Verified grants, fellowships, credits & competitions that fund builders without taking a cent of equity — and the dead programs to skip.
Why this list is different
Every grant listicle on the internet is padded with dead programs. Every entry below was checked against the program's own page or FAQ on September 22, 2026, and we separate four things most lists mash together: real equity-free cash, prize competitions that pay grant money, programs that ended or paused, and the famous "grants" that are credits, loans or perks.
Equity-free money will not replace a fundraise. But $10K to $100K of it plus $20K or more in credits is real runway, and usually enough to reach the traction that makes the actual raise easy.
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What is open right now (verified September 22, 2026)
| Program | Equity-free amount | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Emergent Ventures | typically $10K to $100K | rolling |
| Thiel Fellowship | $250K over 2 years | rolling |
| Z Fellows | $10K | rolling |
| O'Shaughnessy Fellowships | $100K fellowships, $10K grants | rolling |
| Awesome Foundation | $1,000 | rolling, monthly chapter votes |
| Amber Grants (WomensNet) | three $10K grants every month | rolling monthly |
| Digital Sandbox KC | up to $20K proof of concept | rolling, quarterly decisions |
| Halcyon US Health Accelerator | listed under open applications | open |
| Startup SG Founder | S$20K to S$50K, 1:1 co-match | open, rolling via partners |
| EIC Accelerator | grant up to EUR 2.5M | short application anytime |
| Prototype Fund | up to EUR 47,500 solo, EUR 95,000 teams | window opens October 1 |
| SBIR/STTR | Phase I $50K to $275K | open, reauthorized to 2031 |
Closed for this cycle, worth calendaring: Arch Grants (next cycle expected around February 2027), NC IDEA SEED and MICRO, Cartier Women's Initiative, Fast Forward Accelerator, Africa's Business Heroes.
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The week-1 stack (no investor required)
If you just landed in SF with a project and no funding, you can assemble $20K or more in cash-equivalent value in one week with zero equity and zero investor connections:
1. Emergent Ventures: rolling grant, one afternoon to apply
2. Cloudflare for Startups: $10K credits, self-serve, roughly 48 hours to review
3. Microsoft for Startups: $5K Azure credits self-serve (the old $150K self-serve ladder is gone)
4. Google for Startups (Start tier): $2K credits, no funding required
5. AWS Activate Founders: $1K credits, self-serve, and it does not block a later award
6. NVIDIA Inception: free membership, unlocks partner credits and hardware pricing
7. Mercury or a startup card account: the perks portals are the fastest key to a dozen partner programs
8. YC Startup School: free, unlocks $25K or more in partner deals
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Cash grants, genuinely $0 equity
Emergent Ventures (Mercatus Center, Tyler Cowen)
- What: grants for "zero to one" ideas, awards typically in the $10K to $100K range (the program page itself does not publish a range). Anyone 13 or older, worldwide, no affiliation. Tracks for India, Africa and the Caribbean, and Ukraine.
- Apply: rolling, short essay, decisions in weeks. Tyler Cowen reads them personally.
- Tip: most rejections are for ideas that do not scale. Be concrete about what the money unlocks. Best expected value per hour on this list.
Thiel Fellowship
- What: $250,000 over two years for roughly 12 people a year aged 22 or younger who skip or leave college. Worldwide, rolling.
- Reality check: recent fellows had serious traction before applying. Treat it as a prize for momentum, not seed funding. Also strong O-1 evidence.
O'Shaughnessy Fellowships and Grants (OSV)
- What: $100,000 one-year fellowships plus separate $10,000 grants, several of each per year, any age, any country, fully equity-free.
- Tip: they find people through public work. Ship and document in public.
Z Fellows
- What: $10,000, rolling, ten-minute application. The money arrives as a tiny investment at a $1B cap, functionally free, and you can do the one-week program without taking it.
Neo Scholars
- What: for standout CS undergrads, a $25K gap-semester grant ("Semester in SF") or a $40K residency grant, equity-free, no obligation to start a company. Around 30 a year.
1517 Fund: Medici Project
- What: $1,000 no-strings microgrants for students, dropouts and deep-tech scientists in North America. "We don't own you, your project, any IP."
