Horizon Europe Budget Benchmarks: What Funded Projects Actually Receive, by Scheme

The Short Answer

We analysed the 21,200 Horizon Europe projects recorded in CORDIS to answer the question every applicant asks and no guidance document answers: how much money do projects like ours actually get?

The headline figures, by EU contribution:

Funding scheme	Projects	Median EU contribution	Typical range (p25–p75)
RIA — Research and Innovation Action	2,458	€4.97M	€3.43M – €6.75M
IA — Innovation Action	1,062	€6.00M	€4.74M – €8.37M
CSA — Coordination and Support Action	1,448	€1.50M	€0.50M – €2.50M
ERC (Starting/Consolidator/Advanced)	4,818	€1.98M	€1.50M – €2.23M
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship (European)	6,207	€202k	€184k – €227k
EIC Pathfinder / Transition	647	€2.99M	€2.50M – €3.54M

The median Horizon Europe project receives €1,499,976 — but that number is almost useless on its own, because the programme is dominated by single-researcher fellowships. The scheme-level figures are the ones to budget against.

Why Publish This At All

The Programme Guide tells you the funding rate. The call topic tells you the indicative budget and how many projects are expected. Neither tells you what proposals in your instrument actually received once evaluation was over — and that is the number you need when a partner asks whether €450,000 is a reasonable ask.

CORDIS records every funded project. So the distribution exists; it has simply never been published in a form you can budget against.

A note on what this data can and cannot do, stated up front: CORDIS contains funded projects only. There is no record of unsuccessful proposals in it, so nothing here says anything about success rates, and we make no such claim. For official success-rate statistics, use the Commission's Horizon Dashboard.

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The Full Benchmark Table

EU contribution per project, Horizon Europe, all schemes with at least 150 funded projects.

Scheme	Projects	p25	Median	p75	p90
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship (EF)	6,207	€183,601	€202,125	€226,751	€260,348
ERC (StG/CoG/AdG)	4,818	€1,499,822	€1,983,771	€2,225,305	€2,499,940
RIA	2,458	€3,428,970	€4,966,826	€6,752,029	€9,246,332
CSA	1,448	€498,613	€1,497,770	€2,499,506	€4,139,846
ERC Proof of Concept	1,087	€150,000	€150,000	€150,000	€150,000
IA	1,062	€4,739,786	€5,999,995	€8,373,834	€11,958,321
MSCA PF (Global Fellowship)	692	€265,099	€288,859	€351,849	€413,380
EIC Pathfinder / Transition	647	€2,498,176	€2,987,943	€3,537,028	€3,998,989
EIC Accelerator (blended finance)	514	€2,348,999	€2,496,417	€2,499,999	€2,500,000
MSCA Doctoral Network	510	€2,617,357	€2,739,623	€3,911,192	€4,463,712
Joint Undertaking RIA	476	€2,999,491	€4,728,293	€7,101,743	€13,209,526
MSCA Staff Exchanges	326	€616,400	€995,900	€1,444,400	€1,656,000
Joint Undertaking IA	190	€6,902,912	€9,648,928	€19,996,899	€34,226,299
ERC Synergy	189	€9,755,098	€9,991,449	€11,133,873	€12,989,492
EIC Accelerator (grant only)	175	€2,482,401	€2,497,326	€2,499,999	€2,499,999

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Five Things This Data Shows

1. Some schemes have a ceiling, and it is absolutely rigid

Look at ERC Proof of Concept: p25, median, p75 and p90 are all exactly €150,000. Every single funded project received the same amount. There is no negotiation and no distribution to analyse.

The same pattern appears at the EIC Accelerator, where p75 and p90 both sit at effectively €2.5M — the scheme's grant ceiling. In these schemes the budget question does not exist. Ask for the ceiling.

Contrast that with RIA, where p25 is €3.4M and p90 is €9.2M — a genuine 2.7× spread that reflects real variation in project scope.

2. Innovation Actions are funded larger than Research and Innovation Actions

Median IA is €6.00M against €4.97M for RIA — roughly 20% higher, and the gap widens at the top (p90: €11.96M vs €9.25M).

This surprises people, because IA participants are reimbursed at 70% rather than 100%. But the funding rate governs what share of costs the EU covers, not how large the project is. Innovation Actions involve demonstration, piloting and closer-to-market work, which is simply more expensive. See Horizon Europe funding rates explained for how the rates themselves work.

3. The funding rates are visible in the data

We calculated the average ratio of EU contribution to total project cost for each scheme. The result is a clean empirical confirmation of the official rates:

Scheme	EU contribution as share of total cost
RIA	99.6%
CSA	98.2%
ERC	100.0%
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship	100.0%
IA	85.4%
Joint Undertaking RIA	81.0%
EIC Accelerator (blended)	63.3%
Joint Undertaking IA	62.5%

RIA lands at 99.6% — the 100% rate, with rounding. IA lands at 85.4%, not 70%, and the reason is instructive: the 70% rate applies to for-profit entities, while non-profit legal entities receive up to 100% in the same consortium. A typical IA consortium mixes universities and companies, so the blended rate sits between the two.

