Government work was never a club.
You're already in it.
Councils, hospitals, schools and state agencies post work every day that your business is perfect for. They pay on time. There's no chasing invoices. No dodgy developers. The only thing standing between you and that work is a system written by procurement officers, for procurement officers — one that was never designed with a sparky on a job site in mind.
We built Tendera to take that wall down.
The way it works now
You're not competing against other tradies. You're competing against the procurement system itself. Here's what it looks like from where you're standing.
You're hunting blind across ten portals
There are eight different government tender portals across Australia. AusTender for federal. NSW eTendering. QTenders. Tenders VIC. SA Tenders. WA, TAS, ACT, NT all running their own systems. Plus commercial platforms like VendorPanel and ICN Gateway. Plus council sites that change format every other year. You'd need to check ten-plus websites every morning just to know what's live. Most tradies don't even know half of them exist — and by the time you find one that fits, you've got three days to respond.
The documents are written in a different language
"The contractor shall demonstrate compliance with AS/NZS 4801:2001 and provide evidence of capacity to deliver services in accordance with Technical Specification 3B, Appendix C, Section 2.4.7..." You're a qualified tradie. You've done this kind of work a hundred times. But reading forty-seven pages of procurement-speak just to work out if you're even eligible? That's a Saturday gone, and you still don't know what they actually want.
You're pricing blind
Here's the part nobody tells you. You have no idea what similar work has been awarded for. A school maintenance contract in your region — is that a $60k job or a $150k job? You're guessing. The big firms aren't. They've got procurement analysts tracking this stuff full-time. So you either bid too high and lose, or bid too low and win a job that bleeds money.
What we do, and what we don't
We do the hunting, the filtering, and the translating. Each day we pull from the major feeds we monitor, score each tender against your trade and postcode, summarise it in plain English, and tell you upfront whether it's simple enough to quote on your phone or complex enough to need a hand. What we don't do is write the response for you. When you're ready to lodge, you click through to the buyer's portal and respond directly. We sit between you and the chaos — not between you and the buyer.
The cost of not bidding
Let's say there are 50 relevant government tenders in your area this year. You see maybe 5 of them. You bid on 2. You win 0 because you priced it wrong. That's 48 missed opportunities. At an average contract value of $80K, that's $3.8 million in work you never even knew existed. Even if you only win 10% of what you bid on (industry average), that's still $380K in revenue you left on the table. Not because you can't do the work. Because the system made it too hard to even try.
The way it should work
We didn't build another tender portal — there are already too many of those. We built the layer that should have existed on top of all of them. One feed. Plain English. Built around your trade, not theirs.
1. We do the 6am shift
Each day we pull from the major public feeds we monitor — federal, most states and territories, VendorPanel, ICN Gateway work packages, and council sources. Right now there are 1,300+ tradie-relevant open tenders and active work packages in the feed. You tell us your trade and postcode once. We show you what matches. No more hunting across ten websites. No more missing the school job because you forgot to check Tenders VIC on a Tuesday.
2. We translate the procurement-speak
Every tender gets a plain-English summary written for humans. What the buyer actually wants. What licences and insurances they expect. What would disqualify you. Read it in two minutes instead of two hours. Every tender also gets a match score against your profile — 85%+ means the job is basically written for you, under 60% means save your evening for the kids.
3. We show you what the work is actually worth
This is the unfair-advantage one. We've ingested every awarded contract from AusTender. Electrical maintenance in Brisbane? You'll see what similar jobs were actually awarded for — $124k, $89k, $156k — who won them, and which department keeps spending. You're not guessing anymore. The big firms have always had this data. Now you've got it on your phone.
4. You decide and go
When a job's worth chasing, click straight through to the buyer's portal and respond there. We don't sit between you and the buyer. We don't draft your bid or submit it for you. We just make sure you actually saw the job — and went in with your eyes open about what it's worth.
Who this is for
Tendera is built for trade businesses that do good work and have been quietly locked out of government contracts because nobody handed them the map.
You belong here if
- • You've got a few years under your belt and a track record you'd show your mum
- • You're licensed, insured, and pay your taxes
- • You do quality work and you'd like quality clients to match
- • You're sick of chasing invoices from dodgy developers
- • You want to grow without hiring a full-time procurement officer
This isn't for you if
- • You're running cash jobs without an ABN (government work requires the basics)
- • You're after residential leads (this is government, not Hipages)
- • You want a magic button that bids for you (we find the work and explain it — you still do the work)
What this is costing you right now
Say you currently chase one government tender every six months.
