Proposals
Budgeting a Horizon Europe proposal: cost categories and the mistakes evaluators notice
7 min read · Updated 19 September 2026
Written by Alessandro Brunetti, Founder of Arvacore · Last reviewed 19 September 2026
The budget is part of Implementation, and evaluators read it as evidence of whether you understand your own project. Numbers that do not match the work plan cost points even when the science is strong.
The main cost categories
- Personnel — actual costs based on daily rates, usually the dominant share. Expressed in the proposal as person-months per partner per work package.
- Subcontracting — tasks contracted out to a third party. It must be described and justified in the proposal; core work should not be subcontracted.
- Purchase costs — travel and subsistence, equipment depreciation, other goods, works and services.
- Other cost categories where the call allows them, such as internally invoiced goods and services.
- Indirect costs — a flat 25% of eligible direct costs, excluding subcontracting. Never calculate them separately.
Person-months are the backbone
Build the effort table first and the euros second. For each work package, decide what must be done, who does it, and how many person-months it realistically takes. The budget then follows from your partners' rates.
A useful sanity check: divide the total effort by the project duration and see how many full-time people that implies. If a partner has 36 person-months over 36 months, they have committed one full-time researcher. Ask whether that person exists.
Funding rates
Research and Innovation Actions are normally funded at 100% of eligible costs. Innovation Actions are normally 70% for profit-making entities and 100% for non-profit legal entities. Coordination and Support Actions are 100%. Always confirm against the call conditions — exceptions exist.
Where budgets go wrong
- Effort that does not match the work plan: a work package with heavy tasks and almost no person-months, or vice versa.
- A coordinator with too little management effort. Coordination is real work and under-budgeting it signals inexperience.
- A partner with a token allocation and no clear role — evaluators ask why they are there.
- Equipment charged in full instead of depreciated over the project period.
- Subcontracting used for tasks that belong to the consortium's own expertise.
- Travel budgets that do not cover the meetings, secondments and events promised elsewhere in the proposal.
Consistency checks before submission
- Effort table totals match the Part A budget table.
- Every work package has a lead and an effort distribution that matches its described tasks.
- Dissemination, communication and exploitation activities have budget behind them.
- Open access and data-management costs are included where required.
- Every number in the narrative matches the corresponding number in the tables.
Frequently asked questions
- How much should management cost?
- There is no fixed rule, but management effort should reflect consortium size, reporting load and the coordinator's real duties. Very small management allocations on large consortia are a recognised warning sign.
- Can we change the budget after the proposal is submitted?
- Limited adjustments are possible during grant preparation, and budget transfers between partners are possible during the project under the grant agreement rules. That is not a reason to submit an unrealistic budget — the evaluation happens first.
- Do we need quotes for equipment?
- Not at proposal stage, but your figures should be defensible. Keep the basis for each estimate so you can justify it during grant preparation and, later, in an audit.