How your price becomes points in an EU tender

Evaluation & award · This guide was generated with the help of an AI system. Its legal references were checked against the official EU texts listed under Sources on 9 October 2026. Next review due by 9 October 2027, or sooner if the law changes. EU rules only. Not legal advice.

Short answer. Above the EU thresholds, the procurement documents must state the weighting of each award criterion (Article 67(5)). EU law doesn’t always require the buyer to publish its evaluation method, including the formula that turns price into points. As a rule, though, the buyer can’t settle that method after it has seen the bids, and the method can’t change the criteria or their weighting. Different formulas with the same 40% weighting can rank the same bids differently. So find the formula before you price. If it isn’t in the documents, ask early. Then work out what one quality point is worth to you in euros: that figure tells you where to put your effort.

EU law · What the Directive and the Court require

Contracts are awarded on the most economically advantageous tender (Article 67(1)). The buyer can identify it on price or cost alone, or on the “best price-quality ratio”, which combines price with criteria such as quality, the experience of the staff who will do the work, or after-sales service (Article 67(2)). Quality criteria have to come with indications that let the buyer assess bids specifically and objectively (Article 67(4); Antea Polska, C‑54/21). What can be scored as quality, and how it differs from the selection criteria, is covered in how quality is scored.

The procurement documents must give “the relative weighting” of each criterion, unless the award is on price alone. A range is allowed. If weighting is objectively impossible, the criteria must at least be listed in decreasing order of importance (Article 67(5)).

What about the formula?

The Directive requires the weighting to be published. It has no express rule on the evaluation method. In TNS Dimarso (C‑6/15) the Court held that a buyer is not required to publish in advance “the method of evaluation used … to specifically evaluate and rank the tenders”. The same judgment sets limits that matter just as much:

• The weighting must be fixed from the start and can’t change during the procedure. In principle, a buyer can’t apply weighting rules it hasn’t told bidders about.
• In principle, the method can’t be decided after the bids are opened. That is allowed only where it could demonstrably not have been fixed earlier.
• The method can’t alter the award criteria or their relative weighting. In Dimarso itself, the Court pointed out that an unpublished scoring scale could end up giving price decisive weight, which would not respect the published weighting.
• Weightings for sub-criteria can be set after the deadline only if they don’t change the criteria, contain nothing that would have affected how bids were prepared, and don’t discriminate against anyone.

Dimarso concerned a service contract under the earlier Directive 2004/18/EC. We searched the Court’s case law linked to both Directives and found no later judgment that requires formulas to be published. Latest analysis: must the buyer publish its scoring formula? sets out the search and what it means when you bid.

Two later judgments matter for scoring. The documents may set a minimum quality score: bids below it drop out before price is scored, however many bids remain (Montte, C‑546/16, an open procedure). And a bid can’t be automatically rejected solely because its price is €0.00. The buyer has to treat it as possibly abnormally low and ask for an explanation under Article 69 (Tax‑Fin‑Lex, C‑367/19).

National law · Where your country may go further

Member States may ban price-only awards or limit them to certain buyers or types of contract (Article 67(2)). In C‑769/23 the Court accepted a national rule that bans price-only awards for standardised services where labour makes up at least half of the contract value. The facts show why such rules exist: in that tender, labour costs were fixed by the collective agreement, three bidders offered a 100% discount on their fee, their bids were equal, and the contract was awarded by drawing lots (C‑769/23, paragraphs 20–21). How often contracts are awarded on price alone varies widely between Member States (see what the EU procurement scoreboard tells bidders). National rules can also require more transparency about formulas than EU law does. Check the rules of the country where the contract is awarded.

Our analysis · Same three bids, three formulas, two winners

It’s well documented that the choice of formula can change the result. Stilger and colleagues compared 38 formulas in the Journal of Public Procurement in 2017, and practitioners have been writing about it for at least a decade. Below it is in numbers you can check. The tender is made up for the example. Quality is worth 60 points and price 40, and the quality marks are already in.

Each of these three price formulas gives the cheapest bid the full 40 points:

• Proportional: 40 × lowest price ÷ your price
• Deviation from lowest: 40 × (1 − (your price − lowest) ÷ lowest), never below zero
• Lowest-to-highest: 40 × (highest − your price) ÷ (highest − lowest)

Same bids, same 60/40 weighting. The proportional formula gives the contract to A by 0.2 points. The other two give it to B. Under lowest-to-highest, the most expensive bid scores nothing on price, however close it is to the others.

Our analysis · A fourth bid arrives

Add bidder D: €640,000, with a quality mark of 31. Nobody else changes anything.

