Smart Grants have closed. Here are your alternatives

If you’ve recently tried to apply for a Smart Grant from Innovate UK, you’ll have hit a wall. The programme, which provided non-repayable grants of £25,000 to £2 million, has been paused. For many innovative UK SMEs, Smart Grant was the go-to funding programme. So what now?

Alternative 1: Innovation Loans (the main replacement)

£100k to £5m in funding
Up to 7-year terms
3.7% interest during the project period (50% deferred)
No personal guarantees required
Expanded eligible costs, including pre-commercial activities
100% capital expenditure is now eligible

Yes, these are business loans, not grants. But the terms are far more generous than commercial lending, and there’s
no equity dilution.

Alternative 2: R&D tax credits

If you’re spending money on research and development, you may already be entitled to R&D Tax Credits from HMRC. The merged scheme replaces the old SME and RDEC schemes. R&D-intensive SMEs can access a higher rate, and loss-making companies can receive cash payments.

Alternative 3: Other Innovate UK competitions

Biomedical Catalyst — life sciences and healthcare
Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) — defence innovations
Net Zero competitions — clean energy and sustainability
Creative Industries funding — digital media and creative tech

Alternative 4: Regional & devolved grants

Innovate UK EDGE — free business growth support
Local Enterprise Partnerships — often have innovation grant pots
Scottish Enterprise, Business Wales, Invest Northern Ireland
Combined Authority funds (Greater Manchester, West Midlands, etc.)

These tend to be smaller (£5k to £100k) but often less competitive and faster.

Alternative 5: Equity funding

With SEIS/EIS tax relief making investment attractive and deal sizes increasing, equity may be the right route if your innovation has strong commercial potential.

How Swoop can help

Identify grants

At Swoop we will work to understand your business and aspirations so that we can best match your project to the most suitable grant funds. Your chance of securing grant funding improves the more precisely your project fits with the scope of the relevant grant fund.

Match you with a grant writer

If you need some help with your application or just some finishing touches, we will match you to the best grant writers who will use their experience to deliver and submit the grant application as well as helping negotiate due diligence and any future grant funding needs.

Prepare application

Our grant writers will save you hours of time and energy in writing an application that is as strong as possible while keeping in regular contact with you to update you on the application progress.

Continued support

Ensure you get the maximum value out of your grant funding through continued support and advice on best use of your grant.

Andrea Reynolds
Swoop’s CEO & Co-Founder

A word from Andrea

"The Innovate UK Smart Grant exists as a way to fund novel, game-changing ideas with clear commercialisation and economic benefit for the UK, using public funding in the form of grants. If your business focuses on research and development, this may be the right option for you."