IREPS explained — how Indian Railways tenders work, and why you need a login to see them
IREPS is the Indian Railways E-Procurement System — the portal Indian Railways uses for its own buying, at ireps.gov.in. It is not part of CPPP, and it is not a state e-procurement portal. Railways runs its own system, with its own registration, its own rules and its own way of taking earnest money.
If you have been looking for Railway work on the Central Public Procurement Portal or on a state portal and finding nothing, this is why. Almost none of it is published there.
What IREPS actually covers
Three different things live on the same site, and they are not interchangeable:
E-Tender — the part most contractors want. It is split into Works tenders and Goods and Services tenders, each with its own search. Works is civil and infrastructure; Goods and Services is supply and service contracts.
E-Auction (Sale) — Railways selling scrap and condemned material. This is you buying from Railways, not supplying to it. Separate registration, separate bidder account.
E-Auction (Leasing) — leasing of Railway assets and earning contracts, such as parcel space and commercial rights.
A fourth set of modules on the site — iMMS, UDM, UVAM (vendor approval), the Inspection Module — are internal workflow systems. They matter once you are an approved vendor; they are not where you find work.
Why you cannot just browse it
This is the part that surprises people coming from a state portal.
On most e-procurement portals you can read the tender list without an account. On IREPS the tender search sits behind a guest login, and that login asks for a CAPTCHA and a one-time password. Verified on 1 October 2026: opening the tender search at ireps.gov.in/epsn/anonymSearch.do returns a guest logon form, not a list. The awarded contracts page behaves the same way.
So "browse first, register later" does not work here. To see what Railways has out, you register — and registration is also how you get the digital signature association you will need to bid anyway.
Two routes, and picking the wrong one wastes a week:
- New Vendors / Contractors — for E-Tender and E-Auction Leasing. This is the one a contractor or supplier wants.
- New Bidder (E-Auction Sale) — only for buying scrap at auction.
Earnest money works differently here
On most portals EMD is a demand draft, a bank guarantee, or a payment through the portal's gateway. Railways uses a virtual account mechanism — IREPS publishes a separate user guide for it, linked from the E-Tender Works menu.
Read that guide before your first bid rather than on the day it closes. An EMD that has not landed in the right virtual account by the deadline is a bid that does not open, and the money being "sent" is not the same as the money having arrived.
Railways also allows contractual payment against a letter of credit on indigenous contracts, with the terms set out in the tender document itself. If your working capital is the constraint on how much you can bid for, that is worth knowing about.
Why Railway tenders are not listed on TenderDhundo
They are not here, and it is better to say so than to let you search and find nothing.
Every portal TenderDhundo reads publishes its tender list without a login, so the list can be refreshed automatically and in full. IREPS does not: the guest login with its CAPTCHA and one-time password is a deliberate control on automated reading, and working around it is not something this site does.
The practical consequence for you: search TenderDhundo for everything else, and watch IREPS directly for Railway work. Register once, and the tender search opens up.
If that changes — if Railways publishes an open list the way the state portals do — the Railway tenders will appear here like every other source, and this guide will say so.
What to do next
- Decide which register you belong in — Vendor/Contractor for tenders, Bidder for scrap auctions. They are different accounts.
- Read the Pre-requisites for Contractors and the User Manual for Contractors, both linked from the E-Tender Works menu on ireps.gov.in, before you start the form.
- Have the digital signature ready. The same Class 3 signature you use on CPPP and the state portals works here — see our guide on the digital signature you need to bid.
- Read the EMD virtual account guide before the first bid, not during it.
Railways is one of the largest buyers of works and supply in the country, and its portal is the only place its tenders appear. The login is a one-time cost; not knowing the tenders exist is a permanent one.