- Apply: email a five-minute Loom. Response in about two weeks.
Afore Grants
- What: $1,000 equity-free for builders 21 or younger in North America, plus office hours and space. One-question application, rolling.
776 Foundation Fellowship (Alexis Ohanian)
- What: $100K over two years for people 24 and under working full time on climate. Around 20 per cohort.
Entrepreneurs First Fellowship
- What: $10K equity-free plus three months of housing in San Francisco for people early in their founder journey. Rolling.
Solo Founders Program (Julian Weisser)
- What: $100K cash grant and a three-month San Francisco cohort for solo founders. Launched July 2026.
Runnin' Down a Dream Foundation (Bill Gurley)
- What: $5K non-dilutive microgrants for US residents 18 and older funding a career pivot, not startup-specific. You must have read the book. Next cycle opens October 1, 2026.
Solo Grant (formerly Merge Grants)
- What: $100 to $1,000 microgrants for young builders, any nationality. Tiny, but a good first yes.
LocalHost Fellowship
- What: grants up to $10K plus credits for builders roughly 18 to 30, labs in SF and Bangalore. Their India residency covers flights and housing.
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Microgrants you can apply to this week
These are small and unglamorous, and they are the ones almost nobody in SF bothers with.
- Awesome Foundation: $1,000, rolling. Local chapters of about ten trustees each put in $100 a month and vote. Apply to a chapter near you or a thematic one.
- WomensNet Amber Grants: three separate $10,000 grants every month (Amber, Startup, and a rotating business category), $510,000 for the 2026 program year. One application covers all of them, judged in the month it arrives. The Startup Grant is aimed at idea-phase companies or under $10,000 in sales.
- The Pollination Project: rolling seed grants for early social-impact projects with a total project cost under $10,000.
- HerRise MicroGrant: monthly, closes the last day of each month. Note the $15 application fee.
- Hello Alice: a platform, not one grant. On September 22 it listed several open rounds, including a $5,000 DoorDash local-business disaster relief grant and Fund Her Future with H&R Block at $50,000 to up to four women-owned businesses. Check the board monthly.
- Digital Sandbox KC: up to $20,000 in proof-of-concept funding, rolling with quarterly decisions, for early-stage tech projects in the Kansas City region.
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Government money: real, bigger, slower
The 2026 headline: SBIR/STTR lapsed for six months during the shutdown, then was reauthorized on April 13, 2026 through September 30, 2031. Program-wide, Phase I is $50,000 to $275,000 over 6 to 12 months and Phase II is $750,000 to $1.8M over 24 months. The government takes 0% equity and no IP.
- NSF SBIR (America's Seed Fund): start with the free three-page Project Pitch, accepted any time, with a response in roughly one to two months. Invited full proposals can be submitted at any time against published deadlines, and decisions come about six months later. The PI must work at least 20 hours a week for the company. No advanced degree required.
- NIH SBIR (SEED): multiple funding notices open if your product has a health angle.
- DOE SBIR (Office of Science): Phase I up to $200,000 or $250,000 depending on the topic, Phase II up to $1.1M or $1.6M. Note their About page still cites authority through 2025, which is stale.
- NASA SBIR/STTR and DoD/DSIP: open, topic-driven, worth a look for hardware and autonomy.
- NSF I-Corps: $50K plus a customer-discovery bootcamp. UC Berkeley's free regional course is the cheapest legitimacy signal in federal funding.
- CalSEED: $150K concept plus $450K to $500K prototype awards for California clean-energy hardware. Cohort 8 closed March 31, 2026, and the call historically opens around March.
The catch for international founders: SBIR/STTR requires the company to be more than 50% owned by US citizens or permanent residents, and NSF also excludes companies majority-owned by multiple VC, PE or hedge funds. Founders on H-1B, O-1 or F-1 do not count toward the 51%. The practical fix is a US-citizen co-founder holding at least 51%. Structure before you apply, not after.
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If you are not American: government programs that pay founders
- Startup SG Founder (Singapore): S$20,000 to S$50,000 on a 1:1 co-matching basis, applied through accredited mentor partners. In 2025, 55 of 65 applications were approved and the average award was about S$50,000.
