Honest comparison
Velstrian Bid vs mytender.io
Two UK-built bid writing tools for small and mid size firms. One publishes its pricing and grounds every figure. The other is a private-cloud drafting platform. Every competitor fact is sourced.
Your first 7 days are free. A card is needed to start.Updated 26 July 2026
Velstrian Bid helps small and mid size firms find and answer tenders, for public and private work, from £49 per month. mytender.io is a UK AI tender-writing platform, built at the University of Southampton, that does not publish a price. Both are aimed at bid data that cannot go through general public AI tools. This page compares them feature by feature, states Velstrian Bid's prices, marks anything mytender.io does not publish as Not published, and dates every source.
Which should you choose?
Choose mytender.io if
- A Virtual Private Cloud deployment is a hard requirement for your bid data.
- You want drafting wired into SharePoint, Salesforce or Google Drive.
- You produce ten or more bids a year and want a dedicated drafting workspace.
- You are comfortable getting pricing through a demo rather than up front.
Choose Velstrian (Velstrian Bid) if
- You bid for public and private work: public contracts arrive each morning, and a private client's tender you upload.
- You want published pricing from £49 per month, stated before any call.
- You need Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland and EU TED discovery refreshed daily.
- You want the AI blocked from inventing a figure, with a note on every draft saying AI helped (PPN 017).
- You need social value added up in code and proof of delivery after you win.
At a glance
Scroll the table sideways
| Feature | Velstrian Bid | mytender.io |
|---|---|---|
| Category | UK bid and tender management suite | UK AI tender-writing platform |
| Finds public contracts for you (Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, EU TED) | Yes, refreshed daily at 06:00 UTC | No own feed stated. Partnered with a UK tender portal |
| Drafting grounded in your own past bids | Yes | Yes, retrieval over your content library |
| Figure-grounding (AI blocked from inventing a number) | Yes, a fixed check in code | Not stated publicly |
| A note on every draft saying AI helped write it (the PPN 017 disclosure public buyers expect) | Yes | Not stated publicly |
| Social value (the local good you do) added up in code | Yes, worked out in code | Not a dedicated calculator |
| Proof of delivery after you win (Procurement Act 2023 s.52 / s.71) | Yes | Not stated |
| Private-cloud (VPC) deployment | Standard cloud, EU data residency | Yes, Virtual Private Cloud |
| Content-tool integrations (SharePoint, Salesforce, Google Drive) | Yes. Reads SharePoint, OneDrive and Confluence, syncs bids with Salesforce and HubSpot, writes to Slack, Teams and Google Drive | Yes, per its published material (April 2026) |
| Published price | Yes | No |
| Starting price | £49/month | Not published (on request) |
| Best for | Small and mid size firms bidding for public and private work | UK SMEs producing 10+ bids a year |
What buyers check first
Traceability
Can every figure in a draft be traced back to your own records?
Read in full: Traceability
- Every £ and % in a draft is checked against a set of allowed figures computed from your own data, and the draft is rejected if a figure is not in that set. Every AI-assisted draft carries a PPN 017 AI-use disclosure and waits for a named person to approve it before you submit.
- Not stated publicly. The sources at the foot of this page describe retrieval over your own content library and integrations with SharePoint, Salesforce and Google Drive. They document no check of this kind.
Data governance
Where your data is kept, and how it is protected.
Read in full: Data governance
- AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit, customer data stored in the EU (Ireland), UK GDPR compliant, ICO registered, and follows ISO/IEC 27001. Security sets out each control.
- Virtual Private Cloud deployment, reported by Future Worlds on 21 May 2025 and listed in the sources at the foot of this page. Encryption, data residency and registration detail are not documented there.
UK regulatory alignment
How each tool handles the UK rules a public buyer checks.
Read in full: UK regulatory alignment
- A PPN 017 AI-use disclosure on every AI-assisted draft, social value calculated in code against the weighting the buyer published rather than by the AI, and post-award delivery evidence against Procurement Act 2023 sections 52 and 71.
- The sources at the foot of this page state no position on PPN 017 disclosure, social value calculation or the Procurement Act 2023 post-award duties.
Velstrian Bid's lines are first party and checkable against the product. The mytender.io lines repeat only what the vendor's published material or the dated sources at the foot of this page actually state. Where something is not published, this page says so rather than inferring it. The full table is above.
Where Velstrian Bid loses honestly
mytender.io leads on one thing Velstrian Bid does not offer: a Virtual Private Cloud deployment model, which some security teams insist on. Both connect to SharePoint, Salesforce and Google Drive for teams that manage their proposal content there. It is also further along on general drafting-workspace collaboration. Velstrian Bid's focus is narrower and different: UK and EU tender discovery, public and private tenders answered the same way, grounded answers with a hard figure-grounding gate, social value maths done in code, and post-award delivery evidence under the Procurement Act 2023. The honest read is that they overlap on drafting but diverge on everything either side of it, and a team could reasonably run both.
The longer read
Each product in full, and the prices side by side. Open a line when you want the detail.
What is mytender.io?
mytender.io is a UK AI tender-writing platform founded at the University of Southampton by Samuel Aaron, Jamie Horsnell and Nicolas Dickreuter, with pre-seed investment led by Fuel Ventures. It drafts proposal answers using retrieval over a content library the customer builds from past bids, and it runs inside a Virtual Private Cloud to address the confidentiality concerns that keep bid data out of general public AI tools. It lists integrations with SharePoint, Salesforce and Google Drive, and has stated a partnership with a large UK public-sector tender portal.
