it the same way each time: they qualify early, map requirements before writing, and draft from content that has already been proven in earlier bids.

That last step is where an accuracy-first platform earns its place. AutoRFP.ai builds each tender draft from your approved past answers and documents, cites the source behind every response, and passes anything it cannot support to the right person on your team. See how it fits a Commonwealth tender workflow on our RFP software page.