The amount of the subsidy depends on the overall costs of the project. The basic support amounts to 25% of all costs.

Funding for a development project is decided on the basis of the project budget. This includes all costs necessary to carry out the project:

• the personnel costs of the business partners (based on staffing and actual wage costs);
• overhead costs and operating costs of the business partners (e.g. cloud infrastructure, the use (rent and maintenance) of buildings and parking lots, office space and meeting rooms, administrative & management costs, etc.); 
• third-party costs such as the payment of invoices submitted by self-employed professionals and the costs of outsourcing work to research partners and subcontractors;
• investment costs that can directly be linked to the execution of the project and are specifically necessary for the implementation of the project or subsidized activities.

You submit the project budget in the form of a spreadsheet prepared by VLAIO. Please find further explanation in the guidelines for the budget preparation.

After the budget template has been submitted, VLAIO will verify which costs are eligible for funding. On this basis, VLAIO will establish an accepted budget, on which the grant will be calculated.

The basic funding rate for a development project is 25%. This percentage can be supplemented with additional premiums.

Additional premiums:

• A 10% increase in the funding rate may be granted if it concerns a relevant and substantial collaboration between at least two independent companies, of which at least one is an SME and/or if it is a cross-border cooperation within the framework of an officially recognised European network in which VLAIO participates. In a collaboration, each business partner bears risk and neither has more than 70% budget share of the project budget. A 10% increase in the funding rate for medium-sized enterprises (middelgrote ondernemingen, 'mo').
• A 20% increase in the funding rate for small enterprises (kleine ondernemingen, 'ko').

The overall funding rate is capped at 50%.

Only one exception to this limit is possible: in case of an international collaboration in the context of one of the officially recognised European networks in which VLAIO participates (Eurostars, ESCEL, AAL, FACCE Surplus, Susan, Susfood 2, M-ERA, ERA-MIN, MarTera, SOLAR-ERA.NET, Smart Grids Plus, Waterworks, ICT-AGRI-FOOD, BLEU BIO en ENUAC) ), the support percentage can be increased by 15%. In such a cooperation, none of the partners may have more than a 70% share in the project budget and the Flemish enterprise must work together with a Flemish research partner. If these conditions are being met, the support percentage is limited to 60% instead of 50% of the budget.

The support for activities such as demonstrators, pilot studies and upscaling the production is limited to 1 million euro.