01How a grade happens
Three steps sit behind every grade:
- Read and classified. Every tender published to the public contracts feeds is read once and sorted — what kind of work it is, which sector, what it requires.
- Matched against your profile. We line it up against what you do, where you work, your track record, and the things you've told us aren't for you.
- Judged, then analysed. A fast local judge decides whether a tender is worth a full analysis. The ones that clear that bar get a full AI analysis against your profile — and every tender you see in BidHound has been through that full analysis. Nothing reaches your feed on a keyword match alone.
02What the letters mean
A grade comes from a fixed bar, not a daily line-up — every tender is scored on its own, and that score is checked against the same cut-offs every time. Those cut-offs were set once, from the overall spread of scores across the whole market, and they're never reshuffled by whatever else happens to be in your feed. An A is rare on purpose: most tenders genuinely aren't for you, and a grader that called everything a B would waste your time.
A grade is made from the tender notice first. When the full documents are available, they confirm or correct that first read — and you'll always see which of the two you're looking at.
If a tender carries a mandatory requirement you don't meet — an accreditation you don't hold, a minimum turnover you're under — that caps the grade at C+ however strong the fit is otherwise, with a note saying what would lift it. Where a requirement looks like it might accept an equivalent, we flag it rather than quietly ruling you out.
03When grades change — and why you'll always see it
Grades aren't frozen in amber, but they don't move quietly either.
When the full documents arrive and change a grade, we show the old letter struck through beside the new one, so you can see what changed and why. No silent edits.
And a grade you've already acted on — once a tender is in your pipeline — doesn't move under your feet. We hold the letter you saw when you decided to pursue it, so your decision rests on the grade you actually made it on, not a later revision.
04How to correct us
The grader learns from you. Three controls feed it, and here's what each one actually does:
- “Not for us” (dismiss). Tells us this kind of work isn't a fit. Similar tenders drop down or out of your feed.
- The “wrong grade?” button. Flags a grade you think we got wrong, so the pattern is visible to us.
- Exclusions in Settings. Your “not a fit for” list — add to it and your feed re-scores overnight.
All three feed the same place: the judges that decide what reaches you next time.
05Honesty notes
Every week we re-check a sample of the tenders the gate hid, looking for good ones it buried by mistake — so our misses stay visible to us, not just to you.
A grade is our best read of how well a tender fits your business, meant to help you prioritise — it's judgment applied consistently, and the decision to bid is always yours. For the terms that govern using BidHound, see our Terms of Service; for how we handle your data, our Privacy Policy and Security page.