TED Data Download

TED Data Download is the bulk data export service provided by the Publications Office of the European Union for TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) notice content. Where the TED API supports real-time querying of individual or small batches of notices, TED Data Download is designed for users who need large volumes of historical TED data for analysis, research, or system initialisation.

What is TED Data Download?

TED Data Download provides pre-packaged datasets of TED notices that users can download directly without making API calls. The service is hosted on the Publications Office's data portal and is free to access after registration. Available datasets include:

• Annual notice packages. All TED notices published within a given calendar year, packaged as a compressed archive. These span back to the 1990s, making TED Data Download the source for long-run analysis of European public procurement.
• Monthly and weekly packages. More recent data is also available in smaller time-segmented packages, useful for systems that need to initialise from a recent baseline before switching to real-time TED API ingestion.
• Notice type filtering. Some datasets are segmented by notice type (contract notices, contract award notices), allowing users to download only the notice category relevant to their use case.

Data is provided in XML format, reflecting the notice structure at the time of publication (older notices use legacy standard form schemas; notices from October 2023 onwards use eForms XML). Summary data in CSV format is also available for many datasets, providing flat tabular extracts of key fields (buyer, value, CPV, country, awarded supplier) without the full XML notice content.

TED Data Download data is also made available through the EU Open Data Portal (Procurement) and the European Data Portal, where it is catalogued as open government data under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.

Why it matters for bidders

Direct competitors of large companies analyse TED award notice data at scale to understand market concentration, buyer spending patterns, and incumbent supplier relationships. This analysis requires processing thousands or millions of award notices, which is only practical using bulk TED data rather than manual browsing.

For procurement intelligence platforms that serve European suppliers, TED Data Download is typically used to build the initial historical dataset, which is then kept current through TED API polling. The combination gives complete coverage from historical baselines through to notices published hours ago.

Analysts and researchers also use TED Data Download to study procurement policy: tracking the uptake of sustainability award criteria, monitoring SME participation rates, or analysing how thresholds affect contracting authority behaviour. This research is made possible by the open data licence that covers TED content.

Example

A Czech procurement research institute wants to analyse award notices across all EU member states for the past five years to study the relationship between contract value estimates and actual awarded values. They download the annual TED Data Download packages for the relevant years, parse the XML award notice fields, and build a dataset of approximately 1.2 million contract award notices. The analysis identifies systematic underestimation patterns in certain sectors and countries.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is TED data subject to copyright?

TED notice content is published by the Publications Office under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Users can freely use, adapt, and redistribute the data, including for commercial purposes, provided they attribute the source.

How large are the annual download packages?

Annual packages vary by year. More recent years with eForms notices can be several gigabytes compressed. Users should plan for adequate storage and processing capacity, particularly for multi-year analysis projects.

What is the difference between TED Data Download and the TED API?

TED Data Download provides pre-packaged batches suitable for bulk historical retrieval. The TED API provides real-time query access to current and recent notices. Most large-scale integrations use Data Download for the historical baseline and the API for ongoing updates.