G-Cloud 15: The Essential Pricing Guide

Laura Danter

19 November 2025

Getting your pricing right for G-Cloud 15 is a big deal. It’s mandatory, it’s sensitive, and if even one section is incomplete, your entire bid is instantly marked non-compliant.

This guide walks you through what you need to do for each lot, in plain English, so you can submit your pricing with confidence.

Pricing for Lots 1A and 1B

When you open the pricing page for lots 1A or 1B, you’ll see four sections. You must complete every one of them, but only the first two count towards the 10% pricing score.

Onboarding (scored)
Framework Discount (scored)
Price Mechanism (mandatory but not scored)
Price Certainty (mandatory but not scored)

You’ll complete these sections once per lot, and your answers don’t have to match across lots.

Use Edit if you’re updating a response, or Answer Question if you’re starting a new one.

1. Onboarding Pricing Scenarios

You’ll be given nine text boxes. Enter a numerical price in each one.

Here’s how CCS evaluates this section:

They total your nine prices.
They calculate a mean average.
That average is compared with all other bidders.

The lowest overall average gets the full 5% score.
Everyone else is scored proportionally based on how close they are to that lowest price.

Example:

Lowest average: 100 = full 5%
Your average: 200 = 2.5%

You’ll also pick the taxonomy section your prices relate to using the radio buttons.

Heads up: These onboarding responses will be publicly visible once G-Cloud 15 goes live.

2. Framework Discount

Here you give one discount percentage that applies to all your services for the lot.

It must be between 0 and 100, to two decimal places
Zero is allowed
The highest discount gets the full 5% score
Everyone else is scored proportionally

This discount will also be visible on the platform once the framework goes live.

3. Price Mechanism

This section is all descriptive text. You’ll explain how your pricing works so buyers understand it.

You’ll need to cover:

Deployment models: Tick every model that applies.
Baseline pricing: Where buyers find your normal prices (website, pricing doc, etc.).
Public pricing: If you choose a public model, you must provide a full URL starting with http or https.
Automatic linking: Your onboarding and framework discount answers auto-pull through.
Price differentiation: How and why your final price might change, discounts, currency exchange, etc.

4. Price Certainty

This is a short explanation of how you give buyers confidence that your pricing is stable. Keep it short and simple; the word count is limited to 200 words.

Once all four sections are done, click:

Save and Return to Pricing Summary, then
Complete Pricing Questions

Your pricing status will switch to Completed, but you can still go back and edit anything before final submission.

Pricing for Lots 2A and 2B (Cloud Software)

If you’re bidding for 2A or 2B, you must follow the instructions exactly as laid out in Attachment 2 and on the digital platform. Missing anything makes your bid non-compliant.

For each service offering, you must:

Upload a pricing document (mandatory)

This document must clearly show:

Your whole pricing model
Units of measure
Unit prices
Everything a buyer needs to calculate contract value

If you don’t upload it, your bid will fail.

Complete the discount table

You’ll enter a discount percentage for six annual contract value ranges, excluding VAT.

Values between 0% and 99.999%
Two decimal places (e.g., 10.50%)
You must complete all six
One set of discounts covers both 2A and 2B
These discounts will be publicly visible

Invalid values trigger an error that you must fix before moving on.

Once everything’s entered:

Hit Save and Return
Review your summary
Click Complete Pricing Questions

Your pricing status should now show as Completed.

How this section is scored

Discounts make up 80% of the price score for these lots.

Scoring works like this:

All six discounts are added up.
The highest total gets full marks.
Everyone else is scored proportionally.

Breaking Down the Scoring Calculation

Here’s how CCS calculate the scores:

1. Add up your six discount percentages: CCS totals your six discount percentages. They do the same for every supplier.

2. Identify the highest total: The supplier with the biggest total gets the full 80% score.

3. Score everyone else proportionally: Everyone else gets a score based on how close their total is to the highest one.

Scores are calculated using the following formula:

Your total ÷ Highest total × Maximum score

Here’s how it looks in practice:

Supplier A total: 300% (highest). They get the full 80 points
Supplier B total: 240%

Supplier B’s score would be:
240 ÷ 300 × 80 = 64 points

So the closer your total discount is to the highest bidder, the more points you get. The further away you are, the fewer points you score.

Pricing for Lot 3 (Rate Cards)

Lot 3 is all about your Government Digital & Data rate cards.

Just like the other lots, an incomplete submission = non-compliance.

What you need to do

Enter your maximum day rates in pounds, excluding VAT, to two decimal places.
Provide at least one rate for one role level in one job family; that’s the bare minimum to be compliant.
Rates must be between £50 and £10,000. Anything outside that range triggers an error.

You can offer both onshore and offshore rates, depending on where the work is delivered.

Onshore rates are the day rates you charge for work delivered inside the UK.

Offshore rates are the day rates for work delivered outside the UK, usually from another country where your team is based. It’s the same roles, just different pricing depending on where the work is physically carried out.

A link to the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework is provided to help you pick the right roles.

When you finish a role family, click Save and Return to Summary, review your entries, then hit Complete Pricing Questions.

Your Lot 3 status will switch to Completed.

How Lot 3 is scored

Your pricing is assessed on your average day rate across all roles you submit.

The lowest average day rate submitted gets the full 80 points.
Everyone else is scored proportionally.

You can upload an optional pricing document explaining your full pricing model. It must match your submitted day rates, but it doesn’t affect your score.