Under the proportional formula A was ahead of C. With D in the field, C is ahead of A, although neither of them changed a thing. All three formulas score you against the other prices, so a new low bid pulls everyone’s price score down, and not by the same amount. The research literature calls this a ranking paradox. For you it means one thing: when you submit, you can only know a range for your score, not the score itself.

A note on rounding. C’s exact score under the deviation formula is 64.125. Rounded to two decimals that becomes 64.13 or 64.12, depending on the rounding rule. Here it changes nothing, but in a close tender the rule in the documents can decide a tie.

Our analysis · What one quality point is worth in euros

Take bidder A in the three-bid case. How far would A have to cut its price to gain one point, the same as one extra quality mark would give it?

Say a stronger method statement would cost €15,000 in extra senior time and should earn one more quality point. Under the first two formulas it pays for itself. Under the third it loses money. Same tender, same weighting, opposite advice.

These figures are rates at your current price. They hold for small changes, while you’re neither the cheapest nor the most expensive bid, and while the other prices stay where you assumed. For a big move, or one that would make you the cheapest, recalculate from scratch. The scoring calculator does that for you.

Our analysis · The cheapest bidder’s odd position

The lowest bid already has all 40 price points, so cutting further earns it nothing directly. What it does is lower everyone else’s price score. In the three-bid case, if B cuts from €880,000 to €840,000, B stays on 87.00, while A drops to 85.60 and C to 85.22 under the proportional formula. B goes from second to first without gaining a single point.

Our analysis · When these formulas work, and when they don’t

• One bid, or identical prices. Lowest-to-highest can’t be calculated, because it divides by zero. What happens then depends on the documents, so don’t assume full marks.
• A €0 bid. Proportional gives every other bidder zero price points, and deviation-from-lowest can’t be calculated at all. A €0 bid can’t simply be thrown out (C‑367/19), so ask how it would be scored.
• Bids far above the cheapest. Deviation-from-lowest reaches zero at twice the lowest price. Beyond that, a higher price costs you nothing more on price.
• Outliers. Lowest-to-highest is the most sensitive. One very high or very low bid moves everyone’s price score.
• Quality-heavy bids. Proportional never reaches zero. In this example that makes it the formula that rewards quality most.
• Other people’s bids. None of these three stops your score depending on what others bid. Only an absolute formula does, one that scores you against a published reference price or budget. Then the question becomes whether that reference price is realistic.

None of this makes these formulas unlawful. In Proximus v Council (T‑117/17) the General Court upheld a formula that compared each price with the sum of all bids, a figure no bidder could know in advance. That case concerned a purchase by an EU institution under the EU’s Financial Regulation, not the Directive, but the practical lesson travels: if a formula worries you, raise it before you submit, not after you lose.

Practice · Before you set your price

1. Find the weighting and the formula. Look in the evaluation method, the instructions to tenderers or the award-criteria annex. Note any minimum quality score and the rounding rule.
2. If there’s no formula, ask early. If you ask in good time, the buyer has to supply additional information about the specifications and supporting documents to all tenderers no later than six days before the deadline, or four days in an accelerated procedure (Article 53(2)). If it can’t, it has to extend the deadline in proportion to how much the information matters. It doesn’t have to if you didn’t ask in good time or the information isn’t significant for preparing tenders (Article 47(3)). What counts as “in good time” may be set in the documents themselves. See clarification questions for the timetable and how to word your question.
3. Work out what a point is worth to you, then decide where your effort goes: price or quality. On the quality side, check what one mark on each sub-criterion is worth (how quality is scored).
4. Test the competition. Try three cases: nobody cheaper than you, one bid 10% below the current lowest, and one far below. If your position collapses in the last case, you know what you’re exposed to.
5. Don’t let the formula push you into a price you can’t explain. A bid that looks abnormally low will have to be justified. Prepare that file before you submit.
6. Keep your workings. You’ll need them when the result comes in.

What this page doesn’t cover

The national rules of any particular country. Utilities contracts under Directive 2014/25/EU. Life-cycle costing (Article 68; see life-cycle costing). Formulas that score several service packages separately. Contracts in the UK. If you’re in a live dispute, talk to a procurement lawyer in the country concerned. Review deadlines can be very short. The minimum weights for quality in the Commission’s 2026 proposal aren’t law; see what the proposed Public Procurement Act would change.

Further reading. P. S. Stilger, J. Siderius and E. M. van Raaij, “A comparative study of formulas for choosing the economically most advantageous tender”, Journal of Public Procurement 17(1), 2017, pages 89–125, compares 38 scoring formulas. M. Bowsher QC, “Random effects of scoring price in a tender evaluation” (Monckton Chambers, February 2015), and H. Denfield of Sharpe Pritchard, “Goldilocks and the three problems” (Local Government Lawyer, 7 December 2018), discuss the same effects from a UK practitioner’s side. These are commentary, not sources for what the law says.