There is money you don't have to pay back, but less of it than the lists suggest, and almost none of it pays for simply starting a company. A grant funds a specific project – equipment, training, research, cutting emissions – and it usually pays out only after you have spent your own money. Much of what gets called a government grant is really a loan, a guarantee or a tax break. Real grants are mostly regional or sector-specific, so for most new limited companies the honest answer is one local scheme worth a few thousand pounds, not a national pot. Everything below was checked on 20 October 2026, and grant lists go stale within months, so check the official finder first.

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What a small business grant is, and what gets called one by mistake

A small business grant is money given to your company for a particular purpose, and you don't pay it back as long as you keep to the conditions. Break them and the funder can ask for some or all of it back. Grants come from government departments, local councils, the devolved governments, and sometimes industry bodies.

Every grant has a goal of its own – new technology, more jobs in one part of the country, lower emissions, better skills – so the money is tied to a project rather than to your business. You will be asked what you plan to spend it on, what it will achieve, and how you will evidence both. Grants are appealing for obvious reasons, and fiercely competitive for the same ones.

The bigger trap is that a lot of what gets listed as a government grant is not one:

• Start Up Loans are a loan, and a personal one. GOV.UK puts it plainly: 'Unlike a business loan, this is an unsecured personal loan.' You borrow in your own name at a fixed 7.5% a year, and you keep repaying it if the company stops trading.
• The Growth Guarantee Scheme is a guarantee to your lender rather than money for you. It covers part of what is still owed if you default, and you stay 100% liable throughout.
• Innovate UK innovation loans are loans of £100,000 to £5m, and applications are paused until January 2027.
• Research and development relief is a tax break rather than an award. It cuts your corporation tax bill or pays out a credit, with no application window and no awarding body.
• Help to Grow: Management is a subsidised course, not funding.

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Can a new company get a grant to start up?

Rarely, and not for the things a new company most needs money for. Grants pay for a defined project, not for incorporating, paying yourself, buying stock, or renting premises. For most founders a grant is something you apply for once you have a specific project, not something that gets you going.

The King's Trust Enterprise programme is the exception people have in mind, and it is worth knowing what it really is. It supports 18 to 30 year olds, it funds the person rather than the company, and you are out of scope once the business has been trading for more than a year. Of the £30,000 you will see quoted, at most £5,500 is a grant – up to £500 to test an idea and up to £5,000 to start – and the other £25,000 is a loan you repay with interest.

If that is the stage you are at, our guide to start-up funding options covers the realistic routes, most of which are not grants.

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Which grants are open to UK limited companies

Four national schemes were open to a limited company on 20 October 2026, and not one of them is a general pot of money – each pays for a particular kind of thing. Alongside them sit the local schemes, which is where most companies find their grant.

Innovate UK runs the only national programme where a young company can realistically win significant grant money, and it runs in rounds: 31 competitions were listed on 20 October 2026, 19 of them open. Each closes within weeks or months, so the one that matters is whichever is open when your project is ready, which is why naming them here would be no help to you.

Apprenticeship funding is the quietest and most dependable money on this list. If you don't pay the apprenticeship levy, and a new company won't, the government pays the entire training and assessment bill for an apprentice aged 16 to 24, up to the funding band for that apprenticeship, and 95% of it for anyone older. The fully funded band widened to 16 to 24 on 1 August 2026, and a £2,000 hiring payment was added for apprenticeships starting on or after 1 October 2026. It is England only.

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Who qualifies, and what the funder is judging

Plenty of companies qualify for something, because the range of schemes is so wide – but each scheme sets its own rules, and most of them turn on where you are based and what you are trying to do. These are the things a funder weighs up:

• What the project is for: the sector you work in, the problem you are solving, and how much difference the funder thinks it will make.
• Where you are, and what you are: many grants exist because one area or industry has been targeted for support, so your registered address and your legal structure can decide it on their own.
• Size: most schemes are aimed at small and medium-sized businesses as each scheme defines them, and some set turnover or employee limits.
• How long you have been going: some schemes are only open to companies in their first year or two, others only to established ones.
• Whether the plan stands up: funders want a business plan, costings, and forecasts that show the project will happen and that you can fund your share of it.

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How to find the grants your business can actually get

Start with the two official finders, because they are the only lists that keep themselves up to date. Find a grant is the government's own index, and it listed 126 grants on 20 October 2026. It is still a beta service, and it covers everything published, including grants closed to applications and schemes for farms, charities, and public bodies – so the number open to your company is far smaller than the headline. GOV.UK's finance and support for your business finder listed 166 schemes and lets you filter by grant, business stage, industry, size, and region, which makes it the better place to begin if you don't yet know what you are looking for.

