TED vs SAM.gov and USAspending: how public procurement data differs between the EU and the US

If you have sold to the federal government, you know the routine: register in SAM.gov, watch Contract Opportunities, and look up competitors' awards on USAspending.gov. The European Union has its own public record, TED (Tenders Electronic Daily). It answers the same questions, but it is built differently, coded differently and covers 27 national markets instead of one federal market. For a manufacturer looking for distributors in Europe, the most useful part is the award notice.

Putting it simply: in the US, opportunities and award results live in separate systems (SAM.gov for opportunities and registration, FPDS data published on USAspending.gov for awards). In the EU, TED publishes both the call for tenders and the contract award notice for contracts above EU thresholds, and the award notice names the winning company. Read EU award notices by product code and you get a list of companies that already supply your category to public buyers in a given country.

The US side: three systems, one federal market

SAM.gov: registration and opportunities

GSA describes the System for Award Management (SAM.gov) as the primary method used to collect the identifying information and representations of entities seeking federal contracts, and the Unique Entity ID (UEI) it issues is "the authoritative identifier for those doing business with the federal government." SAM.gov is also the governmentwide point of entry, which FAR 2.101 defines as "the single point where Government business opportunities greater than $25,000, including synopses of proposed contract actions, solicitations, and associated information, can be accessed electronically by the public."

FPDS and USAspending.gov: who won

Award results come from the Federal Procurement Data System. Under FAR 4.603, agencies use FPDS "to maintain publicly available information about all unclassified contract actions exceeding the micro-purchase threshold." The public search that used to sit on FPDS.gov is now in SAM.gov, and the old ATOM feed is being replaced by a SAM.gov Contract Awards API.

USAspending.gov publishes the same contract data. Its documentation says contracting officers have three business days to report a contract action to FPDS (FAR 4.604), and that the data are generally available on USAspending.gov within five days of the award (Department of Defense and Army Corps of Engineers awards appear about 90 days later). The FPDS file includes the awarding agency, recipient, place of performance, industry (NAICS) and product or service code (PSC), with SAM.gov as the authoritative source of recipient names.

The thresholds that matter

FAR 2.101 (FAC 2026-01, effective March 13, 2026) sets the micro-purchase threshold at $15,000 and the simplified acquisition threshold at $350,000, with exceptions for certain purchases. Contract actions above the first are reported to FPDS; acquisitions that do not exceed the second fall under the simplified procedures of FAR Part 13.

The EU side: one journal, 27 national systems

TED is "the online version of the 'Supplement to the Official Journal' of the EU, dedicated to European public procurement." It is free to use, covers the EU and the European Economic Area among others, and publishes over 3,000 notices every weekday, according to the Publications Office.

Under Directive 2014/24/EU, notices are sent electronically to the Publications Office and published (Article 51). Within 30 days of concluding a contract, the buyer must send a contract award notice (Article 50). Annex V Part D lists what it contains: CPV codes, the value of the successful tender and, for each award, the "name, address including NUTS code, telephone, fax number, email address and internet address of the successful tenderer(s)", including whether the winner is a small or medium-sized enterprise.

The directive applies to contracts with a value net of VAT at or above the EU thresholds. From January 1, 2026, Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2152 sets them at EUR 140,000 for most supply and service contracts of central government authorities, EUR 216,000 for those of sub-central authorities, and EUR 5,404,000 for works. Below those figures, national rules and national portals apply, so TED shows the larger contracts, not all of them.

Codes: CPV versus NAICS and PSC

The US uses two lenses. NAICS, maintained for federal statistics, classifies business establishments by the processes they use to produce goods or services: it describes the company. The PSC Manual provides codes "to describe products, services, and research and development" purchased by the federal government: it describes the purchase.

The EU uses one: the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV), "a single classification system for public procurement" that describes the subject of the contract. Main codes have up to nine digits. The first two give the division, the next digits narrow it to group, class and category, and the ninth is a check digit. Map your products to CPV from your own product list and from real notices, not from your NAICS code; a company code and a product code answer different questions.

Side by side

What each tells a manufacturer about distributors

US award data tells you who sells to federal agencies at home. It is useful for benchmarking, but it says nothing about who could carry your product in Lyon or Rotterdam.

EU award notices do. When a hospital in France or a city in the Netherlands buys furniture, protective gloves or LED fittings through a supplier, the notice names that supplier, the buyer, the CPV codes and the value. A company that wins repeatedly in your codes has demand, logistics and tender experience in your category. That is the reasoning behind Cresques: it reads TED award notices by CPV category for one country at a time and keeps the company-level evidence for each candidate distributor.

Three cautions. TED covers contracts above the EU thresholds, so smaller deals sit on national portals. Article 50(4) lets a buyer withhold certain details, for example where release would harm a company's legitimate commercial interests. And public awards show only the public side of a distributor's business.

What this means for a US manufacturer

Use what you know from SAM.gov and USAspending, but change the question. At home you read award data to find competitors and bid opportunities; in Europe you read it to find partners. Start from your CPV codes, read award notices in one country, and shortlist the companies that keep winning. You are not bidding for tenders; you are using the public record to find the distributors who already sell what you make.