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How is Zeffy free?
How is Zeffy free?
Zeffy relies entirely on optional contributions from donors. At the payment confirmation step - we ask donors to leave an optional contribution to Zeffy.
Paid grant databases can run from a few hundred to over a thousand pounds a month. That is a steep overhead on the research step, before a single pound of funding reaches your cause. The good news: credible free options exist, and for most small-to-mid UK charities they are the right place to start, not a consolation prize.
Below is a side-by-side look at the best grant databases for UK charities in 2026, followed by full profiles, a decision tree, and five tips to actually win the grants you find. Most UK charities under £500k income should stay on free tools until they have dedicated grant-writing staff. This guide shows you exactly which free tools are worth your time.
Quick comparison: Best UK grant databases at a glance
Tool
Type
Price
Suited to
Zeffy Grant Finder
Corporate and foundation (primarily US/global)
Free
UK charities pursuing cross-border or US corporate CSR grants
Charity Excellence Funding Finder
UK grants (all types)
Free
Small UK charities, CICs, and community groups
UK Government Funding Finder
Central and devolved government grants
Free
Charities pursuing statutory and departmental funding
GrantNav (360Giving)
UK grants awarded (open data)
Free
Researching actual funder giving records
National Lottery Community Fund
Lottery distributor grants
Free to search
Charities seeking National Lottery funding
Funds Online (DSC)
UK trusts, foundations, and statutory
Subscription (visit dsc.org.uk for current pricing)
Charities with a modest grants-research budget
Trustfunding.org.uk (DSC)
UK charitable trusts only
Subscription (visit dsc.org.uk)
Charities focused on trust and foundation funding
Idox GRANTfinder
Local authority and public-sector grants
Subscription (quote on request)
Public-sector-facing organisations and local authorities
Foundation Directory Online (Candid)
US and international foundations
Tiered plans (visit candid.org)
UK charities researching US-based international funders
Zeffy Grant Finder
Most grant databases charge hundreds to over a thousand dollars a month, money that should go to your mission rather than a software subscription. Zeffy Grant Finder removes the cost barrier at the discovery stage entirely: there is no paywall, no trial limit, and no sign-up required.
An honest note for UK charities: Zeffy Grant Finder currently indexes primarily US corporate and foundation grants, drawing on US charity financial disclosures. It is a strong option for UK charities pursuing US-based international funders or transatlantic corporate CSR programmes, for example, US foundations with a global remit or multinational companies with UK and US giving portfolios. For discovering UK-native trust, foundation, government, and lottery grants, the primary recommendations below (Charity Excellence Funding Finder, UK Government Funding Finder, and GrantNav) are purpose-built for the UK market.
What you get with Zeffy Grant Finder
Unlimited grant search, with no paywalls and no trial limits
Funder insights drawn from US charity filings: past recipients, average award size, giving trends, and financial profile
Eligibility and geographic rules shown upfront on every listing
Filter to grants active in the past two to three years so you avoid dead leads
Direct links to each funder's official application page
Personalised matches via SMART filters
Deadlines shown on every grant listing
Honest scope
Zeffy Grant Finder is a discovery and research tool for cross-border and corporate funders. It is not a grant management system: it does not track applications post-submission, manage reporting, or replace a development team's workflow. For UK-native grant discovery, pair it with Charity Excellence Funding Finder or Funds Online.
Pricing
Free. Zeffy's entire platform is free for UK charities, including Grant Finder. There is no upsell, trial, or paid tier, ever.
Zeffy for UK charities: beyond grant finding
Zeffy is used by 100,000+ charities and not-for-profits globally, with over £2 billion raised through the platform at zero platform fee. UK-native features include Gift Aid handling, small-society-lottery-compatible raffles, integrated event ticketing, membership management, and donor management, all in one free platform.
Charity Excellence Funding Finder: Purpose-built for UK small charities
The Charity Excellence Funding Finder is the UK small-charity default for grant discovery. Founded by Ian McLintock, it serves a community of around 50,000 UK charities and not-for-profits, growing by approximately 3,000 members per month.
The tool is free and built specifically for small UK charities, CICs, unincorporated associations, and community groups, many of whom are locked out of the paid databases. It covers trust and foundation grants, government funding, corporate grants, and in-kind support across a wide range of cause areas.
What you get
Free access to a broad UK grants database with no subscription required
Coverage of trusts, foundations, statutory grants, lottery funding, and corporate CSR
Guidance resources and a large peer community for small charities
Practical tools to assess your eligibility before you apply
Regular updates as new funding opportunities open
Honest scope
Charity Excellence is optimised for small charities and community groups, not large national organisations with dedicated development teams. It is a discovery tool, not a pipeline management system.
Pricing
Free.
UK Government Funding Finder: The official portal for statutory grants
The UK Government Funding Finder is the Cabinet Office's official portal for central government grants available to charities, voluntary organisations, and community groups. It is completely free.
