The TendFeed Study 2026: Competition Density in EU Public Procurement
How thinly contested is the EU public-procurement market really — and what does it cost not to know? An analysis of 592,091 real EU contract awards (TED, Tenders Electronic Daily), November 2023 – June 2026.
Publisher: AnalystHAUS GmbH (TendFeed brand) · Data source: TED, CC BY 4.0 · As of: June 2026
This study is published in English and German (https://tendfeed.eu/de/studie).
Summary (citable)
Across all sectors, 69.3% of all EU contract awards went to three or fewer bidders — 34.4% to a single bidder. The EU procurement market is not overcrowded; it is thinly contested across the board. A bidder competes against a median of 2 others, not a dozen.
Basis: 592,091 award notices with a valid bidder count from 90 countries over 2.5 years (TED). This is not a sample — it is close to the full corpus of machine-readable EU awards for the period.
1. Methodology
- Source: TED (Tenders Electronic Daily), the official EU procurement portal, CC BY 4.0.
- Population: all contract-award notices Nov 2023 – Jun 2026 with an evaluable bidder count (StatisticsCode=tenders in the eForms standard) → n = 592,091.
- Cleaning (conservative): lots with 0 received tenders excluded (cancelled/failed procedures, no "zero-competition wins"); artefacts > 500 bidders excluded. This cleaning lowers the reported figures.
- Aggregation per cluster: CPV division (2-digit, the official EU sector taxonomy), only clusters with n ≥ 100 reported.
- Contract values: median of estimated values per cluster (n = 23,000–112,000 per cluster), outliers > €1bn truncated.
2. Core finding: the market is thinly contested across the board
| Metric | Value | n |
|---|---|---|
| Awards with only 1 bidder | 34.4% | 592,091 |
| Awards with ≤ 3 bidders | 69.3% | 592,091 |
| Median bidder count (all sectors) | 2 | 592,091 |
Read it like this: in more than one in three EU procedures there was no real competition at all (1 bidder). In more than two thirds of cases, ≤ 3 offers were enough to win. The common belief that "too many bid on public contracts, it is not worth it" is refuted across the full corpus.
3. Competition density and value per sector cluster
For each cluster: how thinly contested and how much contract value (stake). The column expected value/tender = median contract value ÷ median bidder count — the statistical value of pursuing one tender from a thinly contested cluster without any skill bonus (conservative baseline).
| CPV | Sector | n (bidders) | Median contract value | Median bidders | % ≤ 3 bidders | Expected value/tender |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 45 | Construction | 76,508 | 4.500.000 € | 4 | 46 % | 1.125.000 € |
| 85 | Health/social services | 11,511 | 1.700.000 € | 2 | 76 % | 850.000 € |
| 48 | Software | 18,838 | 1.600.000 € | 2 | 82 % | 800.000 € |
| 72 | IT services | 32,133 | 1.596.820 € | 2 | 76 % | 798.410 € |
| 31 | Electrical | 11,949 | 1.102.400 € | 2 | 74 % | 551.200 € |
| 38 | Lab/measurement/optics | 15,491 | 543.633 € | 1 | 89 % | 543.633 € |
| 09 | Energy/fuels | 13,613 | 1.060.120 € | 2 | 68 % | 530.060 € |
| 50 | Maintenance/repair | 29,338 | 975.652 € | 2 | 80 % | 487.826 € |
| 33 | Medical | 53,952 | 467.830 € | 1 | 85 % | 467.830 € |
| 34 | Vehicles | 27,145 | 780.000 € | 2 | 84 % | 390.000 € |
| 44 | Construction materials | 13,392 | 780.251 € | 2 | 70 % | 390.126 € |
| 90 | Environment/waste | 29,386 | 1.044.672 € | 3 | 62 % | 348.224 € |
| 30 | Office/IT equipment | 18,409 | 684.309 € | 2 | 74 % | 342.155 € |
| 71 | Engineering/architecture | 53,767 | 800.000 € | 3 | 54 % | 266.667 € |
| 79 | Business consulting | 29,404 | 800.000 € | 3 | 56 % | 266.667 € |
Reading for the bidder: even in the most conservative calculation (no skill, pure statistical odds), the expected value of pursuing one tender from a thinly contested cluster is in the six-to-seven-figure range in every listed sector. The most expensive mistake is not bidding — it is pursuing the wrong (overcrowded) tender and missing the thinly contested one.
4. The cost of not knowing (independently sourced)
Competition density (sections 2–3) is one side. The other: what it costs to pursue the wrong procedure. These costs are independently documented — independent studies are clearly separated from vendor data.
Cost per bid — independent: IfM Bonn (2024, independent research institute; case study of three electrical SMEs in municipal procurement): €870–3,070 per tender participation depending on firm size, ~€3,070 for the smallest firms (≤ 9 employees) — the authoritative independent source for the German market (IfM-Materialien No. 301). cosinex (2024): "up to €3,000" effort per tender participation.
How much work wins nothing — independent: AGC (Associated General Contractors): bid-to-win ratio of 20–35% in construction → 65–80% of all proposal work generates zero revenue.
Vendor benchmark (labelled as such): Loopio RFP Benchmark Report: ~33 hours per RFP, average win rate 39% (vendor survey, not an independent institute).
4.1 In their own words (verbatim, with sources)
The pain is not abstract — it is on record. German quotes are kept in the original language (scientific practice):
„Da arbeite ich doch lieber fünf Stunden in der Werkstatt, als ein Angebot abzugeben, von dem ich weiß, dass es eh nicht zum Zuge kommen wird." ("I would rather work five hours in the workshop than submit a bid I know will not win.") — Stefan Zirngibl, master metalworker.
Deutsche Handwerks Zeitung (German)
"I once spent 2 weeks and about $5k meeting all of the requirements for the RFP … I was more than a little bothered afterwards." · "Unless you personally influenced the RFP and have a champion who has told you you're the preferred vendor, it is a guaranteed waste of time."
Hacker News: "Your competitor wrote the RFP you're bidding on"
4.2 The bidder's arithmetic
Conservative, independent figures only: per the IfM case study, one prepared bid costs €870–3,070 depending on firm size. 65–80% of that work wins nothing (AGC). Bidding on 4 wrong (overcrowded) procedures burns up to ~€12,000 of working time — without a single award.
These wasted rounds happen because the bidder does not know before the proposal work how thinly contested the procedure is (section 2: 69% ≤ 3 bidders — but which ones?).
5. Conclusion
Across the full corpus, the EU procurement market is demonstrably thinly contested (69% ≤ 3 bidders) and valuable (six-to-seven-figure expected values per cluster). The bottleneck is not competition — it is information about where competition is thin, before the expensive proposal work is invested.
How to cite this study
AnalystHAUS GmbH (2026): The TendFeed Study 2026: Competition Density in EU Public Procurement — analysis of 592,091 EU contract awards (TED, Nov 2023 – Jun 2026). https://tendfeed.eu/en/study
Methodological notes: median instead of mean (robust to outliers). "≤ 3 bidders" as the threshold for thin competition (under uniform odds this would arithmetically correspond to ≥ 25%). Observed competition density is not a probability of winning. Data as of June 2026, continuously updated. Research/data tool, not legal advice, no guarantee of award.