A lowest-price award is a lot on which every published award criterion is price. There is no quality score to win. The supplier who passes the gates and offers the lowest evaluated price takes the lot.
EU rules allow a buyer to award on price or cost alone, or on the most economically advantageous tender, which is price together with other criteria linked to the contract. Article 67 of Directive 2014/24/EU is the provision. The chart below reports what buyers published on the award notice. It records the criterion type, coded price on every award-criterion entry for that lot.
Across TED contract-award notices for the EU27 and Norway, published from October 2025 to September 2026, 47.4% of lots with a reported criterion were price-only. Slovakia is at 94.8%. France is at 7.4%. Finland is at 56.9%, 3,291 of 5,784 lots, rank 12 of 28. Croatia is the low end of this set, at 4.8%.
What the supplier prepares changes with the criterion
On a price-only lot, the scored work is the price schedule. Quality text does not earn points, because the notice published no quality criterion. The gates in front of price still apply: eligibility, mandatory requirements, and a complete submission. A cheap price that fails a gate is not evaluated.
On a lot with quality criteria, price is one term in a published formula. The weights, the scoring scale, and the evidence the evaluator can check are the work. That sequence is covered in how public tenders are evaluated and scored.
Read the award criteria on the notice before writing. A Finnish lot in this year is price-only 56.9% of the time. A French lot is price-only 7.4% of the time. The country figure is a prior. The notice in front of you is the rule for that bid.
How many companies actually bid is a separate count, in what a single-bid lot is. A price-only lot can still draw several bids. A quality-scored lot can still draw one.
Sources
- TED Search API v3, contract award notices (can-standard), EU27 and Norway, published October 2025 to September 2026. A lot is counted as price-only when every BT-539 award-criterion type on it is
price. Countries with fewer than 300 notices carrying criteria are excluded. None were, in this extract. - Directive 2014/24/EU, Article 67.
