Many Belgian businesses follow public tenders through e-Procurement, the official portal run by BOSA (the Belgian Federal Public Service for Policy and Support). It is a sensible choice — the platform is free, it contains every Belgian publication and it works reasonably well. For companies that pursue a small handful of tenders per year and do not need deep analysis, e-Procurement is enough.
If that situation describes you, here is the central claim of this page: if e-Procurement is free enough for you, then TenderWolf Free is too — and you will get more done with it from day one.
What e-Procurement does well
It helps to start with what is actually there. e-Procurement is a solid publication portal. Every Belgian contract notice is published there, you can build search profiles based on CPV codes and regions, and you receive an email whenever a publication matches your profile. It is official, reliable, and costs nothing.
For submitting bids, e-Procurement is unavoidable in any case. It is through e-Tendering that you actually file your offers. No commercial tool — TenderWolf included — replaces that role.
Where you hit walls
The difference shows up in everything that happens between “publication appears” and “I know whether to bid”.
In e-Notification you can enter keywords, but those only search the title and summary of the notice. The full text of the bid specification — often eighty pages — is not indexed. A tender where the relevant requirement appears on page 23 is something you systematically miss unless it also surfaces in the summary.
Your search profiles work along two axes: CPV codes and region. That is functional but narrow. If you want to filter contracts by form type (only framework agreements, for example), by contractor recognition class, by a specific contracting authority, or within a fifty-kilometre radius of your head office — none of that is possible. You catch a wider net than you need, then have to filter manually.
Bid documents are downloaded as PDFs. Reading them remains manual work. Market intelligence — who are my competitors on similar contracts, what prices were submitted in past tenders, which contracting authority is interesting for me — is absent.
None of these limitations are dramatic. Together, they cost time and let opportunities slip.
What TenderWolf Free adds
TenderWolf Free is built to fill exactly that gap. The free tier is not a demo or a trial — it is a permanent plan. No 30-day countdown, no credit card to enter, no functionality that suddenly disappears once a trial expires.
Wider search profiles. You combine six dimensions in a single profile: keywords, CPV codes (hierarchical, includable and excludable), NUTS regions down to the municipality, contractor recognitions for the construction sector, form types (framework agreements as a separate filter), and specific contracting authorities. Unlimited profiles, also in Free. AI learns from what you approve and reject, and adjusts relevance over time.
Search inside the bid documents themselves. The search engine indexes title, summary, full bid specification text and attachments. Operators such as AND, OR, exact match with quotation marks, exclusion with a minus sign, and special queries (cpv:72000000, aanbesteder:"Gemeente Antwerpen") are available. A tender that mentions a specific technical requirement only in an annex is now findable.
Smart filters on the result list. Filter by publication date, deadline window (for example a minimum of twenty days to submit), contract value, procedure type, region with radius around an address, and specific contracting authorities. Sort by relevance, date, deadline, value or match score.
A nicer place to work. Small point, not insignificant: the UI is built to be open every day. Tags, labels per project or team, exports to Excel, PDF or Word, sharing with colleagues. It is not the kind of stripped-down government portal where every screen is a form.
At a glance
| Feature | e-Procurement (e-Notification) | TenderWolf Free |
|---|---|---|
| Belgian publications | All | All (plus NL, LU, FR, EU via TED) |
| Search profiles | CPV codes, region | Six dimensions, unlimited |
| Searches bid specification text | Title + summary | Full text + attachments |
| Operators (AND, OR, "", -, cpv:, aanbesteder:) | Limited | Full |
| Filter by form type (framework agreement separately) | No | Yes |
| Radius around an address | No | Yes |
| AI bid analysis | No | Quickscan via credits |
| Market intelligence (competitors, award amounts) | No | Company profiles via credits |
| Tags, labels, exports | Limited | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free (3,000 starter credits + 750/month) |
Pro features you can try at no cost
A few functions are not useful in every search and would clutter the UI if always active. Those run on credits, but without a paywall. At registration you receive 3,000 starter credits, and your balance is automatically topped up to 750 each month whenever it drops below that level. For most users, that means structurally working without ever paying.
The Quickscan extracts from a bid the selection criteria, award criteria with weightings, estimated value, planning, lots, site visit obligations and technical norms — at 25 credits per scan. A screening (50 credits) shows competitors at that specific contracting authority and on the wider market, plus possible consortium partners. A company profile (100 credits) gives key figures, won and lost contracts, financial data and competitors ranked by intensity. Searching for a keyword across all bid documents (25 credits) is useful when exploring a new theme.
To put numbers on it: 750 monthly credits covers around thirty Quickscans, or six screenings, or seven company profiles. For a small or mid-sized company that thoroughly analyses a handful of tenders per month, that fits comfortably within the free tier.
When does upgrading make sense?
Not to unlock features — those are all available in Free. A paid plan is worthwhile in three situations.
If you scan structurally and the monthly credit budget gets tight, Standard (€79/month) gives you 5,000 credits and Professional (€149/month) gives 15,000. If you operate in multiple European countries, Professional is the first plan that expands beyond a single country — Free and Standard cover one country of your choice. And if priority support matters to you, that lives in the higher tiers.
For the broader comparison between platforms — not just e-Procurement versus TenderWolf — Choosing tender software is a good starting point. For a deep dive into how e-Procurement itself works and which modules it contains, see the knowledge base article on e-Procurement in Belgium.
Get started
Creating a TenderWolf account takes less than a minute and requires no credit card. You keep your e-Procurement account for submitting, and you work from TenderWolf for searching, filtering and preparing.