- EIC Accelerator (EU): a grant component below EUR 2.5M for innovation activities at TRL 6 to 8 over up to 24 months, with an optional EUR 1M to 10M equity component. Short application any time, full proposals to published cutoffs.
- Innovate UK: rolling competitions on the Innovation Funding Service, usually with match funding required. Grants run from about GBP 25,000 to several million.
- EXIST Gruenderstipendium (Germany): a 12-month living stipend, EUR 3,000 a month for PhD holders, EUR 2,500 for graduates, plus coaching and material budget. Applied through a host university.
- Prototype Fund (Germany): up to EUR 47,500 for six months or EUR 79,167 for ten months as an individual, up to EUR 95,000 or EUR 158,000 for teams of up to four, for open-source public-interest software. Submissions open October 1 to November 30, with jury recommendations two to three months later.
- NRC IRAP (Canada): cost-shared R&D funding arranged with an Industrial Technology Advisor, up to a $10M threshold on large projects. You start with a conversation, not a form.
- Start-Up Chile: Build is CLP 15,000,000 equity-free, two generations a year, next call pending.
- Tony Elumelu Foundation (Africa): $5,000 non-returnable seed capital plus training, annual window on TEFConnect.
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Open-source and ecosystem funds
If your work is a library, protocol or public-interest tool rather than a company, this is the most overlooked money on the list.
- NLnet Foundation (NGI): small to mid-size project grants, rolling calls with fund-specific deadlines. Friendly to individuals.
- Sovereign Tech Fund and Agency: multi-month contribution agreements to maintain critical open infrastructure. Not a pitch competition, a maintenance contract.
- Ethereum Foundation ESP: rolling, and the scale is real, $44.4M across 677 projects in 2024.
- Solana Foundation: rolling milestone-based grants, more than $100M and 500 projects funded.
- Stellar Community Fund: up to $150,000 in XLM on the Build track, plus smaller Instawards. Paid in tokens, so the value moves.
- Unity for Humanity and Epic MegaGrants: cycle-based. Epic's last verified window closed in September 2025, so treat it as paused until they announce.
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Fellowships and accelerators that pay without taking equity
- Halcyon (Washington DC): Climate, Health and EquityTech programs running February to November 2026. The US Health Accelerator was listed under open applications on September 22. Confirm the cash component per program, since the programs page does not restate amounts.
- Echoing Green: a $100,000 stipend over 18 months. For-profit organizations receive it as a recoverable grant, which is worth reading carefully.
- Fast Forward: $25K or more in unrestricted funding for tech nonprofits. The 2027 accelerator round closed September 7.
- Tory Burch Foundation Fellows: annual, opened late September and closed mid-November for the previous class, so watch it now.
- MassChallenge: zero-equity accelerators with cash awards for finalists across healthcare, climate, food systems and financial systems.
- Breakthrough Energy Fellows: philanthropic R&D funding for climate science and hardware, rolling.
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"Free money" that actually takes equity
Good programs, but these are investments:
- South Park Commons Founder Fellowship: $400K for 7%, plus $600K guaranteed in your next round, for "minus one to zero" explorers.
- HF0 Residency: $1M uncapped SAFE for 5%, twelve weeks live-in, biased to repeat founders.
- a16z speedrun: up to $1M for equity, under 0.4% acceptance. Their Alpha Fellowship is no longer an equity-free grant, it is up to $250K on a SAFE plus credits.
- Pear Competition: $100K uncapped, no-discount SAFE for Stanford and Berkeley students, near-free at this stage.
- Soma Fellows: $100K uncapped SAFE, remote friendly. The "0% dilution" framing is only true until you price a round.
- AI Grant: $250K uncapped SAFE plus roughly $600K in credits, still running in batches.
- Elemental Impact: catalytic capital, a blend of grants and investment sized per project. Not a pure grant.
