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Jump directly to a program page for eligibility, funding details, and application guidance.
Here is what technology funding in Canada actually looks like in July 2026. Our catalog tracks 194 programs written specifically for technology sectors — software, AI, digital, quantum, fintech, gaming. 137 of them are open right now. A further 141 all-industry programs are also open to tech companies, including the two that matter most: NRC IRAP and the SR&ED tax credit.
Just over half of the open technology programs — 73 of 137 — are true non-repayable grants. The rest are tax credits (15), forgivable loans (12), in-kind or advisory programs (29), conventional loans (7) and one award. Federal and provincial supply is almost evenly split: 60 federal, 58 provincial, plus 8 municipal, 9 private and 2 territorial.
Two numbers are worth correcting before you plan anything. IRAP's median actual award is about $75,000, not the “$500K average” that circulates on grant blogs — the $1M figure is a typical ceiling, not an expectation. And the Ontario Innovation Tax Credit is 8%, not the 10% still quoted widely; it was reduced.
The interactive map at the top of this page counts every program a technology business could be eligible for, including the ones currently between intakes — which is why its number is larger than the counts here. The counts on this page are open programs only.
If you have a research or development project with genuine technical uncertainty, start with an IRAP Industrial Technology Advisor and file SR&ED every year regardless. If you do not, skip both — and go straight to the provincial and tax-credit lanes below, where most of the money that reaches non-R&D tech companies actually lives.
Counted directly from the 697-program GrantCompass catalog on July 31, 2026. These are our own numbers, not an aggregate of other directories.
How we counted: a program is “technology” if its eligibility is written for at least one of nine technology sector tags (technology, software, AI, digital, quantum, fintech, IT, gaming, e-commerce). All-industry programs such as IRAP and SR&ED are excluded from the 194 — they are counted separately as the 141 open all-industry programs. “Open” means the program status is active, not merely that the program exists.
The most misleading thing about this market is supply. There are 137 open technology programs, but 70 of them require incorporation and 60 are federal programs built around a formal R&D project. An unincorporated consultancy or a services business selling software sees a market roughly a third the size it looks.
Canadian tech funding is not one pool. It is six, and they barely overlap.
YES, and we are an incorporated Canadian company with fewer than 500 employees → The federal R&D backbone is your lane. IRAP first (median $75K), SR&ED every year after.
YES, but we are not incorporated → Incorporate before applying to anything. 70 of 137 open technology programs, including all the large ones, gate on it. Federal incorporation is roughly $200 and takes a day or two.
NO — we are adopting or deploying technology, not inventing it → Skip IRAP and SR&ED entirely. Go to the provincial lane and the tax-credit lane. Digital-adoption money is now almost entirely provincial.
You build or apply AI → the AI and compute lane — Scale AI, the NRC AI for Productivity Challenge, and Quebec's 30% AI adoption credit.
You sell to government or defence → ISC and IDEaS. These pay by contract, not grant, and Ottawa buys the outcome.
You work in quantum, space or ocean tech → the deep-tech lane, which is the least crowded money in the country.
You are ready to sell outside Canada → CanExport SMEs, up to $50,000 per project at 50% cost-share.
Neither is technology-specific. Both are where the majority of federal money reaching Canadian tech companies comes from.
Here is what you need to know about IRAP: it is a non-repayable contribution toward R&D labour, delivered through an Industrial Technology Advisor who assesses your project before any paperwork exists. The median actual award is about $75,000. The often-quoted “up to $1 million” is a typical ceiling for a substantial multi-year project, and a $10M ceiling exists for major capital work — but planning your cash flow around $500K is how companies get caught short. NRC reaches roughly 22,500 companies a year and funds around 3,360 of them (about 15%). Your ITA relationship is the application; the form is the formality.