The hours add up:
- • Finding the tender across multiple portals: 2 hours
- • Reading and decoding the documents: 3 hours
- • Putting together a response: 8 hours
- • Total: 13 hours per bid
At $100/hour opportunity cost — what you'd be earning doing actual work — that's $1,300 in lost time per attempt. Average win rate for SMEs going in blind sits around 5–10%. So you're spending $1,300 per attempt, going twice a year, and winning once every six years.
Real cost per win: about $7,800 in time.
Plus the opportunity cost of the forty-eight other jobs you never even knew were posted.
What Tendera costs
Right now, discovery is free: browse, save, match, filters, and Market Intelligence are included while Tendera focuses on proving the feed. See Pricing for current details; Stripe may still be used for legacy subscriptions.
If Market Intelligence helps you price one tender correctly, or plain-English summaries save you a couple of hours ruling out bad fits, or alerts surface one opportunity you would have missed — that's the point of the product.
What actually changes
With Tendera, here's what your tendering process looks like:
Monday morning: Email digest shows 3 new tenders that match your profile. You scan them over coffee. One's an 87% match for commercial electrical maintenance in your area. You save it.
Tuesday arvo: You check Market Intelligence. Similar contracts were awarded for $95K–$140K. You were going to bid $75K. You adjust to $118K.
Wednesday: You decide it's a go, read the source documents on the buyer's portal, and start your bid there.
Thursday: You submit through their portal and move the card to "Submitted" in your Tendera pipeline.
Total time: 3 hours instead of 13.
You bid on 12 tenders this year instead of 2. You win 2 instead of 0. At an average value of $95K, that's $190K in new revenue — before accounting for your time to prepare bids on the buyer's system. Even one extra win from better visibility can dwarf software costs.
The real unlock
Government work isn't just about the money. It's about stability. When you've got $200k worth of council and state contracts sitting in your pipeline, you're not scrambling for the next job. You're not taking dodgy work from dodgy developers because you need cashflow on Friday. You can plan. Hire properly. Invest in the business. Say no to the jobs that aren't worth it. That's what Tendera actually unlocks — not just more tenders. More control over which work you say yes to.
Start free. See what's actually live in your postcode.
Create a free account and see whether the work in your area is worth chasing. Full discovery — browse, save, match scoring, Market Intelligence, the lot — is on the house right now. No credit card. No pitch. If you're a tradie who does good work and has been locked out of government contracts because the system's too hard to navigate, this is your door.
A job you should be quoting was posted this morning.
Discovery is free while we focus on the feed. No credit card. No trial timer.
Common questions
Is this just for big companies?
No. The opposite. We built it specifically for sparkies, plumbers, painters, cleaners, builders — the trade businesses the big firms drown out. The big firms already have procurement teams hunting tenders for them. You don't. That's the whole point of this thing.
Do I need tendering experience?
No. If you can quote a job, you can do this. We translate every tender into plain English, give you a quick checklist to see if you're qualified, and tell you upfront if it's a job a tradie can handle solo or one where a bid writer might earn their fee. You learn as you go.
Will this guarantee I win tenders?
Course not. You still need to be qualified and good at what you do. What we guarantee is that you'll actually see the work — instead of finding out three months later that someone else got the school maintenance job your business was perfect for. The hardest part of winning tenders is knowing they exist.
What if there are no tenders in my area?
Possible, but very unlikely. We're scanning 1,300+ tradie-relevant open tenders and ICN work packages across every state and territory right now. Sign up free and see what's in your trade and your postcode before you commit to anything. Costs nothing.
How is this different from just checking the portals myself?
Sure, you could check all ten portals every day, read every tender end-to-end, and decode the procurement-speak yourself. Most tradies don't, because that's a part-time job. We do the hunting, the filtering, and the translating. You spend the saved hours actually quoting work you can win.
What if I need help?
Email us. There's an AI chat in the app for tender-specific questions. We're a small team and we actually answer the inbox — usually within a day. If you're stuck, ask.
I ran a painting business for twenty years before I built this. I know exactly what it's like to hear later that some mob from interstate won the school painting contract in your backyard — work you would have killed for, if anyone had bothered to tell you it existed.
Tendera is the tool I wish I'd had. It's built by a tradie, for tradies, and it has one job: make sure the work you should be doing actually ends up in front of you.