Government grants tend to be larger than trust grants, but they come with stricter eligibility criteria, compliance requirements, and reporting obligations. If your charity is just starting out, build experience with trust and foundation grants first.
Beyond the central government portal, relevant statutory funding sources include:
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI):UKRI funding opportunities for research-oriented charities and academic partners
Devolved government portals: Scottish Government Funding Search, Welsh Government Funding Wales, and NI Direct for Northern Ireland-specific statutory funding
Local authority grant schemes: contact your local council directly; many run small grants programmes for community groups
What you get
Free, official source of all central government grant opportunities
Keyword and category filters
Larger award amounts than most trust grants
Honest scope
Statutory grants carry significant compliance, audit, and reporting requirements. Navigation can be utilitarian. They are best suited to charities with the capacity to manage government-grant obligations.
Pricing
Free.
GrantNav (360Giving): Open-data UK grants research
GrantNav is the free, open-data grants search engine built on the 360Giving Data Standard. It holds over £100 billion of UK grant records published by funders voluntarily to a common open standard, making it the most transparent picture of actual UK grant-making available anywhere.
Unlike a forward-looking grants database (which lists open opportunities), GrantNav is a research tool: it shows you what funders have actually awarded, to whom, in what amounts, and for what purposes. This makes it invaluable for qualifying funders before applying (see tip 2 below).
What you get
Free access to over £100 billion of UK grants data
Search by funder, recipient, amount, geography, and subject area
Downloadable data for deeper analysis
A transparent, independent view of UK grant-making patterns
Honest scope
GrantNav shows past grants awarded, not open opportunities. Use it alongside a forward-looking database such as Charity Excellence or the UK Government Funding Finder.
Pricing
Free.
National Lottery Community Fund: The UK's largest funder of community causes
The National Lottery Community Fund is the largest lottery distributor in the UK and one of the biggest funders of charitable and community activity in the country. It is funded by National Lottery players.
Grants range from small awards (under £10,000) through to large strategic programmes (£500,000+). Key programmes include Awards for All (small grants, simple applications), the Community Fund's medium grants programmes, and devolved programmes across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Other National Lottery distributors worth knowing:
The National Heritage Fund: heritage, historic sites, and oral history projects
Sport England and UK Sport: sport and physical activity (search at Sport England funds)
Arts Council England: arts, culture, and creativity (grants managed via Grantium; visit Arts Council England)
British Film Institute (BFI): film and screen
What you get
Free to search; open to a wide range of organisations including unregistered community groups (for smaller Awards for All grants)
Multiple funding streams by size, geography, and cause area
Simple application routes for smaller grants
Pricing
Free to search and apply.
Funds Online (Directory of Social Change): The leading paid UK grants database
Funds Online by the Directory of Social Change (DSC) is the leading paid UK grants research database. It indexes UK trusts, foundations, statutory funders, and corporate grant programmes with detailed profiles, giving histories, and application guidance.
DSC also operates Trustfunding.org.uk, a sister database focused exclusively on UK charitable trusts, useful for charities concentrating on that funding stream.
What you get
Comprehensive UK funder profiles with giving histories
Trust, foundation, statutory, and corporate grants in one place
Regularly updated data with application deadlines and contacts
The sector's most established paid UK grants-research tool
Honest scope
Funds Online is best suited to charities that have at least a part-time grants officer. The depth of the database earns its cost once you have the staff to use it systematically.
Pricing
Subscription-based. Visit dsc.org.uk for current pricing, as rates are updated regularly.
Other UK grant databases worth considering
Three more tools are worth knowing about, depending on your charity's type and focus.
Idox GRANTfinder and Open4Community
Idox GRANTfinder is a paid grants intelligence service used widely by local authorities, housing associations, and public-sector-facing organisations. It covers UK and European funding with detailed programme profiles and alerts. Pricing is by subscription and quote-only.
Open4Community is Idox's community-facing product, aimed at voluntary and community sector organisations rather than local authorities. Both tools are comprehensive but priced above the budget of most small charities.
Foundation Directory Online (Candid)
Foundation Directory Online (FDO) by Candid indexes 312,000+ grant-making foundations, drawing on US charity filings, philanthropic press, and funder submissions. It is the standard tool for researching private foundations in the US.
For UK charities, FDO is most useful if you are pursuing US-based international funders, for example, large US foundations (such as Wellcome's US programmes, Rockefeller, or Gates) that fund international organisations. It is less useful for UK domestic grant research.
Tip: Many public libraries provide free FDO access through Candid's Funding Information Network. Check whether your local library participates before paying for a subscription.