SR&ED works in the opposite direction. You spend first, then claim. For Canadian-controlled private corporations the enhanced 35% investment tax credit is fully refundable on the first $6 million of eligible expenditures — Budget 2025 raised that limit directly from $3 million to $6 million, so the maximum enhanced credit is now $2.1 million a year. Above $6M, and for non-CCPCs, the rate is 15% and non-refundable. Refundable is the word that matters: a pre-revenue company with no tax payable still gets a cheque. If you are deciding whether to hire a consultant for the claim, our SR&ED claim guide works through what the filing actually involves.
IRAP vs SR&ED — the two are complements, not alternatives
| NRC IRAP | SR&ED | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Non-repayable contribution, $75K median | Refundable tax credit, up to $2.1M/yr |
| When | During the project, milestone payments | After your fiscal year, with the T2 |
| Gate | Incorporated, under 500 FTE, project not started | CCPC for the 35% rate; anyone for 15% |
The best first move for an incorporated Canadian tech company doing real R&D is IRAP, not SR&ED — because IRAP cannot fund work that has already started, and SR&ED can. Delay SR&ED and you lose nothing but time value. Delay IRAP past your project kickoff and you lose the whole contribution. Full side-by-side: IRAP vs SR&ED.
Two adjacent federal programs are worth knowing. NRC IRAP Clean Technology ($100,000–$1M typical) absorbed the work of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which was wound into NRC after governance findings — clean-tech applicants now come through the IRAP network. And Defence Industry Assist (up to $500,000) applies the IRAP contribution framework to defence supply-chain projects. Deeper treatment of the R&D lane: R&D funding in Canada and the IRAP guide.
The fastest-moving lane in Canadian tech funding, and the one with the most confusion about who actually receives the money.
Here is what you need to know about Scale AI: it runs two different things under one brand. The Acceleration Program gives up to $50,000 per AI startup, but you apply through one of 25+ certified partner accelerators — MaRS, DMZ, ventureLAB, Amii, Volta, Le CAMP — and the funding is reimbursement-based against accelerator program costs. It pays for the program you are in; it is not working capital that lands in your account. The Supercluster is the larger vehicle, $1M–$5M per project, and it requires a consortium: an AI solution provider plus an industry adopter putting up matching investment.
Where AI money actually comes from in 2026
| Program | Amount | Who it is really for |
|---|---|---|
| NRC AI for Productivity Challenge | $250K–$2M | Collaborative R&D with NRC, runs to 2033 |
| Scale AI Acceleration | Up to $50K | Startups already inside a partner accelerator |
| Quebec AI Adoption Credit (CDAEIA) | 30% rate | Quebec companies buying AI, not building it |
The AI Compute Challenge (ISED) is open on continuous intake with amounts negotiated case by case; it is aimed at compute infrastructure, and at difficulty 5 it is not a first application. The Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative delivers $250K–$5M through the regional development agencies as a repayable contribution. The AI Compute Access Fund ($100K–$5M) is between intakes — its first call closed July 31, 2025 and further calls are expected but not scheduled. Do not build a plan on it. Full breakdown of all of these: AI grants in Canada.
For an AI company with under $1M in revenue, the highest-yield move is not an AI program at all — it is IRAP plus SR&ED. AI-labelled programs are either consortium-shaped (Scale AI Supercluster), adoption-shaped (Quebec CDAEIA), or infrastructure-shaped (AI Compute Challenge). Applied AI development is ordinary R&D, and the ordinary R&D programs pay for it with far less structural overhead.
Small, specific, chronically under-applied — and mostly invisible on general grant directories.
Canada funds four deep-technology verticals through dedicated federal channels, and competition in each is a fraction of what IRAP sees. NRC runs three quantum challenge programs — Applied Quantum Computing, IoT: Quantum Sensors, and Quantum Internetworking — each paying roughly $100,000–$350,000 a year to collaborators. NSERC's Alliance Quantum SME Partner Stream runs $100,000–$650,000 a year where a company partners with an academic team.