Then look locally, because that is where the grants a small company actually wins tend to be. The local support finder on business.gov.uk asks for your postcode and shows what is available near you. By nation it is the Business Support Service in England, Find Business Support in Scotland, Business Wales, and Invest Northern Ireland. If you have read elsewhere to contact your local enterprise partnership, that route has gone: the partnerships were wound up and their work moved to councils and combined authorities. We have written separately about grants and loans in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

One question deserves a plain answer: there is no open, national, women-only business grant in the UK as at October 2026. The one government-backed award, Innovate UK's Women in Innovation Award of up to £75,000, runs in annual rounds, and the last one closed on 4 February 2026 with no new round published. The same is true of most 'grants for founders like me' lists: what exists is regional, competition-based, or privately run.

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How to apply for a grant

An application is real work, so check you are eligible before you start. Then:

1. Read the scheme's own eligibility rules and its closing date. Most grants run in windows, and a strong application to a closed round is worth nothing.
2. Define the project. Funders award money to something that will happen: what you will buy or do, what it will cost, when, and what will be different afterwards.
3. Get the numbers straight. You will usually need quotes for what you are buying, a cash flow forecast, and a figure for your own contribution. A business plan you can hand over saves time on nearly every application.
4. Apply through the scheme itself rather than an intermediary. Every scheme above takes applications directly, and nobody can sell you a shortcut.
5. Plan for the reporting. Most grants pay against evidence, so expect to submit invoices, photographs, or progress reports, sometimes in instalments across the project.

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What a grant gives you, and what it costs you to get one

Free money has a price, and you pay it in time and in control over what you spend it on. Both sides are worth weighing before you commit weeks to an application:

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How grants are paid, and the cash gap that leaves

Almost all grant money arrives after you have spent your own. That is not a quirk of one scheme; it is Treasury policy. HM Treasury's Managing Public Money tells departments that 'payment in arrears should always be the norm' and that they must avoid paying in advance of need.

In practice that means two things at once: you fund the purchase and then claim, and the grant usually covers only part of it. One live GOV.UK scheme states both in a single breath – 'The grant is paid in arrears… You must have sufficient funds to pay for items in full before claiming your grant payment. You can use loans, overdrafts and certain other grants' – and its payment is the lower of a set reference cost or 50% of your actual invoice.

Take the Workplace Charging Scheme as an example. Say four sockets are quoted at £4,000 installed. The scheme pays 75%, which would be £3,000, but the £500-a-socket cap limits it to £2,000. So you pay the installer £4,000 now and claim £2,000 back later. The grant is real and worth having. It just isn't money you can spend on the thing it is paying for.

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Tax on a business grant

Whether you pay corporation tax on a grant depends on what it pays for. HMRC's Business Income Manual gives the general rule: a grant that meets revenue costs is normally a trading receipt, so it goes into your taxable profit, and a grant that meets capital costs normally is not. A grant given for no specific purpose is treated as revenue.

The capital case has a sting worth knowing about. A capital grant is not taxed as income, but it reduces the qualifying expenditure you can claim capital allowances on – so if a grant pays part of the cost of a machine, you claim allowances on your share rather than the full price. HMRC says 'normally' in both cases, and the section that governs a company is s.102 Corporation Tax Act 2009, so ask your accountant before you book it.

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If a grant isn't going to work

Most companies that go looking for a grant don't get one, and that is the ordinary outcome rather than a failure. What to do instead depends on what the money was for.

If you are funding growth and you are willing to sell part of the company, angel investors and crowdfunding are equity rather than debt: nothing to repay, but you give something up permanently. If the project is research-heavy, an Innovate UK round is still the best-value money available and worth waiting for. If what you need is working capital, a loan is the straightforward answer, and our comparison of grants and loans goes into the trade-off properly. For a company in its first year or two, start-up business loans are usually the quickest route to a decision.

There is one more problem, and it applies to the grant you do win: it still pays late. You have to buy the equipment or start the work before the claim clears, and that gap is what an iwoca Flexi-Loan is for – a business loan with flexible repayment options, so you can spend when the funder expects it. You get 30 days to draw the money down after approval. You choose a fixed term of 12 months to five years, and because there is no fee for repaying early you can clear it as soon as the grant arrives – many of our customers only take out our finance for a few weeks, or even days. We lend to UK limited companies, and a new Flexi-Loan needs a personal guarantee from at least one director.