The Small Business Grants Study

239 of the 427 published programmes (56.0 percent) are grants a business can apply for and keep. Another 185 are something else. Loans, tax credits, equity deals, advisory services, or money that only a city, a university or a nonprofit can apply for. The remaining 3 fit no rule cleanly, and we count them in the total rather than dropping them.

Then there is the second cut. Of the 239 grants, 79 are expired, paused or point at a dead link. Another 20 are not confirmed open, either because the round has not opened yet or because we could not confirm it. That leaves 140 programmes that are both a grant and confirmed open.

So out of 427 entries, 140 are a live grant a business can actually apply for. That is our own data, audited against ourselves.

Every published programme, grouped by what kind of money it is. We did not audit anyone else's list. We audited ours, because it is the one we can prove.

The status split across the 239 programmes that are grants. Dead means one of three things. The programme expired, it was paused, or the application link no longer resolves. The middle row holds every grant we will not call open without proof, and it mixes three kinds. A round announced for a window that has not opened yet. A programme the verifier could not confirm either way at the last check. And a programme whose own verifier note argues with its open status. The first kind is known to be not open yet, so the row label undersells it. We keep all three out of the open count. We do not assume any of them takes applications today.

Our rule is one question. Can a small business apply for this and receive money it does not pay back? If yes it is a grant. If not, it gets one of these labels.

• Loan, the money is repaid, and loan guarantees count here too.
• Equity investment, the programme takes a stake in the business.
• Tax credit, it reduces a tax bill rather than paying money out.
• Technical assistance, it buys advice, training or consulting rather than handing over funds.

One more label surprises people. A programme is not business facing when the applicant is a city, a county, a tribe, a university, a nonprofit or an economic development body, even where a small business benefits in the end. The test is who signs the form, not who benefits. It is also the biggest non grant category we hold, 105 programmes.

Two calls here move the number, so we state them plainly. A forgivable loan counts as a grant only when the debt is wiped on terms the applicant can meet alone. If someone decides later whether to wipe it, we call it a loan. Calling a loan a grant is the error that saddles a founder with debt they did not expect. So we take the safer side. A matching grant is still a grant. You put in your own money. The awarded part is never paid back.

Some programmes do not fit any rule. We leave those unclassified rather than guess, and we count them in the total rather than dropping them. Dropping them would flatter the percentage. There are 3 of them, and they fall into three groups.

• Programmes that bundle a loan, an equity fund and an advisory service into one listing, where no single label is honest.
• Programmes whose own page has gone and cannot be read.
• Programmes where the source contradicts itself, naming businesses as eligible in one place and barring them in another.

Anyone checking this study against one of our state pages will find a bigger open number there, and the difference is scope rather than standard. A state page counts every kind of funding it holds for that state, loans and tax credits and advisory programmes included. This page counts grants and nothing else. The two were never measuring the same population.

The tests themselves are now the same on both surfaces. Expired, paused and dead linked strike a programme off here and dim it on the state page. So does a note that argues with its own status. So does a round announced for a window that has not opened. The last of those differences closed on September 3, 2026, when a programme nobody had confirmed recently stopped counting as open on the state pages too. One case could still part the counts. A programme with no status at all would be held back here and shown there.

You can check any state yourself. The state grant pages list every programme we hold for that state with its own status, and our grants guide covers how to apply for the ones that are open.

The Runway Number is our other open data page. It works out what six months without a salary costs in each state, living costs, health cover and the first year business fee added together. Same method, our own data.

Every figure on this page is computed from the live table each time the page loads, so it moves when the data moves. Nothing is typed in by hand. The stamp on this reading is September 26, 2026. A verifier rechecks programme status continuously, and the classification improves as programmes are re read, which means the numbers here have moved before and will move again.

Nothing on this page is a recommendation and nothing here earns us a commission. There are no partner links on it by design.