Deep-tech federal channels, by vertical
| Vertical | Entry program | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Defence | IDEaS | Up to $1.5M per project; $6.75M across the full pipeline |
| Space | CSA LEAP | Up to $2M, extensible to $4M |
| Ocean | Ocean Supercluster Technology Leadership | Up to 40% of costs, $1M minimum project |
Selling to the federal government is its own lane. Innovative Solutions Canada's Testing Stream issues R&D contracts up to $1.1 million (up to $2.3M for military challenges), and the Challenge Stream runs Phase 1 up to $150,000 and Phase 2 up to $1,000,000. One caution: ISC's budget was reduced by $70 million a year starting 2025–26 and our catalog scores its trend as declining, with a difficulty of 4 out of 5. It is a real route to a first government customer — it is not a reliable revenue line. The Pathway to Commercialization source list, which lets departments sole-source from you for three years, only opens to companies that have already completed a Testing Stream contract.
Of the 137 open technology programs, 58 are provincial and another 19 are municipal, private or territorial. Ontario and Quebec carry the most; Atlantic Canada has the least competition per program.
Open non-federal technology programs by province — provincial, municipal and regional (GrantCompass catalog, July 2026)
| Province | Open non-federal tech programs | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario | 26 | OCI Collaborate 2 Commercialize ($20K–$150K); OVIN R&D Partnership Fund (up to $1M, Stream 1 open) |
| Quebec | 16 | Programme Innovation — Primo-Adoptants (up to $75K); AI Adoption Credit (30%) |
| Manitoba | 7 | Innovation Growth Program (up to $100K, quarterly intakes) |
| British Columbia | 6 | Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit (25%); NDIT funds in the north |
| Nova Scotia | 7 | Graduate to Opportunity (salary share); Digital Media Tax Credit |
| Saskatchewan | 5 | Advantage Innovation Fund (up to $450K); Tech Startup Incentive |
| PEI | 7 | Innovation PEI Ignition Fund (up to $25K) |
| New Brunswick | 6 | NBIF Innovation Voucher Fund ($10K–$100K) |
| Alberta | 3 | Innovation Employment Grant (20% of R&D spend); AICE for health tech |
| Newfoundland | 3 | techNL Graduate Transition (up to $41,250 per hire) |
Counts exclude the 60 open federal technology programs, which are available everywhere. They overlap slightly where one program covers more than one province, so the column does not sum to 77.
One correction worth making explicitly: Alberta Innovates' Voucher and Micro Voucher programs and its Digital Traction Program are all between intakes as of July 2026 — their last continuous intakes closed May 29, 2026 with no new dates confirmed. Innovate BC is in a similar position: Ignite, the Go-To-Market Microgrant, the Venture Acceleration Program and the Early-Stage Demonstration Call are all currently closed. Directories that list these as open are reading the program page, not the intake calendar. Province-level guides: Ontario · British Columbia · Alberta · Quebec · Atlantic.
15 of the 137 open technology programs are tax credits. They are not competitive — you either qualify or you do not — which makes them the only predictable line in a funding plan.
Federal SR&ED is the anchor, and every province layers something on top. The provincial credits fall into two families: R&D credits that stack directly on your SR&ED base, and interactive digital media credits that pay against labour for games, apps and interactive products regardless of whether any R&D happened.
Provincial R&D and digital-media tax credits open to tech companies
| Credit | Rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario Innovation Tax Credit | Up to 8% | Refundable. Reduced from 10% — older guides still say 10% |
| Ontario R&D Tax Credit (ORDTC) | 3.5% | Non-refundable, stacks with OITC |
| Quebec R&D Credit (CRIC) | 20–30% | The most generous provincial R&D credit in Canada |
| Alberta Innovation Employment Grant | Up to 20% | Up to $4M in eligible expenditures per year |
| Manitoba R&D Tax Credit | 15% | 50% refundable in-house; fully refundable with a Manitoba institute |
| Saskatchewan R&D Tax Credit | 10% | Refundable on the first $2M/yr for CCPCs; $1M annual cap |
| Ontario Interactive Digital Media (OIDMTC) | 40% | Of Ontario labour; 35% fee-for-service; no overall cap |
| Manitoba Interactive Digital Media | Up to 40% | Games and interactive products |
| BC Interactive Digital Media | 25% | Of eligible BC labour |
| Quebec AI Adoption Credit (CDAEIA) | 30% | For adopting AI, not developing it |
If your product is a game, an app or any interactive digital product, the interactive digital media credit is almost certainly worth more to you than any grant on this page. Ontario's OIDMTC pays 40% of eligible Ontario labour with no overall cap and no competitive process — a ten-person studio clears more from it than a successful IRAP application would return, every single year, without writing a proposal.