If you are budgeting an IA, this is the number that matters. A consortium that is mostly academic will land well above 70%; one that is mostly industrial will land near it.

4. Duration is tightly clustered by scheme

Scheme	Median duration
ERC Synergy	71 months
ERC	59 months
MSCA Doctoral Network	47 months
RIA	44 months
IA	43 months
EIC Pathfinder / Transition	41 months
CSA	35 months
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship (EF)	23 months
ERC Proof of Concept	17 months

RIA and IA both sit at 43–44 months, effectively the standard 42-month collaborative project plus a short extension. A 60-month RIA is not impossible, but it is well outside the norm and will need justifying.

5. Budget per partner is remarkably stable

Divide each project's EU contribution by its number of participating organisations and the schemes converge:

Scheme	Median EU contribution per partner
EIC Pathfinder / Transition	€525,257
Joint Undertaking RIA	€362,983
RIA	€357,120
IA	€356,934
CSA	€197,123
MSCA Doctoral Network	€175,232

RIA and IA land within €200 of each other — roughly €357,000 per partner. The overall budget differs because the consortia differ in size, not because partners are funded differently.

This is the most directly usable figure in the whole analysis. If your ten-partner RIA is asking for €9M, you are budgeting at €900k per partner — around 2.5× the norm, and evaluators assessing your resources under the implementation criterion will notice.

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How to Use These Numbers

As a sanity check, not a target. The right budget is the one justified by your work plan. These figures tell you when you are far enough from the norm that you need an explicit justification.

Work from the per-partner figure. Roughly €357k per partner for RIA and IA, roughly €197k for CSA. Multiply by your consortium size, then compare with the scheme median.

Read the p25–p75 band as the comfortable zone. Half of all funded projects in the scheme sit inside it. Outside it you are not wrong, but you are unusual.

Check the call topic first — it always wins. Many topics state an expected contribution per project. Where the topic specifies a figure, that governs, and these programme-wide distributions are context rather than instruction.

Remember what evaluators are told to do. For lump sum topics, experts use the Horizon dashboard showing personnel costs between the 20th and 80th percentile by country and organisation type, and unjustified costs above that band invite budget cuts. The same instinct applies to actual-cost proposals, informally. See lump sum funding explained.

To see the actual funded projects behind these distributions — their budgets, consortia and objectives — you can search them in the Project Explorer.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average Horizon Europe project budget?

The median EU contribution across all 21,200 Horizon Europe projects in CORDIS is €1,499,976, but that figure is dominated by single-researcher fellowships. By scheme, the medians are approximately €4.97M for RIA, €6.00M for IA, €1.50M for CSA, €1.98M for ERC grants and €202k for MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships.

How much should each partner ask for in a Horizon Europe project?

The median EU contribution per participating organisation is approximately €357,000 for both RIA and IA projects, and €197,000 for CSA. This is a benchmark rather than a rule — the justified figure depends on the work assigned to that partner.

Why do Innovation Actions receive more funding than RIAs if the funding rate is lower?

The funding rate determines what share of eligible costs the EU reimburses, not project size. Innovation Actions cover demonstration, piloting and close-to-market activities, which cost more in absolute terms. Median IA EU contribution is €6.00M against €4.97M for RIA.

How long is a typical Horizon Europe project?

Median duration is 44 months for RIA and 43 months for IA, 35 months for CSA, 59 months for ERC grants and 23 months for MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships (European Fellowships).

Can I use CORDIS data to work out success rates?

No. CORDIS records funded projects only and contains no information about unsuccessful proposals, so no success rate can be derived from it. Official success-rate statistics are published by the Commission through the Horizon Dashboard.

Does the EU really fund RIA projects at 100%?

Effectively yes. Across 2,458 funded RIA projects the average EU contribution is 99.6% of total project cost. For Innovation Actions the average is 85.4%, reflecting consortia that mix for-profit entities funded at 70% with non-profit entities funded at up to 100%.

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Methodology

Figures derived from the 56,589 Horizon Europe and H2020 projects recorded in CORDIS as of August 2026, of which 21,200 are Horizon Europe. Unless stated otherwise, all figures in this article refer to Horizon Europe only; H2020 and earlier framework programmes are excluded.

"EU contribution" is the EU financial contribution recorded in CORDIS. Percentiles are computed across projects with a non-null, non-zero contribution. Schemes with fewer than 150 funded projects are omitted, as small samples produce unstable percentiles. Per-partner figures divide each project's EU contribution by its count of distinct participating organisations, deduplicated per project, and are reported as the median across projects rather than as a ratio of totals.

CORDIS records funded projects only. It contains no data on unsuccessful proposals, so no success rates are inferred here.

Last updated: August 2026.