Cresques vs Europages: a directory listing or evidence of sales?
Europages shows who says they sell a category; an award notice shows who sold it to a public buyer. Criteria, sources and when Europages is the better choice.
Tomasz Kowal · Data and public procurement
Updated 29 October 2026 · 6 min read
Europages is often a manufacturer's first stop when looking for distributors in another European country, and for good reasons: it is free to search, large and multilingual. Here it is compared with Cresques on one question: what each tells you about whether a company already sells your category.
Putting it simply: Europages is a B2B marketplace where companies build their own profiles, including whether they are a manufacturer, distributor or wholesaler, and buyers search them free of charge. It is the quicker route to a long list and an enquiry form. Cresques starts from contract award notices on TED, in which a public buyer names the company that supplied a category, with a date and a value. Use Europages to find and reach companies; use award notices when you need evidence that a company has actually sold your category.
Disclosure: Cresques is our own product. We compare on criteria you can check yourself and link to each source.
What Europages is, as of October 2026
Europages is operated by Visable, which also runs wlw. Visable describes it as "the leading B2B marketplace for European trade", with 2,200,000 registered companies, 1,000,000 buyers a month and 21 languages, "free to use for buyers".
How a company gets in. A supplier registers free of charge and builds its own profile. According to the Europages help centre, all new profiles "are reviewed by our team during registration to ensure they comply with our business criteria", which can take up to 48 hours; registrations can be declined, for example as consumer-facing, duplicate or not verifiable. The company selects a mandatory "company type" — "the main activity of your business" — and a business sector, and may add a description of up to 1,500 characters, translated automatically.
What a buyer gets. Search with filters for supplier country, distance, number of employees, verified profiles and supplier type: Manufacturer/Producer, Customer-specific manufacturer, Distributor, Service provider and Wholesaler. Profiles show products and services, contact points, certificates and delivery area. In the Request Hub, professional buyers post requests for quotes that suppliers can answer.
How it is funded. Suppliers pay for visibility. Boosted Products and Services improves a portfolio's ranking; Top Ranking places a company "in one of the top three positions in search results for the selected category", from £28 a month according to Visable's UK page.
On 7 October 2026 a search for "medical equipment" on europages.co.uk returned 15,442 suppliers, 2,687 tagged Distributor and 3,145 Wholesaler. That filter is genuinely useful: it narrows the list by type in one click, on each company's own declaration — though a company may tick several types, so it does not cleanly separate makers from resellers.
What Cresques is
Cresques is a web application for a manufacturer entering a new EU market through distributors. You create a market — a country plus CPV categories — and see the companies that have won public contracts in those categories, each tied to an award notice you can open, with the route to market and the lawful first-contact channel for that country. A materials reader proposes CPV categories from your brochure. Pricing is in credits, shown in the app before you pay. Company profiles with an AI-researched role and first messages drafted in the local language are live; e-mail alerts on new awards come with paid plans.
TED, the public source, publishes more than 3,000 procurement notices every working day. Above the EU thresholds, a public buyer must publish an award notice naming the winner, its address, whether it is an SME, the value and the CPV codes (Directive 2014/24/EU, Article 50 and Annex V Part D).
The comparison table
Europages descriptions are from Visable's and Europages' own pages in October 2026.
| Criterion | Europages | Cresques |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | B2B marketplace run by Visable; free for buyers, financed by suppliers' visibility packages | Web application built on public award notices, for manufacturers seeking distributors in an EU or EEA country |
| Data source | Profiles written by the listed companies, reviewed at registration | Award notices published on TED by public buyers under a legal duty |
| Evidence that a company sells your category | Self-declared: company type, sector and products chosen by the company | Documentary: buyer, date, value and CPV code in a notice you can open |
| Intra-EU coverage | Broad: 2.2 million registered companies, 21 languages | EU and EEA via TED; only winners of public contracts above the EU thresholds |
| What you get | Long lists, supplier-type filters, profiles, enquiry form, Request Hub | Companies tied to notices, route to market, lawful first-contact channel, CPV proposals; profiles with role and quotes; first message in the local language; alerts (Starter and above) |
| Cost model | Free for buyers; suppliers pay for visibility (Top Ranking from £28 a month) | Credits: free plan with one market map, then plans from €49 a month (pricing) |
| Best for | Finding and contacting companies across Europe, including private-sector-only ones | A first shortlist with evidence of category sales to public buyers |
Where the difference matters
A profile is a declaration; an award notice is a record. Europages' published review criteria check that a company is real and business-to-business, not that it has sold the products it lists. The Distributor tag tells you how a company describes its main activity, not whether it distributes office chairs, surgical gloves or both.
Paid placement is openly offered and normal for a marketplace; result order reflects marketing as well as relevance, not sales.
The award notice has limits Europages does not share. A distributor selling only to private clinics, retailers or builders appears in no notice, and a notice carries no enquiry form or company description.
The two work well together: take names from award notices, then open their Europages profiles for description, contacts and delivery area — or start from the Distributor filter and look for the same names in notices.
When Europages is the better choice
- Your distributors sell to private buyers only. That trade never reaches an award notice; Europages lists such companies.
- You want a free long list today. Searching is free, and the filters narrow results quickly.
- You want buyers to find you. A manufacturer can register its profile and product portfolio free (if its country is eligible; companies from some non-European countries are declined), translated into 21 languages, and answer requests in the Request Hub. Cresques is not a marketplace.
- You need a contact route now. Europages profiles show contact points and an enquiry option; Cresques drafts a first message for the lawful channel but does not supply named contacts or an enquiry form.
- Your target market is outside TED. The United Kingdom has published its high-value notices on Find a Tender, not TED, since 1 January 2021; Europages lists UK suppliers.
- Public buyers rarely purchase your category above the EU thresholds. The notice trail will be thin; a directory does not depend on it.
What this means for a manufacturer
- Europages answers "who is out there and how do I reach them"; an award notice answers "who has already sold my category to a real buyer".
- The supplier-type filter is a good first cut between makers and resellers, on the company's own word.
- Treat ranking as marketing, not evidence.
- For public-sector-facing categories in TED countries, pair each shortlisted name with a dated document.
- Whatever the source, confirm the company in its business register and settle the lawful first contact before writing.
