Program comparison · verified 2026-09-02
IRAP vs CanExport: which is easier to get?
CanExport SMEs is the easier of the two on our accessibility rating, 4 out of 5 against IRAP's 3, and it is also the smaller one: the typical CanExport SMEs award is $25,000 against IRAP's $75,000. Both are high-volume programs rather than long shots, with 1,674 CanExport SMEs agreements and 2,507 IRAP agreements signed in 2025, and both require an incorporated Canadian company.
The short version. These two programs are not substitutes and the honest comparison is not a ranking. CanExport SMEs is more accessible, faster to scope, smaller, and only relevant if you are entering a new export market. IRAP is larger, negotiated with an advisor, and only relevant if you are doing technical development work in Canada. A company that qualifies for both is usually applying to both, in sequence rather than in competition.
Neither approval rate appears on this page. GrantCompass has no verified approval rate for either program and will not publish an unverified one. What is measurable is what recipients actually received, how many agreements each program signs per year, and what each program requires before it will look at you.
How we measured
- Award amounts come from federal disclosure, not from program brochures. The IRAP figure is the median of 17,770 agreement values covering NRC IRAP firm contributions, which excludes the Youth Employment, Green Youth, AI Assist, Clean Technology and Contributions to Organizations sub-streams. The CanExport figure is the median of 10,077 agreement values covering CanExport SMEs contributions, the direct-to-SME export grants, whose recipients are for-profit businesses.
- Median, never mean. Both distributions have long right tails, so an average would sit well above what a typical recipient receives. The 25th and 75th percentiles are published beside each median so the spread is visible rather than implied.
- Agreement counts exclude the current year. Federal disclosure lags, so the 2026 partial counts are excluded from every trend statement on this page.
- Accessibility, competitiveness and application difficulty are GrantCompass ratings on a 1 to 5 scale, assigned per program by our analysts. Higher accessibility means easier to qualify for and apply to. They are our classification, not the funder's.
- Turnaround is a coarse bucket and the two clocks are different. See the timing section below before comparing the two figures.
The two programs side by side
| Measure | IRAP | CanExport SMEs |
|---|---|---|
| Median award received | $75,000 | $25,000 |
| Middle 50% of awards | $50,000 to $197,020 | $20,000 to $30,500 |
| Agreements behind the median | 17,770 | 10,077 |
| Agreements signed, 2023 | 2,234 | 1,483 |
| Agreements signed, 2024 | 2,049 | 1,557 |
| Agreements signed, 2025 | 2,507 | 1,674 |
| Advertised amount | Up to $1M typical, $10M ceiling for major capital projects | Up to $50,000 per project, $10,000 minimum request, $99,999 cap across all CanExport programs per company per fiscal year |
| Maximum share of project costs | 80% | 50% |
| Matching contribution required | Yes | Yes |
| GrantCompass accessibility rating | 3 of 5 | 4 of 5 |
| GrantCompass competitiveness rating | 3 of 5 | 3 of 5 |
| GrantCompass application difficulty | 3 of 5 | 3 of 5 |
| GrantCompass turnaround bucket | Under 1 month | 2 to 3 months |
CanExport is easier to qualify for on one axis and harder on another
Both programs require an incorporated Canadian company. Sole proprietorships and partnerships are ineligible for either, and IRAP additionally does not support unlimited liability corporations. That single gate removes a large share of small Canadian businesses before anything else is assessed.
Where they diverge is revenue. CanExport SMEs carries a floor of $300,000 in annual revenue and a ceiling of $100 million, which means a pre-revenue startup cannot apply to it at all, and neither can a large company. IRAP records no revenue floor of that kind. So the higher accessibility rating on CanExport reflects a simpler, well-defined application for a narrower project, not a wider door: IRAP records no revenue floor, so a company with $80,000 in revenue is not ruled out of IRAP consideration and is not eligible for CanExport SMEs.
| Requirement | IRAP | CanExport SMEs |
|---|---|---|
| Incorporated Canadian company | Required | Required |
| Sole proprietorships and partnerships | Ineligible | Ineligible |
| Minimum annual revenue | None recorded | $300,000 |
| Maximum annual revenue | None recorded | $100,000,000 |
| Other structural exclusions | Unlimited and limited liability corporations are not supported | Subsidiaries must apply directly rather than through a parent; franchisees are ineligible and only franchisors qualify |
Neither program pays what its ceiling advertises
CanExport SMEs advertises up to $50,000 and its median award is $25,000, exactly half the cap, with three quarters of awards at $30,500 or below. IRAP advertises a $10 million ceiling for major capital projects and its median award is $75,000, which is 0.75% of that number. The advertised ceiling and the award are different quantities on both sides, and the gap is much wider on the program with the bigger headline.
The practical consequence is that a budget built from the advertised maximum is wrong in both directions. Plan the CanExport project around $25,000 of support at a 50% cost share, and plan the IRAP project around a five-figure to low-six-figure contribution at up to 80% of eligible costs, then let the advisor conversation move it.
The turnaround figures cannot be compared directly
The two turnaround buckets in the table above are measured on different clocks and ranking the programs on speed from them would be false. Each bucket is the first duration the program states after a formal proposal has been submitted, and the work that precedes that point differs enormously between the two. IRAP's own guidance puts first contact with an advisor through to a decision at three to six months, because the advisor relationship and project scoping happen before a proposal exists. CanExport states 60 business days for non-U.S. projects from a submitted application.
Read them as two separate facts about two separate processes. IRAP is slower to start and CanExport is slower to decide once started, and the total elapsed time for a first-time applicant is measured in months in both cases.
CanExport SMEs is not accepting applications right now
CanExport SMEs' 2026 intake closed on August 31, 2026; the next window has not been announced. The 2026 cycle ran from February 4 and the U.S.-market envelope was fully allocated before the general close, so U.S.-targeted applications were already being turned away ahead of that date. Other programs in the CanExport family sit at different points in their cycles: CanExport Innovation is recorded as upcoming, CanExport Associations and CanExport Community Investments are between intakes, and CanExport GAC-Led Delegations is active.
IRAP has no fixed intake window. It runs continuously through its advisor network, which is part of why the two programs are usually pursued in sequence rather than weighed against each other.
What this means for your application
Choose by project, not by program. If the work is technical development inside Canada, the question is IRAP and the first step is an advisor conversation, not a form. If the work is entering a specific foreign market, the question is CanExport SMEs and the first step is checking the revenue floor and waiting for the next window to be announced. A company doing both can hold both, because they fund different costs.
Before either, the deciding facts are structural: incorporation, revenue band, where the work happens, and whether you can carry the unfunded share. Those same facts decide eligibility across most of the Canadian catalogue, which is why answering them once is worth more than reading one more program page.
Sources
- Proactive Disclosure of Grants and Contributions, Government of Canada. Agreement values and counts for NRC IRAP firm contributions and CanExport SMEs contributions. search.open.canada.ca
- Industrial Research Assistance Program, National Research Council Canada. nrc.canada.ca
- CanExport SMEs, Global Affairs Canada. tradecommissioner.gc.ca
- GrantCompass funding catalogue, program records for advertised amount, hard requirements, cost-share limits, accessibility, competitiveness and application difficulty. Verified 2026-09-02 against the GrantCompass catalogue (886 browsable programs).
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.