Frequently Asked Questions

BidIQ is a South African procurement intelligence platform that aggregates government tender notices from official public procurement portals into a single, searchable database. Instead of manually checking multiple websites every day, you sign up once, set up your profile, and BidIQ surfaces relevant opportunities for your business automatically.

Yes. The Free tier is genuinely free — no credit card required, no trial period. You get full access to browse and search all active tenders on the platform indefinitely.

Paid Scout and Pro tiers unlock additional features like saved search alerts, tender tracking and AI document analysis. See our pricing section for full details.

BidIQ is built for any South African business that bids — or wants to bid — on government tenders. This includes construction companies, IT firms, consultancies, logistics providers, security companies, manufacturers and more. If your business competes for public procurement contracts, BidIQ is for you.

BidIQ currently imports from the National Treasury eTender Publication Portal, which covers national and many provincial departments. We are actively expanding our data sources to include provincial procurement portals, municipalities and state-owned entities. Coverage will be visible on each tender record.

BidIQ is a discovery and tracking tool, not a bid writing service. We help you find the right tenders, understand requirements quickly (via AI analysis on Pro), and track deadlines — but the bid preparation itself is up to you or your bid writing team.

Click Register in the navigation bar, enter your email address and choose a password. That is it. You will be taken straight to the onboarding flow where you can optionally set up your company profile. The whole process takes under two minutes.

No. We only require an email address and password to create an account. Company details like your operating province and industry categories can be added during onboarding or from your profile page at any time — and they make matching more accurate, but they are optional.

Password reset is currently handled via our support team. Email support@bidiq.co.za with your registered email address and we will send you a reset link. Self-service password reset will be available in an upcoming release.

Currently, each BidIQ account is a single-user account. Team accounts with multiple seats and shared dashboards are on our product roadmap and will be available in a future release. For now, team members can each register individually for free.

You can request account deletion by emailing support@bidiq.co.za. We will delete your account and all associated personal data within 30 days, as required by the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Self-service account deletion is on our roadmap.

Registration allows BidIQ to personalise your experience — calculating match scores, tracking your saved searches and followed tenders, and sending you alerts. Account creation is free and takes under two minutes. We do not share your registration data with third parties for marketing purposes.

When you view a tender, BidIQ compares the tender’s province and category against your company profile and returns a match score:

• Strong Match — province and category both align with your profile
• Possible Match — one dimension aligns (e.g. right province, different category)
• Low Match — neither dimension aligns with your profile

Match scores are a quick triage tool, not a guarantee of eligibility. Always read the full tender specification.

Tenders are imported from official portals daily. Each tender record shows the date it was last updated on BidIQ. There may be a delay of up to 24 hours between a tender being published on the source portal and appearing on BidIQ, so for time-sensitive tenders, always cross-check the original source.

Use the filter panel on the Browse Tenders page to narrow by category (industry type). You can also search by keyword — for example, “electrical”, “catering”, or a specific department name. Combining keyword search with category and province filters gives the most targeted results.

Each tender record on BidIQ includes a link to the original source listing on the official portal. From there you can download the full specification document. BidIQ does not host the original documents — we link directly to the authoritative source so you always access the most up-to-date version.

Free — Browse and search all tenders. Company profile. Match scoring. Unlimited access, forever.

Scout (R299/mo) — Everything in Free, plus: save searches, email alerts when new tenders match, follow specific tenders with deadline tracking and dashboard overview.

Pro (R999/mo) — Everything in Scout, plus: AI Document Analysis (50 analyses/month), AI Bid Readiness scoring, advanced analytics and priority support.

Scout and Pro are currently in development. Sign up for a free account to be notified the moment they launch. Early adopters who sign up now will receive a priority launch offer.

Yes. Annual billing is available at a 17% discount — effectively two months free. Scout annual is R2,990/year (vs R3,588 monthly). Pro annual is R9,990/year (vs R11,988 monthly).

Monthly plans can be cancelled at any time. Annual plans run for 12 months and are non-refundable after the first 14 days. There are no penalty fees or minimum notice periods beyond the billing cycle.

Payment details will be confirmed at launch. We intend to support major credit and debit cards as well as EFT for South African bank accounts. All prices are in South African Rand (ZAR) and exclude VAT.

After running a search on the Browse Tenders page, you can save it with one click (Scout plan required). Saved searches remember your keyword, category, province and status filters. You can re-run a saved search any time from your dashboard or saved searches list.

Alert frequency is configurable per saved search. You can choose daily or weekly digest emails. Alerts are sent only when new tenders matching your criteria have been published since your last alert — no alert is sent if there are no new matches.

Scout and Pro plans include unlimited saved searches. You can set up separate saved searches for each industry you operate in, each province you target, and each type of contract you pursue — without any limit.

BidIQ imports tender data from official South African government public procurement portals. Our primary source is the National Treasury eTender Publication Portal. We are actively adding provincial portals, municipalities and state-owned entities. All data is sourced from official public channels only.

BidIQ displays data as imported from official sources, but information can become outdated between import runs. Always verify tender requirements, closing dates and addenda directly with the issuing department. If you notice a data error on BidIQ, please report it to support@bidiq.co.za and we will investigate.

No. BidIQ only aggregates tenders from official public procurement sources. We do not accept tender submissions from departments directly, and we do not publish or promote tenders from unofficial channels.

Yes. Passwords are hashed using Argon2id (a modern, memory-hard algorithm — not MD5 or SHA-1). All connections are encrypted via HTTPS. We do not sell personal data to third parties. For full details, see our Privacy Policy.

We have designed BidIQ with POPIA (the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013) compliance in mind. Our Privacy Policy details what information we collect, why we collect it, how it is stored, your data subject rights, and how to exercise them. We will keep this policy updated as compliance obligations evolve.

No. BidIQ does not share your account information or activity with any government department, procuring entity or third party. Your browsing behaviour and search history on BidIQ is not visible to any government body.

Email us at support@bidiq.co.za. We aim to respond within one business day. For billing issues on paid plans, Scout and Pro subscribers receive priority responses.

Please email support@bidiq.co.za with a description of what you were doing, what you expected to happen and what actually happened. Screenshots are very helpful. We take bug reports seriously and typically deploy fixes within 48–72 hours of confirmation.

Absolutely. BidIQ is being built in close consultation with South African businesses that actively bid on tenders. Email your suggestion to feedback@bidiq.co.za. Feature requests from active users carry significant weight in our roadmap decisions.

Head to our Contact page for all the ways to get in touch with the BidIQ team.