On eTenders
National Treasury's eTenders portal marks each finished tender as awarded, closed or cancelled. On 12 October 2026 Awardee counted 167,303 finished tenders: 21.0% awarded, 13.4% cancelled and 65.6% only "closed", with no outcome shown. So eTenders tells you who won about one tender in five. See the full statistics, by province and by buyer type.
Bid opening registers
When a municipality opens bids it records every bidder and, usually, each total price in a bid opening register. Many publish these on their websites as monthly lists, spreadsheets or scanned pages, some handwritten. They show who competed and what they charged, which is more useful than the award alone.
Awardee has checked 3,011 of these lists so far, 55,172 bids, from Cape Town, eThekwini, Tshwane, Mangaung and Rustenburg. A typical tender drew 8 bidders, and the highest bid was usually 3.2 times the lowest. See them on the bid results page.
The rules
Regulation 23 of the Municipal Supply Chain Management Regulations says bids may be opened only in public, all at once, as soon as possible after the closing time. It gives any bidder or member of the public the right to ask for the bidders' names and, if practical, each total price to be read out. And it requires the accounting officer to record all bids received in time in a register, make it available for public inspection, and publish the entries and the bid results on the municipality's website.
Using the results
- Price your next bid. Price is worth 80 of 100 points on most tenders, so the going rate decides most awards. See how points are scored.
- Know your competitors. The same companies bid against each other again and again; registers show who they are and how they price.
- Judge the buyer. A buyer that cancels often, or never publishes winners, is a risk to the work you put into a bid. Every buyer page shows both.
Questions
How do I find out who won a government tender?
Check eTenders first: it shows the awarded bidder for 21.0% of finished tenders. For municipal tenders, check the municipality's website for its bid opening register and award notices, which it must publish. Awardee collects both.
Do municipalities have to publish the bids they receive?
Yes. Regulation 23 of the Municipal Supply Chain Management Regulations requires the accounting officer to record all bids received in time in a register, make it available for public inspection, and publish the entries and the bid results on the municipality’s website.
Can I ask for the bid prices at the opening?
Yes. At a municipal bid opening, any bidder or member of the public may ask for the names of the bidders who submitted in time to be read out and, if practical, each bidder’s total price (regulation 23(b)).
Why does a tender only show as closed?
65.6% of finished tenders on eTenders show only as closed, with no award or cancellation published there. Many were awarded, with the result published on the buyer's own website or not at all.
Sources
- Municipal Supply Chain Management Regulations, GN 868 of 2005 (Government Gazette 27636, 30 May 2005), regulation 23
- National Treasury eTenders portal: tender status counts, read by Awardee on 12 October 2026
- Bid opening registers published by the City of Cape Town, eThekwini, the City of Tshwane, Mangaung and Rustenburg (January to October 2026)
Awardee is an independent service, not a government website. This guide explains the rules in plain language; the gazetted text and the tender documents are what bind you.