DefenceLens vs Stotles
Stotles is a well-designed public-sector sales platform: it covers the whole UK public sector, offers a free plan, and wraps tenders in workflow tools — buyer profiles, signals and CRM integrations. The comparison with DefenceLens is really a comparison of breadth versus depth. Here it is, honestly.
| Stotles | DefenceLens | |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | All UK public sector — health, local government, education, defence and more. | UK defence and security only, from pipeline notice to contract award. |
| Defence filtering | Defence is covered within its general platform: you build feeds from keywords, CPV codes and buyers, ranked by AI relevance scores. | Periscope’s defence-specific classification, with the reasons shown on every notice. |
| Workflow tools | Strong: pipelines, team workspaces, buyer intelligence, CRM integrations. | Deliberately lean: search, email alerts, winners feed, CSV export. |
| Winner intelligence | Award notices and supplier pages within the general platform. | A dedicated defence winners feed: values, buyers, per-company win histories, first-time-winner flags. |
| Free tier | A free plan with tender discovery and tracking for unlimited users. | 14-day Operator trial (no card), then a free tier with a weekly email of your alerts. |
| Pricing | Free plan, then published paid tiers: Basic from £50–£75 a month, Growth from £475 a month; Expert on request (October 2026). | Published: from £129 a month (Sentry: alerts and the winners feed) up to £30,000 a year (Prime). |
Comparison based on publicly available information, checked 4 October 2026. Products change — verify details with each provider before buying.
Stotles is likely the better fit if…
- You sell across the public sector and defence is one vertical among several.
- You want team workflow — shared pipelines, qualification stages, CRM sync — around your tender process.
- You want a free tier you can live in for a while before paying.
DefenceLens is likely the better fit if…
- Defence is your market, and configuring generic filters to approximate it has burned you before.
- You need award-side intelligence as much as tender-side: who's winning, at what value, and who's new.
- You'd rather have one accurate defence feed than a broad platform you have to tune.
Frequently asked questions
- Can't I just set up defence filters in a generic platform?
- You can get close, but defence is genuinely hard to filter: many defence contracts carry civilian CPV codes (construction, catering, IT), and many military-sounding keywords appear in civilian notices. Periscope, our defence classification engine, is built for exactly that problem, and every notice shows why it qualified.
- Does DefenceLens have Stotles-style workflow features?
- No — no shared pipelines or CRM integrations today (CSV export is included from the Operator plan, and CRM sync is on our public roadmap). DefenceLens spends its effort on the intelligence layer rather than workflow.
- Which is cheaper?
- Stotles' free plan is bigger, and its paid plans start lower: Basic from £50–£75 a month and Growth from £475 a month (about £5,700 a year), with Expert priced on request. DefenceLens publishes prices from £129 a month (Sentry: alerts and the winners feed), with full award intelligence from £3,950 a year (Operator). Compare on the total cost of the plan that actually covers your use, and on what your team does with the time each saves.
Judge it on the data, not the marketing
Every new DefenceLens account gets 14 days of Operator access — every UK notice, every award, every winner — before you spend anything. Then compare.
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