How long do you get to bid? Tender deadlines in 60 countries compared

The single biggest reason good companies miss good tenders is not price or eligibility. It is time: the notice is found too late to prepare a proper bid. We measured how much time bidders actually get, using every notice in our database that states both a publication date and a deadline: 424,982 notices from official sources.

The global picture: half of all tenders close within 16 days

• The median bid window is 16 days from publication to deadline.
• A quarter of tenders give 10 days or less.
• 39% close in under two weeks, and 12% in under a week.
• Only 18% give more than a month.

In other words, if you check for new tenders once a week, you lose a large part of the market before you start. One notice in eight gives less than a week, so a weekly check can miss it entirely.

The shortest windows

Short windows usually mean small, repeat purchases: requests for quotation, framework call-offs and low-value goods. Colombia and the Dominican Republic publish a very large number of these, which pulls their medians down. Tanzania and Singapore are short but remarkably consistent: almost nothing closes inside a week, and almost nothing runs past a month.

The longest windows

European windows are long because EU rules set minimum periods for contracts above the EU thresholds, and because those bids are heavy: qualification documents, detailed technical offers, often in the local language. A long window is not spare time; it is the time the paperwork needs.

What kind of notice it is matters more than where

By what is being bought, goods tenders close fastest (median 18 days), while works (27) and services (28) get longer. Consultancy assignments are quicker than people expect, at a median of 15 days, because most of them are expressions of interest that only ask for a firm profile and CVs.

What to do about it

• Search daily, not weekly. In India, the US, Kenya or Kazakhstan, a weekly habit misses most short notices. Free email alerts do the daily check for you.
• Keep a ready bid pack. Registration certificates, tax documents, financial statements, past-performance letters and standard CVs should be ready before a notice appears. That is what makes a 7-day window workable.
• Register on portals before you need them. Portal registration and digital signature certificates can take longer than the bid window itself.
• Use long windows for the hard parts. In Europe, spend the extra weeks on clarification questions, partners and translation, not on waiting.

Related: how to find the right tenders faster and common mistakes in the bidding process.