Release notes
Aperlena ships something most days. This page keeps the record, newest first, so a returning reader can see what changed since their last visit.
43 entries, the latest on 25 October 2026
23 entries
New · Improved
Like the home page, every page now separates its parts with bands of their own colour: what you read, the figures and charts, the explanations and your own things. The charts take the colours of the home's map, teal for the subject and gold for the latest point.
Improved
Each block of the home page now sits on a band of its own: your week and recent reads, today's front page, Explore, the largest awards and the guides. In the dark theme the bands alternate quiet shades of blue.
Feature
Beside the headline, a map shows every country with open tenders as a circle sized by how many it has, with a gold core for the notices published today. Point at a country to read its figures, or click it to open its tenders.
Improved
The home page is about half as long and puts today's notices first, section pages open on a light header with one figure, and result rows say what matters in three lines. Tender pages start with the summary, keep one main action and fold the extra statistics and methodology notes until you open them.
Improved
A link now starts loading as soon as you point at it or press it, so the page is often already there when the click lands. The page's styles and scripts travel smaller and are requested before the page itself is ready, the page starts up in shorter steps so a phone answers your taps sooner, and the buyer, company and statistics figures are read from values prepared in advance, so busy hours slow them down less.
Improved
Some lists filtered by a rare CPV code took up to a minute to open, and some gave up. They now read only that code's own notices and open in a moment.
Improved
Unusual input no longer ends on an error page: a search made only of symbols, a page link from an old bookmark or an address with stray parameters now opens the list it points to. A machine summary sentence or a translated title that picks up a web address or HTML from the notice text is no longer shown.
Improved
Where a notice states its award in a different currency from its estimate, the award is now converted from its own currency. Bulgarian contracts launched in leva and awarded in euros after the changeover had been shown at about half their value; they now read correctly in the awards, the rankings, the statistics and the radar.
Sources
Aperlena now reads 159 official sources in 30 countries, as well as the EU-level ones. New this week: 44 more Czech public buyers (ministries, police directorates, hospitals and cities), small contracts in Poland and Latvia, German federal notices and awards from Rhineland-Palatinate, Italian results of negotiated procedures, the contract registers of Bristol and Cambridgeshire, the minor contracts of the Valencian and Aragonese governments, NATO's procurement opportunities, Romania again from the government's open data, and San Marino, a new country; every one was checked against the sources already read, so the same tender never appears twice.
Improved
Wherever you give us your email address, a line now suggests a correction when the domain looks like a slip (gmial.com, hotmial.com). One click puts it right; it never blocks the form, and the check runs in your browser.
Feature
A tender page now shows each lot of a procedure (its title, estimated value, duration and region), how tenders are scored and with what weights, whether the call suits small firms or is reserved, and, while the call is open, where tenders are submitted.
Improved
Restricted and negotiated procedures set a deadline for requests to participate, not for tenders, and we used to miss it: about 80,000 calls showed no deadline at all. Pages and lists now show it and say which deadline it is, and one company written several ways now has a single profile with its whole award history.
Feature
Two new pages, linked from every footer: one explains where the notices come from and how often they are read, when a call counts as open and what software writes on a page; the other sets out our accessibility aim (WCAG 2.2 AA), what is not accessible yet and how to report a barrier.
Feature
Follow any CPV code, and everything below it, in every country or in one, daily or weekly, with or without an account. The button is on every CPV page, at the foot of a tender page and in listings filtered by a code.
Improved
The search now finds other forms of a word (plurals, inflections), umlauts typed as ue, oe or ae, common acronyms in six languages, a CPV code typed as a number and a notice reference typed exactly. Titles in Cyrillic and Greek are now set in a typeface that draws them.
Feature
Each tender page now compares its bidding window with notices of the same kind, flags one shorter than usual and shows who wins in that market: how many companies, the share of the three most frequent winners and how many winners are new. Buyer profiles add a scorecard: how often the buyer states a value, its usual bidding window and how often it extends a deadline.
Feature
Award pages now show how many tenders a contract received, whether a lot drew a single bid and the country the winner is based in, where the official notice states them. Where enough comparable awards exist, they also show the range similar contracts were awarded at.
Improved
Award pages now state the facts researchers track in public records, none of them evidence of wrongdoing in itself: a single tender received, an award well above its estimate, repeated direct awards to the same company. The statistics observatory compares these shares country by country.
