Guide
How to tell if a grant fits your small business
Governments publish thousands of grant calls a year, and almost none of them are written for the person who has to decide. The legal language hides a simple question: is this for a company like mine? You can answer it yourself in about twenty minutes, before you invest a day in the full call, by running five checks in order.
1Who is allowed to apply
Every call opens with the beneficiaries. Read that paragraph first and literally: "autónomos and companies", "nonprofits", "research groups". If your legal form is not named, the rest of the call is not for you, no matter how good the money sounds.
2Your size against their threshold
Calls set a headcount or revenue ceiling, and in Spain they lean on the EU definition of "empresa": staff headcount and turnover. Count your group, not just your company — linked or partner companies can count towards the limit.
3The money you must put in
Most calls reimburse a share of costs, after you spend them. Ask two questions: what percentage is covered, and can your cash flow carry the rest until the payment arrives? A 60% grant on a project you cannot pre-finance is not a grant for you.
4What the money is actually for
Eligible activities are listed in detail: digitalisation, hiring, R&D, internationalisation. If your real project is "keep operating and grow", look for calls whose eligible costs match what you already plan to spend, not ones that would force a project you invented to fit.
5The deadline and the paperwork
A call you cannot prepare for in the days left is a "no" this year. Check the window, the forms required, whether the call is first-come-first-served or competitive, and whether you need digital certificates or cl@ve access before you start.
Where the calls live
In Spain, new calls appear in the BDNS (the state register of subsidies), the BOE, and the bulletins of each autonomous community. In the US, the main federal door is Grants.gov, alongside SBA programmes and state initiatives. All of these publish alerts, and the official alert services are free — but they send everything, in legal language, without answering the only question an owner has: does this apply to me?
That gap is what Botsubsidy exists to close. It reads the new calls every day, checks each one against your company profile, and sends you a one-page verdict — fits, maybe, or does not fit — with the reason, the amount, the deadline and the next steps. The first report is free, with no card. If you would rather skip the twenty minutes and the bulletin-reading, that one page is the whole product.
Botsubsidy itself is built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp, which is how a two-person company can watch every bulletin every day.