Export support is the one lane where the money is small, the odds are good, and the paperwork is genuinely light.
CanExport SMEs covers 50% of international market development costs — trade shows, market research, regulatory compliance in a target market, localized marketing. Two caps apply and they are routinely confused: up to $50,000 per project, and up to $99,999 per company per fiscal year. The 2026–27 intake window is open from February 4 to August 31, 2026, reviewed on a rolling competitive basis, and the median actual award is about $25,000. At difficulty 3 with a growing trend, it is one of the better-value applications in the catalog.
Export support beyond CanExport
| Program | What it gives | Cost to you |
|---|---|---|
| Canadian Technology Accelerator | Soft landing in a foreign tech hub, ~$40K in value | In-kind, no cash |
| CIIP | Up to $600K for co-development with a foreign partner | Matching required |
| EDC Financing | Up to $25M in export financing | Debt, not a grant |
Note that CanExport Innovation (up to $37,500 per project for international R&D partnerships) is currently between intakes on quarterly windows with no announced date. More detail: export grants in Canada.
Every program on this page has hard gates that are not on its official page — incorporation, employee count, revenue tests, sector carve-outs, whether the work has already started. Premium checks your business against all 697 of them, ranks what is left by your odds, and drafts the application with you.
These are the programs most often mislabelled as grants. Almost none of them hand you cash.
Here is what you need to know before you commit five to eighteen months to a cohort. DMZ at Toronto Metropolitan University provides in-kind support valued at $500,000–$1M+ in tech credits — and takes 2–2.5% equity. Its Fall 2026 cohort closes September 1, 2026 and our catalog rates its selectivity at 5 out of 5. MaRS Discovery District gives advisory and investor access with no cash; the separate MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund makes ~$500K seed equity investments, which is an investment, not funding. Propel in Atlantic Canada runs at no cost to participants.
Join an accelerator for the customer introductions and the IRAP advisor in the building, not for the money. The one exception with a clean cash line is the Scale AI Acceleration Program, which reimburses up to $50,000 of your accelerator costs through a certified partner — and the practical unlock there is choosing a regional partner (Volta in Halifax, Amii in Edmonton, Le CAMP in Quebec City) where you are competing against far fewer companies than at MaRS or DMZ.
Combining programs is expected. The ceiling is 75% total government assistance on eligible costs.
IRAP: $150,000 toward R&D labour over 12 months — above the $75K median because the project is substantial, but nowhere near the $1M ceiling.
SR&ED: 35% refundable on the out-of-pocket portion IRAP did not cover, plus materials and the overhead proxy.
OITC + ORDTC: 8% refundable and 3.5% non-refundable on the same Ontario R&D base.
CanExport: up to $50,000 at 50% cost-share once there is a US pipeline to develop.
OIDMTC: 40% of eligible Ontario labour, no overall cap, claimed annually with the corporate return. No competition, no proposal.
ICTC WIL Digital: up to $7,000 per student placement toward wages.
Mitacs Accelerate: $15,000 per four-month internship unit for a graduate researcher.
Six steps, in the order that keeps your options open.
Incorporation and technical uncertainty. 70 of the 137 open technology programs require an incorporated Canadian company, and the federal R&D backbone requires a project whose outcome is genuinely uncertain. If either is missing, you are in the provincial and tax-credit lanes, and everything below changes.
IRAP funds roughly TRL 3–7 — proof of concept through working prototype. Provincial programs often sit earlier. Deep-tech challenge programs sit later and expect a demonstrable capability. Matching your stage to the program's mandate removes most rejections before they happen.