Feature
A new page gathers what is coming in European procurement: tenders buyers have announced in advance and contracts due back on the market, kept apart and filterable by buyer.
Feature
Describe what your company sells, in any of the six languages, and the CPV explorer suggests the codes public buyers use for it, ready to search and to set alerts on.
Feature
A tender page now lists open tenders in other countries for the same kind of contract, matched by meaning across languages rather than by shared words.
Milestone
Tenders, Awards, the Radar, Statistics, the Guides and the tender page were rebuilt around what a bidder does there: a deadline strip and compact rows in the listings, the week's largest awards and a league of winners, a twelve-month horizon on the radar, a map and a league of countries in the observatory, a deadline calculator in the guides. Every part has its own phone layout.
Sources
Two new batches of connectors went live. Aperlena now reads 102 official sources: national and regional portals in 29 countries, as well as the EU-level sources.
16 entries
Feature
The contact page is now a simple form, and every message reaches us directly. We answer in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Polish.
Feature
Alerts and digests have a new design: every deadline stands out, and the saved-search digest reads as one short list. An unsubscribe link now asks before it acts, so a mail scanner can never end your alerts by mistake.
Improved
The account area is easier to use on a phone. The glossary reads like a dictionary, this page like a changelog and the legal pages as one sheet, and a feed opened in a browser is now a readable page.
Improved
Every guide is a numbered issue with its own cover. Every chart states its conclusion in its title, on a scale you can read, with the table beside it.
Feature
Each profile gives its record in one sentence and draws its awards year by year. The radar and the awards are grouped by month and by day, like a ledger.
Milestone
The front page now reads as today's edition: the lead notice, what closes, what arrived and what was decided, with a live map of Europe on larger screens. On a phone, Search, Today, Radar and your desk sit in a bar within thumb reach.
Improved
Each tender opens on its facts in one ledger: deadline, value, buyer and procedure, with its register number and where we read it.
Feature
Press / or tap Search anywhere. On a phone the results come first, the filters open from the foot of the screen, and each list opens with one sentence on what it holds, the words you searched for underlined.
Feature
Pricing a tender, reading an award notice, lots, consortia, exclusion grounds, the clarification phase, challenging a decision, contract modifications, dynamic purchasing systems, below-threshold tenders and green criteria: twelve new guides of 1,200 words or more, each with a worked example, in six languages. Three of them now open the front page.
Feature
The front page now reads like a daily edition: what arrived overnight, what closes soon and what was decided. A weekly digest rounds up the same seven days in one place, so a Monday catch-up takes a minute.
Feature
Saved tenders now carry the award outcome, a bid or no-bid worksheet, follow-up dates and a work-back plan from the deadline. All of it lives on the tender page itself, in a workspace that opens where you are already reading.
Feature
Compare tenders side by side, keep a shortlist, move through results with the keyboard, and copy or print a one-page brief. A glossary explains the jargon, and every buyer page now shows its publishing rhythm and who usually wins there.
Improved
Guests see what is new since their last visit, signed-in readers get a home page built around their own searches, phones get a tab bar, and this page tells you what shipped. You can also add Aperlena as a search engine in your browser's address bar.
Improved
Every glyph on the site now comes from one set, Phosphor, with one weight per job. The list rows, the spot illustrations and the small interface marks finally look like they were drawn together.
Sources
Alerts can now post to Slack, Discord or Microsoft Teams as well as to your inbox. Three sources joined the index: award decisions from Romania and Greece, and World Bank procurement notices.
Milestone
The site is now called Aperlena and lives at aperlena.com. Nothing else changed: the same sources, the same accounts, the same free access.
4 entries
Feature
Every tender page now offers add-to-calendar links for its deadline: Google Calendar, Outlook or a plain .ics file for any other app.
Improved
Aperlena follows your system theme and offers a toggle in the header for those who prefer to choose. Every colour on the site was rebuilt as a pair, so tables, charts and badges stay readable at night.
Feature
The radar lists contracts that are about to expire and will likely be tendered again. The Verdict takes a stance on whether a race is open or already locked by the incumbent, and its track record is published, unedited, for anyone to check.
Feature
The statistics observatory charts the European procurement market by country and sector. The CPV explorer walks the whole classification tree with live counts, and every NUTS region now has a collection page of its own.