FundingAtlas Methodology

The UK funding landscape challenge

UK business funding is fragmented across hundreds of programmes administered by dozens of public bodies — central government departments, devolved administrations, agencies, combined authorities and accredited delivery partners. Each has its own portal, its own eligibility language and its own application cadence. FundingAtlas exists to make that landscape navigable without sacrificing accuracy.

Programme assessment process

Every programme on FundingAtlas goes through the same assessment steps before publication:

Identify the official source operated by the funder or a named delivery partner.
Read the source page in full and capture the funding instrument, eligibility, value range and application route directly — never inferred.
Structure the programme against the FundingAtlas taxonomies so it can be compared with similar routes.
Cross-reference adjacent programmes that overlap on instrument, stage, sector or objective.
Store the source URL on the record so any claim on FundingAtlas can be independently verified.

Funding categories

We classify every programme into one of a stable, deliberately small set of categories so that comparison stays meaningful across providers:

Grants — non-repayable awards, typically with eligible-cost rules and milestone reporting.
Tax incentives — corporate-tax reliefs such as R&D tax relief, Patent Box and creative-industry reliefs.
Loans — repayable funding, including Start Up Loans and recovery-style debt programmes.
Guarantees — credit-enhancement schemes such as the Recovery Loan Scheme and UKEF buyer/working-capital guarantees.
Export support — UKEF facilities, Department for Business & Trade programmes and market-access support.
Innovation funding — Innovate UK competitions, KTPs, catapult-aligned programmes and innovation loans.
Regional support — devolved nation and combined-authority programmes restricted by geography.

Funding comparisons

Comparison pages are created where two or more programmes overlap and applicants are likely to weigh them against each other. Comparisons are built directly from the catalogued data — funding amounts, eligibility, instrument type, assessment timeline and official source — rather than rewritten editorial. Where a value is not published by the funder, we say so on the comparison rather than estimate.

Decision guides

Decision guides answer a specific question a founder or finance lead is realistically asking — for example, which route to take for a particular stage, sector or objective. Each guide cites the programmes in the FundingAtlas catalogue, sets out the key considerations, common mistakes and a decision checklist, and links back to the underlying grants and comparisons.

Funding pathways

Pathways describe how programmes typically sequence in a real funding journey: what tends to be applied for first, what fits next, and what can be stacked. They are built from the same catalogue and reviewed when underlying programmes change. Pathways are guidance, not recommendations — every funder makes its own decision on its own criteria.

Funding Finder

The Funding Finder uses the user's stated stage, region, sector and objective to filter the catalogue against the same structured fields we use editorially. It does not invent matches: programmes appear in results only where the catalogue data they were tagged against matches the user's input. Match scores reflect overlap on the structured fields, not predictions about whether a particular application will succeed.

Continuous review

Cornerstone grants, comparisons and decision guides carry visible review dates and are re-read on a rolling cadence.
Source-change events on official URLs trigger an editor review.
Programmes that close, pause or are replaced are unpublished rather than left in the catalogue.
User-reported corrections are triaged within two working days.

Data limitations

FundingAtlas is a guide, not an application portal. Funder rules, deadlines, eligibility and amounts can change without notice; always confirm the current position on the official source before applying. Statistics elsewhere on the site are computed live from the published catalogue and reflect programmes we have catalogued, not the entirety of UK public funding.