Funding rate

The funding rate is the share of ELIGIBLE COSTS the EU reimburses. A research or innovation action and a coordination and support action are funded at 100%. An innovation action is funded at 70% for profit-making organisations and 100% for non-profit legal entities. Other programmes use their own rates, commonly 50% or 60%.

One rate applies per participant per action, and different participants in the same project can therefore be paid differently. In an innovation action a university is reimbursed in full while the company next to it covers 30% of its own costs, an asymmetry that has to be settled at budgeting time, because it decides who can afford which work package.

The rate applies to eligible costs, not to what you spend. Ineligible costs are not reimbursed at any rate, so a project with sloppy cost eligibility receives less than the headline suggests even at 100%. This is where the 25% flat rate for indirect costs matters: it is added to your eligible direct costs and then reimbursed at the funding rate like everything else.

A grant is also capped in absolute terms by the maximum grant amount in the grant agreement. Spending more than planned does not increase the grant, even if every euro was eligible and the rate would have covered it.

When comparing calls across systems, compare rates rather than headline budgets. A ceiling of €2 million at 50% with mandatory matching is a smaller opportunity than €1.2 million at 100%, and the published figure hides that entirely.