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What funding calls actually state about eligibility

Measured against the Scalebiz database on 16 September 2026. Counts move as calls open and close; this page is a dated snapshot, not a live feed.

The short version

Public funders publish thousands of calls a year and describe most of them in prose. When the hard eligibility criteria are extracted from that prose — the numbers a company can check itself against — most calls turn out to state very few of them. Three findings, each measured on 16 September 2026 against the full Scalebiz database of tenders and grant calls from TED, SAM.gov, UK Find a Tender, Grants.gov, the EU Funding & Tenders Portal and UKRI:

1. Of 3,666 grant calls, four state a maximum headcount and four state a maximum turnover. The SME size test that gates most EU and US programmes is almost never written into the call itself.
2. SAM.gov published 25,431 federal notices since 1 January 2026 and gave an estimated contract value on none of them. TED did so on 41.7% of its notices, Find a Tender on 67.7%.
3. Roughly two in five tender notices carry no extractable eligibility criterion at all — 40.6% on TED, 42.0% on SAM.gov, 42.2% on Find a Tender.

Grants: the size test is almost never in the call

The table counts, for every grant call in the database, whether the published text states each criterion as an explicit value.

The EU SME definition is fewer than 250 staff and turnover under €50 million or balance sheet under €43 million. The US small business definition is a size standard by NAICS code, mostly in employees or receipts. Both are the first gate on most programmes, and both are referenced by name in calls far more often than they are stated as numbers. A call that says “open to SMEs” states no number; it points to a definition that lives elsewhere.

What the calls do state, when they state anything, is the type of applicant: Grants.gov names eligible applicant categories — state governments, non-profits, small businesses — on 71% of calls. The EU portal names a legal form on 4%.

For an applicant this means one thing: the question “am I small enough for this?” is almost never answerable from the call text. It is answered by a definition the call assumes you already know.

Tenders: the US publishes no value, the EU publishes fewer criteria

Notices published on or after 1 January 2026, whether still open or closed. Counting only open notices removes every short deadline, because those have already closed, and inflates the median.

SAM.gov states no estimated value on any notice. Twenty-five thousand notices, none with a figure. The public layer of the US federal procurement system does not publish what a contract is expected to be worth. Any tool that offers a filter by contract value for US federal opportunities is filtering on a field that does not exist in the source.

SAM.gov notices carry almost no structured eligibility. Only 405 of 25,431 notices — 1.6% — yielded three or more extractable criteria, against 46.9% on TED. US notices are short, and the eligibility lives in the attached solicitation rather than in the notice. The EU notice format carries more of it inline.

The median response window is a separate finding, published in full by market and sector in our open tender sections: 11 days in the US against 31 in the EU and UK.

How this was measured

• Extraction. Each call’s published text was run through a rule-based extraction that fills a fixed set of criterion fields: headcount limits, turnover limits, legal form, eligible countries, applicant type, registration requirements. A field counts as stated only when the extraction found an explicit value in the text. A field the call does not mention stays empty. The extraction does not infer.
• “No criterion” means every criterion field came back empty for that notice.
• Contract value counts a notice as having one only if the published value is a positive number.
• Duplicates — the same notice republished — are excluded.
• Grant figures cover every call in the database on the measurement date, open or closed.

This report is also archived on Zenodo with a DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23010595.

What this dataset does not show

• It does not show whether a call’s attached documents state the criteria the notice text omits. For US federal notices in particular, much of the eligibility sits in the solicitation PDF. The finding is about what the published notice states, not what the full solicitation contains.
• It does not show the German market, which is held back from the tender figures pending separation of dynamic purchasing systems from single competitions.
• It does not show contract award values, only estimated values at publication.
• It does not show how often a call that omits a criterion nonetheless enforces it at evaluation. Silence in the call is not permission.

Where this guide stops

This page measures what calls state. For what the rules behind the calls require — who 2 CFR 200 binds, when a federal buyer must set a contract aside, which costs Horizon Europe accepts — see the guides, each of which cites the regulation by section or page.

Questions people ask about what calls state

Do grant calls state the SME size limits?

Almost never. Of 3,666 grant calls measured on 16 September 2026, four state a maximum headcount and four state a maximum turnover. Calls say “open to SMEs” and point to a definition that lives elsewhere; they rarely state the number.

Does SAM.gov publish the estimated value of a federal contract?

No. Of 25,431 SAM.gov notices published since 1 January 2026, none carried an estimated value at publication. TED stated a value on 41.7% of notices and Find a Tender on 67.7%.

How many tender notices state no eligibility criterion at all?

Roughly two in five. Measured on 16 September 2026: 40.6% of TED notices, 42.0% of SAM.gov notices and 42.2% of Find a Tender notices yielded no extractable criterion from the published text.

Why do US federal notices carry so little structured eligibility?

Because the eligibility lives in the attached solicitation documents, not in the SAM.gov notice. Only 1.6% of SAM.gov notices yielded three or more criteria, against 46.9% on TED, whose notice format carries more inline.

What does “stated” mean in these figures?

A criterion counts as stated only when the call text gives an explicit value. A call that mentions SMEs without a number does not populate a headcount field. Nothing is inferred.

Can these figures be quoted?

Yes, with attribution to Scalebiz and the measurement date, 16 September 2026. Underlying counts by market or sector are available on request at hello@scalebiz.app.

Source: Scalebiz database of tenders and grant calls from TED, SAM.gov, UK Find a Tender, Grants.gov, the EU Funding & Tenders Portal and UKRI, measured on 16 September 2026. Figures may be quoted with attribution to Scalebiz and the measurement date. Underlying counts by market or sector on request: hello@scalebiz.app.

Written by Robert Grabarević, founder of Scalebiz, from the Scalebiz database as measured on 16 September 2026. Journalists and researchers who want the underlying counts by source or by country can write to hello@scalebiz.app. About Scalebiz.