CPV Code Finder

A CPV code is an eight-digit number from the Common Procurement Vocabulary. Public sector buyers in the UK and the EU use it to say what a contract is for. When a council advertises a school catering contract, it adds a CPV code so suppliers can find it without reading every notice that week. There are about 9,450 codes, from bridge building to translation.

The first two digits are the division, the broadest group. Each digit after that narrows the subject by one level, down to seven levels. So 45000000 is construction work, 45200000 narrows it to building and civil engineering work, 45210000 to building construction, and 45213320 to buildings for railway transport. The digit after the hyphen is a check digit. It catches typing mistakes and says nothing about the work, so this tool leaves it off.

Type what you sell into the search above, in your own words. Then open the code and look at the codes above and beside it. Buyers rarely pick the single most precise code, so the useful answer is usually a small group of related codes. Where a code shows tender counts, they tell you which codes buyers really use.

Often not. A buyer may pick a broader code because it is quicker, reuse last year's code, or file a mixed contract under its largest part. Cleaning contracts often appear under facilities management, and IT services under a hardware code. That is why each code page lists the codes buyers use instead, and why searching by code alone misses work you could win.

More than feels natural. Most suppliers start with two or three and miss the work filed elsewhere. A specialist supplier might need eight to fifteen codes across the divisions their work touches, plus the broader codes above them. That is hard to keep up as keyword alerts, which is the problem Jonty was built to solve.

Yes. The UK kept the Common Procurement Vocabulary after leaving the EU. Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and Public Contracts Scotland all use it, and the Procurement Act 2023 did not replace it. A supplier bidding in the UK uses the same CPV 2008 list as one bidding in the EU.

You need them to be found, and to describe what you do the same way in supplier questionnaires and framework applications. You don't need them to search well. Jonty reads each notice in full and matches it to your business. So a contract you could win still reaches you when the buyer picks an odd code.