Contact NRC to be matched with an Industrial Technology Advisor in your region. Pre-screening is free and non-binding, and if IRAP is not a fit, the ITA will point you elsewhere. This matters for timing: IRAP cannot fund work that has already begun, and initial contact to approval typically runs three to six months.
CRA assesses claims on contemporaneous records — lab notebooks, ticket histories, commit logs, time allocation, meeting notes written while the work happened. Reconstructing them afterwards is the most common reason a technically valid claim gets reduced on review.
Provincial applications, CanExport and IRAP run on independent clocks. Waiting for one decision before starting the next is how a twelve-month funding plan becomes a thirty-month one. Track cumulative government assistance as you go so you stay under the 75% cap.
IRAP and SR&ED reviewers are assessing what you do not yet know and how you propose to resolve it. Commercial potential matters, but it is the second question. Quantify milestones, budget by eligible cost category, and have your ITA read the draft before it is formally submitted. Our grant writing guide covers the structure in detail.
Amounts and status reconciled against the GrantCompass catalog, July 31, 2026.
| Program | Amount | Type | Cost-share | Best for | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NRC IRAP | $75K median | Grant | Up to 80% of R&D labour | Incorporated tech SMEs doing R&D | Open |
| SR&ED | Up to $2.1M/yr | Tax credit | 35% CCPC / 15% other | Any company doing qualifying R&D | Annual |
| CanExport SMEs | $25K median, $50K cap | Grant | 50% | Tech companies entering a new market | Open to Aug 31 |
| OIDMTC | 40% of ON labour | Tax credit | 40% / 35% FFS | Games, apps, interactive products | Annual |
| NRC AI for Productivity | $250K–$2M | Grant | Collaborative agreement | Applied AI R&D with NRC | Open |
| Scale AI Acceleration | Up to $50K | Grant | Reimburses accelerator costs | AI startups inside a partner accelerator | Open |
| ISC Testing Stream | Up to $1.1M | R&D contract | Contract, not cost-share | Selling innovation to federal departments | Rolling — declining budget |
| IDEaS | Up to $1.5M/project | Grant | Varies by component | Defence and dual-use technology | Open |
| NSERC Alliance Advantage | $20K–$1M/yr | Grant | Partner contribution required | Company–university research partnerships | Open |
| OCI Collaborate 2 Commercialize | $20K–$150K | Grant | Cost-share | Ontario tech commercialization | Open |
| Strategic Response Fund | $10M minimum | Repayable | 50%+ non-government co-funding | Large-scale transformative projects only | Open |
| DMZ Incubator | In-kind, $500K–$1M value | Program | Takes 2–2.5% equity | Early-stage founders wanting network access | Fall cohort closes Sep 1 |
The most expensive mistake in Canadian tech funding is applying to a program that ended. This is the part most directories never update.
Thirty-four of the 194 technology programs we track are between intakes, and several more are closed with a likely return. These are the ones most often still listed as “open” elsewhere:
Program counts, medians, statuses and hard gates on this page are computed from the GrantCompass catalog, which is maintained against these primary sources. Where our figure differs from a program's headline number — IRAP's median award, Ontario's 8% innovation credit — the difference is stated in the text.
For an incorporated Canadian company with fewer than 500 employees running a project with real technical uncertainty, NRC IRAP is the best single grant — not because it is the largest, but because it is non-repayable, comes with a free technical advisor, and can be combined with almost everything else. Its median actual award is about $75,000; the widely-quoted $500,000 average is wrong. If you do not have an R&D project, IRAP is not your program, and the interactive digital media tax credits or your provincial innovation fund will pay you more with less work.
The median actual IRAP award is approximately $75,000. Contributions of up to $1 million are typical for large multi-year projects and a $10 million ceiling exists for major capital work, but those are ceilings and not expectations. IRAP covers up to 80% of eligible R&D labour costs and up to 50% of subcontractor costs, so your own contribution is built into the structure. NRC reaches around 22,500 companies a year and funds roughly 3,360 of them.
