Bid Cost Calculator
Work out what it really costs your business to bid — the cost of writing one tender, your annual bid spend, and your true cost per win.
Total days of work across everyone involved in a typical bid.
Average fully-loaded cost of a day of your team’s time.
Bid consultants, design, print, portal fees — per bid.
How many tenders you submit in a year.
The share of your bids that you win.
At a 25% win rate, every contract you win effectively costs £7,000 in bid-writing time and costs — because the bids you lose have to be paid for too. The fastest way to lower that number isn’t to bid less; it’s to bid on better-fit opportunities and win more of them.
Spend your bid budget where it pays back
PSIP scores every tender 1–10 against your business and shows the incumbent and buyer spend behind it — so you put your bid effort into the contracts you can actually win.
Start a free trial →Estimates based on your inputs — a planning guide, not a precise cost model.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to bid for a government contract?
It varies with complexity, but the real cost is the time your team spends. A straightforward bid might take a few person-days; a complex framework or high-value tender can take weeks across several people, plus external costs like bid consultants or design. This calculator turns your effort, day rate and any external costs into a cost per bid — and, crucially, a cost per win.
What is “cost per win” and why does it matter?
Cost per win is your total annual bid spend divided by the number of bids you actually win. It matters because you pay to write the bids you lose as well as the ones you win — so a low win rate makes every win far more expensive than the single bid that secured it. It’s the number that reveals whether your bidding is efficient.
How do I reduce the cost of bidding?
Not by bidding less across the board, but by bidding smarter: qualify harder so you only pursue winnable, good-fit opportunities, reuse strong content, and engage buyers early. Raising your win rate is the single biggest lever — it lowers cost per win directly.
How does PSIP help lower bid costs?
PSIP scores every tender 1–10 against your business profile and surfaces the incumbent and the buyer’s real spend, so you can qualify out the bids you were unlikely to win before you spend time on them — concentrating your bid budget where it pays back.