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Commonly mislabeled: credits, loans and perks
None of these are grants, and treating them as grants is how founders end up with a runway number that is not real.
| Program | What it actually is | Ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Activate | cloud credits | up to $200,000 |
| Google for Startups Cloud | cloud credits | up to $350,000 |
| Microsoft for Startups | cloud credits | up to $150,000 |
| NVIDIA Inception | tools, training, pricing, no cash | membership |
| gBETA by gener8tor | free accelerator, no cash | $1M or more in vendor deals |
| Kiva US | 0% interest loan | up to $15,000 |
| Futurpreneur Canada | loan | up to $75,000 |
| Prince's Trust Enterprise | training and mentoring, no cash | support only |
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Cloud and AI credits: the money you will actually use
The highest-leverage unlock is one affiliated investor or accelerator. It turns AWS $1K into up to $200K, Azure $5K into $100K to $200K, Google $2K into $200K to $350K, and opens partner credit lines at the model labs. That is a swing of more than $500K from one affiliation.
| Program | Self-serve | With investor or accelerator |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Activate | $1K | up to $200K (provider OrgID) |
| Google for Startups | $2K | $200K, AI-first up to $350K |
| Microsoft for Startups | $5K | $100K to $200K (Investor Network referral) |
| Cloudflare | $10K, the easiest five figures anywhere | up to $350K |
| Vercel | none | up to $30K plus AI accelerator pool |
| Anthropic | none | $25K or more via partners |
| OpenAI | none | partner-mediated |
| Modal, Together, Groq | none | $25K, up to $50K, $10K (Groq's expires in 90 days) |
| NVIDIA Inception | free membership | partner credits and hardware discounts |
2026 gotchas: Microsoft retired the $25K and $150K self-serve ladder in July 2025. Stripe Atlas's $100K fee waiver ended for new incorporations in October 2025. Cloudflare and Google both raised their ceilings.
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Competitions worth your time in SF
- SF hackathons are the most liquid cash in town. Cerebral Valley events have run $60K to $100K pools, YC hackathons pay cash plus interviews, AGI House runs something most weeks. Watch cerebralvalley.ai/events, events.ycombinator.com, and our events page.
- Verizon Small Business Digital Ready: $10K grants with monthly selection. Two short online courses, then your application rolls over every month. The best boring option.
- TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield: $100K equity-free. 2026 applications closed June 8, so calendar March 2027.
- UC LAUNCH and Stanford BASES: $50K to $100K pools, equity-free, if anyone on the team has UC or Stanford affiliation. Alumni count for LAUNCH.
- Arch Grants (St. Louis): $75,000 equity-free plus a $25,000 relocation grant, and Growth Grants up to $100,000, in exchange for moving the company to St. Louis for a year. The 2026 cycle ran February 18 to March 31 and the next is expected around February 2027. Worth knowing even if you are staying in SF, because it is one of the largest no-equity checks in the country.
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Ended or paused: skip these
Listicles still push all of these.
- Google for Startups Black Founders Fund: ended, after more than $40M in equity-free awards since 2020
- Black Ambition: no 2026 application window, restructured around long-term support
- Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS): ended
- Comcast RISE: no 2026 round found, the site now redirects to Project UP
- Pioneer.app: shut down May 2024
- Buildspace: shut down August 2024
- Fast Grants: COVID-era, dormant
- Fearless Fund Strivers Grant: permanently discontinued after the 2024 settlement
- Backdrop Build: acquired, no rounds since 2024
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The meta-strategy
1. Apply to the rolling ones this week: Emergent Ventures, Z Fellows if you are young and technical, Cloudflare, Microsoft, Google Start, AWS Founders, NVIDIA, plus one microgrant.
2. Calendar the windows: Prototype Fund (October 1), Gurley microgrants (October 1), Tory Burch (autumn), Arch Grants (about February 2027), CalSEED (about March 2027), Battlefield (about March 2027), NSF Project Pitch (any time).
3. Grants compound. A grant is O-1 evidence, accelerator-application proof and press. The money is half the value.
4. Never pay to apply, beyond a nominal fee like HerRise's $15. Anyone charging real money for "grant access" is selling vapor.
5. Grant money is usually taxable income in the US and often arrives with a 1099. Co-matching programs, including Startup SG Founder, Innovate UK, NRC IRAP and MVP Ventures, require your own cash in.
Every program above was checked against its official program or FAQ page on September 22, 2026. Statuses change weekly, amounts get restated, and windows move. Confirm on the official page before you plan around a number. This list is broad, not exhaustive, and nothing here is visa, tax or legal advice.