Developers' corner for eSenders and Reusers

The Publications Office provides several web application programming interfaces (APIs) related to TED and European public procurement.

These APIs let you:

enlightened The Publications Office is unable to offer training on how to use the APIs. However, the links above provide access to documentation for developers and other technical profiles.

 

General

Registration requirements and authentication mechanisms vary according to the API. Registration is required for all APIs except the API for the TED website.

For all APIs except the list of calls for tenders from EU institutions, the Publications Office provides a structured description using the OpenAPI specification (also known as ‘Swagger’).

When the XML content of a notice is included in a JSON payload, it is encoded in Base64 and handled as a string. This avoids any problems with characters that have a specific meaning in JSON (quotes, commas, etc.).

 
Versioning

When a backwards-incompatible change is implemented, a new version is created. The version appears in each URL, for example ‘/v2/…’.

The following changes are backwards-compatible:

  • adding new API operations
  • adding new optional input parameters (in JSON or in the query string) to existing API methods
  • adding new JSON properties to existing API responses
  • changing the order of properties in existing API responses.
 
Recommendations for client implementations

In view of the compatibility policy described above, please make sure when implementing a client that any unexpected fields in responses are ignored. Don't rely on the order of fields in JSON.

Each HTTP request to our APIs must contain the ‘User-Agent’ header. Please specify the value for this header as accurately as possible to help us investigate potential issues.

 

Send notices for publication

The Publications Office provides operations enabling public or private bodies – known as ‘TED eSenders’ – to submit notices for publication on the TED website through their own software systems. See the page on Acting as a TED eSender.

 

View notices in various formats

Based on the content of a notice in XML, you can get the notice in HTML or PDF format, and in a specific language. Access is anonymous.

Two different APIs are available:

 

Search for and retrieve data published on the TED website

Since 14 November 2022, the notices available on the TED website use both TED schema forms and eForms.

If you reuse TED notices, you must adapt your systems to support the eForms notices.

 
Search and retrieve published notices – TED website API

The TED website API can be accessed anonymously, so you can use the website’s search engine to find specific procurement notices. Use the 'expert search' to search for and filter results by different criteria. As the eForms Regulation introduced a new TED schema, some search criteria have been changed. The search API introduced a search-controller-v3 to search both TED schema notices and eForms notices. For details, see the TED website API documentation.

In addition, the following search criteria to find notices have been adapted: type of buyer, award criterion, legal basis, main activity, type of contract, type of procedure, notice type and document type, corporate body, country, place of performance, language in which requests to participate or tenders can be submitted.

For a detailed view, please check this document providing a detailed correspondence between the code values used up to 2 November 2022 and the code values used after 2 November 2022. For further information, please consult the Help pages or contact the Helpdesk.

The TED website API also allows you to search for information on the number of notices for each geographical area (NUTS code) and can provide this information in the form of a ‘place of performance’ map.

 
XML bulk download

If you are logged in, you can download XML notices in bulk from the TED website. A single archive contains all the notices for each day and each month.

This functionality is also available in the TED FTP server.

 
Extension of the notice publication number to 8 digits

The TED website used to allow a maximum of 999 999 notices to be published per year (i.e. 6 digits, e.g. 1-2022, 654321-2022).

To enable more than a million notices a year to be published, we have increased the number of digits in the publication number to 8 digits (e.g. 1-2024, 87654321-2024).

Due to this extension, the XML packages contain two ways of numbering XML files:

  • for eForms notices the files has 8 digits (e.g. 00654321_2022.xml)
  • for TED schema notices the file has 6 digits (e.g. 123456_2022.xml).

The publication number has 8 digits for eForms notices and 6 digits for TED schema notices.

 
CSV files

A subset of data from notices published on the TED website is also available in CSV (comma-separated values) as a dataset on data.europa.eu.

 

Search and retrieve published calls for tenders from EU institutions

You can obtain a list of calls for tenders from EU institutions, as published on the eTendering website.

The list, which provides basic information on each call, can be filtered by:

  • name of the contracting authority
  • status of the call
  • language.

For details, see the API documentation in PDF.