Yes, on different portions of the same expenses. If IRAP covers 80% of your R&D labour, you claim SR&ED on the 20% you paid yourself, plus eligible materials and the overhead proxy IRAP did not fund. Total government assistance from all sources cannot exceed 75% of total eligible project costs. Stacking the two is standard practice and your Industrial Technology Advisor will expect it.
Budget 2025 raised the expenditure limit for the enhanced 35% refundable investment tax credit directly from $3 million to $6 million for Canadian-controlled private corporations. The maximum enhanced credit is therefore $2.1 million per year. Expenditures above $6 million, and all expenditures by non-CCPCs, attract the standard 15% non-refundable credit. The taxable-income and taxable-capital phase-out thresholds were adjusted at the same time.
Yes, but most of them are not shaped the way founders expect. The Scale AI Acceleration Program pays up to $50,000 as a reimbursement of accelerator program costs through a certified partner. The Scale AI Supercluster funds $1M–$5M projects but requires a consortium with an industry adopter. The NRC AI for Productivity Challenge ($250K–$2M) is a collaborative R&D agreement running to 2033. Quebec's CDAEIA gives a 30% credit for adopting AI rather than building it. For most applied-AI companies under $1M in revenue, IRAP plus SR&ED returns more money for less structural work. See the AI grants guide.
The Canada Digital Adoption Program wound down in 2025 and is not accepting applications. It previously offered up to $15,000 through Boost Your Business Technology and $2,400 through Grow Your Business Online. There is no direct federal replacement as of July 2026. The nearest substitutes are provincial digital-transformation programs — Quebec's ESSOR Component 1C, for example — or IRAP if what you are doing is genuinely development rather than adoption.
For most of the money, yes. Of the 137 open technology programs in our catalog, 70 carry an explicit incorporation requirement, and it applies to every large federal program: IRAP excludes sole proprietorships, partnerships and cooperatives outright, and the enhanced 35% SR&ED rate is only available to Canadian-controlled private corporations. Federal incorporation costs roughly $200 through Corporations Canada and completes in one to two business days online.
There is no program that funds building a website or a routine software build — that is ordinary business expenditure, and no Canadian program treats it as fundable. What is funded: software development that resolves a genuine technological uncertainty (IRAP and SR&ED), interactive digital products such as games and apps (the provincial interactive digital media tax credits, at 25–40% of eligible labour), student and graduate developer wages (ICTC WIL Digital up to $7,000 per placement, Mitacs Accelerate at $15,000 per unit), and digital adoption by a non-tech business (provincial programs such as Quebec ESSOR). If your software project has a predictable outcome, target the labour subsidies and the digital media credits rather than the R&D programs.
The honest answer depends entirely on whether you have an R&D project. With one, a company running a $400K–$600K development project can commonly combine IRAP, SR&ED, a provincial R&D credit and CanExport into mid-six-figure total support — bounded by the 75% government-assistance cap, not by program availability. Without one, the realistic stack is a digital media tax credit plus wage subsidies, which for a ten-person Ontario studio can still exceed what a successful IRAP application would have returned, and requires no proposal at all.
As of July 31, 2026 our catalog shows 137 open technology programs and 34 more that are real but between intakes. Open and prominent: IRAP, SR&ED, CanExport SMEs (window runs to August 31, 2026), the NRC AI for Productivity Challenge, Scale AI Acceleration, IDEaS, ISC Testing and Challenge streams, the NRC quantum challenges, NSERC Alliance Advantage, and every provincial tax credit. Currently closed or between intakes: the AI Compute Access Fund, NGen SME Feasibility Studies, CanExport Innovation, Innovate BC Ignite, the Alberta Innovates vouchers and the Scale AI Training Program.
Premium narrows this page to the programs you actually qualify for, tells you what each one rewards, and drafts the application with you — the same intelligence a $5,000 consultant sells.
Thirty-four technology programs are between intakes. We email you when one of them reopens, when a deadline is close, or when IRAP or SR&ED rules change.