qlows
qlows · field notesVol. 02

Guide · AI & MCP

How to find government tenders with Claude

Your AI can't reliably browse procurement portals on its own. Connect one over MCP and it can — ask in plain language, get live public tenders back. Here's how.

Robin Dauer·Founder, qlows
JUL 4, 2026 · 6 min read

Large language models are good at reasoning over procurement text and bad at reliably fetching it. Ask Claude to “find IT tenders in Germany” with nothing connected and you’ll get plausible guesses, not live notices. The fix is MCP — a standard way to give the AI a real tender data source it can query.

01 · Why ask an AI for tenders at all

Because the alternative is portal-hopping. Finding public tenders normally means checking a dozen national portals, each with its own search, language, and format. An AI assistant that can query all of them at once — in conversation — collapses that into a single question. And because it’s the same assistant you already draft and analyse in, the tender goes straight from discovery into work.

02 · What MCP is

MCP (the Model Context Protocol) is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to external tools and data. An MCP server exposes a set of tools — here, functions that search live public tenders — and any MCP-capable client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, and increasingly others) can call them. The AI decides when to call the tool based on your request.

A tender MCP, then, is an MCP server that puts public-procurement data behind those tools. qlows runs one that reads 10 procurement portals across 35+ countries — so a single prompt can check every relevant tender from the last week worldwide.

03 · Setting up the tender MCP
  1. Get the connection details. Grab the qlows free tender MCP — it works with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Cline, and Windsurf.
  2. Add it to your client. Follow the MCP setup docs for your app — a short config entry pointing the client at the qlows MCP server.
  3. Restart and confirm the tools appear. The client lists the tender tools once connected.
  4. Ask.From there it’s plain language — see the prompts below.

Skip the copy-paste

Connect the free tender MCP and ask your AI for live tenders in one prompt.

Ten portals, 35+ countries, in Claude / ChatGPT / Cursor / Cline / Windsurf.

Get the free tender MCP
04 · Prompts that work

Once connected, ask the way you’d ask a colleague:

  • “Find open IT services tenders in Germany and the Netherlandsfrom the last 7 days.”
  • “Any construction tenders in Franceabove €1M closing this month?”
  • “Summarise the deadlines and buyers for medical equipmenttenders in the UK.”

For the full picture of connecting tenders to your AI — including catalog-based matching so the AI returns fits, not just keyword hits — see qlows MCP and adaptive tender matching. Or browse the underlying data directly in the tender directory.

Free to start

Ask your AI for live tenders.

Connect the free tender MCP and ask Claude to find the public contracts worth your time — across 35+ countries.

qlows · field notesqlows.com