How to monitor Parliament for free

If you want to monitor Parliament for free, you have two options. The first is the morning sweep: GOV.UK for announcements and consultations, Hansard for debates, the committee pages for inquiries, the bills pages for stages. It works, and thousands of people do it every day. It also eats an hour before you have done any of your real job.

The second option is to let software do the sweep for you. Frontbench's free tier, called Analyst, costs £0 and does not expire. This guide covers what it includes and how to get the most out of it.

What the free tier includes

Every Frontbench account runs on the same engine, free or paid. You sign up, Frontbench drafts your organisation's profile from your own website, and you correct anything it has misread. You then pick your policy area, your priorities and your keywords.

From that point, every bill, motion, committee session and consultation is scored against your profile overnight. Each morning your dashboard shows what moved, keeps a read on your organisation's risk, and tells you which MP signed what, including Early Day Motion signatures.

On the free tier that engine runs on a tight brief: one policy area, five policy priorities and five tracked keywords. You also get one free go at emailing a stakeholder from the platform and the chance to generate a Frontbench briefing.

Used well, it covers a one-person public affairs operation comfortably.

Six tips for monitoring Parliament for free

1. Pick the policy area you cannot afford to miss. You get one. Choose the area where a surprise would hurt your organisation most, even if another area interests you more. A housing charity should pick housing, however often welfare touches its service users.

2. Make your five priorities specific. "Housing" is a subject. "Section 21 no fault evictions" is a priority. The more specific you are, the better the scoring engine can separate the things that matter to you from everything that merely mentions your topic.

3. Spend a keyword or two on names. Your minister, a committee chair, your own organisation. A name catches the passing mention in a debate about something else, which is exactly the kind of thing a subject search misses.

4. Use Parliament's words. Bills and codes of practice have their own vocabulary, and it is often different from the word you would use in conversation. If the bill says "qualifying tenancy", track "qualifying tenancy". Your keywords should match the text Parliament will publish.

5. Check the dashboard at the same time every day. Five minutes with your morning coffee replaces the hour-long sweep. The habit matters more than the length. A feed you check daily tells you a story; a feed you check fortnightly is just a backlog.

6. Save your free briefing for a real moment. You get one free briefing and one free stakeholder email. Do not burn them on a test the day you sign up. Wait until your bill reaches second reading or a reshuffle changes your minister, then see what the tool produces under real conditions.

What it costs

Nothing. No card details, no trial clock, no annual contract. Most tools in this market sit behind a demo call and a contract priced for a large team. Frontbench publishes its prices, and the free tier is free for good.

If your needs grow past one policy area, the paid tiers add more areas, more priorities, unlimited briefings and stakeholder email, reporting, and seats for your team, from £59 a month. But start free. The point of the free tier is that you can find out whether Frontbench earns a place in your morning without asking anyone for budget.

Sign up for a free account, or see how it works and what the paid tiers add.