Those are real strengths. The Virtual Private Cloud model matters to teams with a heavy internal document estate, and Velstrian Bid does not offer one. On content tools the two now overlap: Velstrian Bid reads SharePoint, OneDrive and Confluence, syncs bids with Salesforce and HubSpot, and writes exports to Google Drive. If your priority is a private-cloud drafting workspace wired into your existing content tools, mytender.io is built around that.
mytender.io does not publish a price. It points prospects to a demo or the in-app dashboard and offers a one-month refundable period after commencement. On this page we therefore mark its price as Not published.
What is Velstrian Bid?
Velstrian Bid is Velstrian's UK bid and tender management suite, live and ready to use today. It is built for small and mid size firms that write their own bids, for public and private work. It tracks Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland and EU TED, drafts answers grounded in the supplier's own submitted bids, and calculates social value in code. Its defining rule is figure-grounding: before a draft is shown, every £ and % in the prose is checked against a set of allowed figures computed from your own data, and if a number is not in that set the draft is rejected. Every AI-assisted draft carries a PPN 017 AI-use disclosure and waits for a person to approve it.
After award, Velstrian Bid keeps the commitment you bid attached to the contract: delivery percentages with a RAG status, evidence capture, monthly social-value reports, and checks against the Procurement Act 2023 KPI duties in sections 52 and 71. On security, it uses EU data residency, AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit.
Velstrian Bid publishes its pricing. Starter is £49 per month for 1 user, Pro is £149 per month for 5 users with post-award delivery tracking, and Portfolio is £549 per month for 10 users. Once your account is open you set it up and run it yourself, with no consultant needed, and you pay by card, held securely by Stripe and never stored by us.
Pricing compared
The pricing models are different in kind, not just in number. Velstrian Bid states £49 and £149 per month in public, on a page anyone can read without a demo. mytender.io keeps its tiers behind a demo or the dashboard. Both of us open an account through a conversation, but only one of us makes you have it before you know the price. If knowing the cost up front is part of how you evaluate software, Velstrian Bid gives you that immediately. If you prefer to see a tailored quote after a walkthrough, mytender.io's model fits that.
Frequently asked questions
Is Velstrian Bid or mytender.io cheaper?
Velstrian Bid publishes its prices: Starter is £49 per month and Pro is £149 per month, and once your account is open you set it up and write your bids yourself, paying by card. mytender.io does not publish a price. Its tiers are shown on request or in the account dashboard, so a like-for-like number comparison is not possible from public information.
Does mytender.io publish its pricing?
No. mytender.io does not list public prices. It directs prospects to a demo or the account dashboard and offers a one-month refundable period after commencement. On this page we mark its price as Not published.
Is mytender.io a UK company?
Yes. mytender.io is a University of Southampton startup founded by Samuel Aaron, Jamie Horsnell and Nicolas Dickreuter, with pre-seed investment led by Fuel Ventures. Velstrian Bid is also UK-built, from Velstrian Systems Ltd.
Does mytender.io find tenders for me?
mytender.io does not advertise its own daily discovery feed, though it has stated a partnership with a large UK public-sector tender portal. Velstrian Bid tracks Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland and EU TED directly and refreshes the feed every morning at 06:00 UTC.
Which is more private or secure?
mytender.io highlights that it runs inside a Virtual Private Cloud to address confidentiality concerns. Velstrian Bid uses standard cloud hosting with EU data residency, AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit. Both are aimed at bid data that cannot go through general public AI tools.
Can either tool stop the AI inventing figures?
Velstrian Bid checks every figure in code before a draft is shown: every £ and % in a draft must exist in an allowed-figure set computed from your own data, or the draft is rejected. We cannot verify an equivalent guarantee in mytender.io's public materials.
Which suits a small firm doing a few bids a year?
Velstrian Bid, because of its published pricing from £49 per month, its social value maths done in code and its post-award delivery evidence. mytender.io positions itself for UK SMEs producing ten or more bids a year.
Can I use both Velstrian Bid and mytender.io?
Yes. The two are not mutually exclusive. A team could draft in one platform and use Velstrian Bid for UK tender discovery, PPN 026 social value scoring and post-award delivery evidence.
Sources
Read the 5 sources, each dated and linked
- mytender.io founders, University of Southampton origin, Fuel Ventures pre-seed, Virtual Private Cloud and public-sector tender portal partnership. Future Worlds, "mytender.io: AI-driven bid writing platform", 21 May 2025. futureworlds.com/mytender-io-ai-driven-bid-writing-platform
- mytender.io pricing shown on request, one-month refundable period. mytender.io Terms & Conditions and Capterra listing, accessed 26 July 2026. capterra.com/p/10031061/mytender-io
- mytender.io positioning, content-library drafting, SharePoint / Salesforce / Google Drive integrations, no own discovery feed, target of 10+ bids a year. CleanTender, "7 Best AI Tender Software for UK Contracts (2026)", 29 April 2026. cleantender.co.uk/resources/comparisons/ai-tender-software
- Velstrian Bid capabilities, figure-grounding, PPN 017, PPN 026, Procurement Act 2023 s.52 / s.71, and security posture (first party). Velstrian, Velstrian Bid product page.
- Velstrian Bid pricing: Starter £49/month, Pro £149/month, Portfolio £549/month (first party). Velstrian, Pricing.
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