Arts Council England and Sport England
For charities working in arts, culture, or sport, the sector-specific funders are often more accessible than general grant databases:
Arts Council England manages National Lottery grants for arts and culture through its Grantium portal
Sport England funds community sport and physical activity
TechSoup UK and Google Ad Grants
TechSoup UK is not a grants database, but it is the most-asked-about "grant" in the UK small-charity community: it validates UK charities for Google Ad Grants (up to £10,000 per month in in-kind Google Ads for eligible registered charities). If your charity is not already validated with TechSoup UK, this is worth prioritising alongside your cash-grant search.
Best free grant databases for UK charities
If your budget for grant-research tools is £0, you have four credible options that cover the UK funding landscape well.
Charity Excellence Funding Finder is the best free starting point for UK small charities: free, purpose-built for the UK market, and covering trusts, foundations, statutory funding, and corporate grants across all cause areas.
UK Government Funding Finder is the official, free portal for central government grants. Use it if your charity has the compliance capacity to manage statutory funding.
GrantNav (360Giving) is the free open-data tool for researching what UK funders have actually awarded. Use it to qualify funders before you invest time in an application.
Zeffy Grant Finder is free with no paywall or sign-up, and is the best option for UK charities pursuing US-based international funders or transatlantic corporate CSR programmes.
Free options have real limits compared with paid tools: smaller curated profile sets in some cases, less dedicated support, and fewer pipeline-management features. For most UK charities under £500k income, those trade-offs are easily worth saving hundreds of pounds per year. Start with the free stack; layer in Funds Online or Idox GRANTfinder once your grant pipeline justifies the spend.
How to choose the right grant database for your charity
Use this decision tree rather than agonising over feature charts.
£0 budget? Start with Charity Excellence Funding Finder for trust, foundation, and corporate grants; UK Government Funding Finder for statutory; and GrantNav for funder research. You can run a real grants programme without spending a pound on database access.
Modest budget, pursuing UK trust and foundation grants? Funds Online (DSC) is the standard paid UK option. The cost is in line with the value if trust grants are core to your strategy.
Larger budget with dedicated development staff? Idox GRANTfinder is built for this. Pipeline-level coverage of UK and European funding is worth the spend once you have the team to use it.
Housed at a university or research institution? Ask your sponsored-programmes office about Research Professional or Grants Online before paying out of pocket.
Pursuing US-based international funders? Add Foundation Directory Online (check your local library first) and Zeffy Grant Finder to your free stack.
UK small-charity reality check: Most UK charities under £500k income should stay on free tools until they have at least a part-time grants officer. The cheapest way to find out whether your grant pipeline can justify a paid tool is to first build one with a free tool.
A note on legal structure and eligibility: Your legal structure directly affects which grants you can apply for. Many trust and foundation grants require a Charity Commission number (England and Wales), OSCR registration (Scotland), or CCNI registration (Northern Ireland). Unincorporated associations, CICs, and community groups without a charity number are locked out of a significant proportion of available funding. If you are not yet registered, check eligibility carefully before investing time in an application, or explore whether a partnership with a fiscal-host charity is appropriate.
Understanding UK grant types: government, trust and foundation, lottery, and corporate
Each database leans towards a specific grant type, so it helps to know what you are actually pursuing.
UK government grants come from central government departments, devolved administrations (Scottish Government, Welsh Government, and the Northern Ireland Executive), and local authorities. Awards can be substantial, but applications require strict compliance, detailed budgets, and ongoing reporting. Statutory grants are best suited to charities with the staff capacity to manage those requirements. Start at the UK Government Funding Finder.
Charitable trust and foundation grants come from private and family grant-making trusts registered with the Charity Commission or OSCR, for example, Wellcome, Garfield Weston Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, and Paul Hamlyn Foundation. They are more flexible in scope and reporting than government grants, but highly competitive. Funder-fit research using the Charity Commission register and GrantNav is the biggest predictor of success.
National Lottery grants come through the five main lottery distributors: the National Lottery Community Fund, the National Heritage Fund, Sport England, Arts Council England, and the British Film Institute. Lottery grants are the most accessible route for smaller charities: Awards for All (National Lottery Community Fund) has a simple application and is open to a wide range of organisations, including some unregistered community groups.
Corporate grants typically align with a company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) priorities and often pair cash with in-kind support, employee volunteering, or matched giving. Examples include John Lewis Community Matters, Tesco Community Grants, Aviva Community Fund, and the M&S Community Programme. Awards tend to be smaller than trust grants, but the relationships are often more accessible to small charities with local presence.
5 tips to maximise your grant database results
1. Find your ideal match
A grant you are a poor fit for is worse than no grant: it costs time you could have spent on a stronger application. Filter aggressively for mission alignment, geography, and award size before you start writing. The best databases let you eliminate 80% or more of irrelevant opportunities with two or three filters.
2. Read the funder's Trustees' Annual Report before applying
Every grant-making trust registered with the Charity Commission or OSCR publishes annual accounts and, usually, a grants-made schedule showing exactly who they have funded, in what amounts, and for what purposes. Reading a funder's last two or three Trustees' Annual Reports is the single highest-leverage thing you can do before drafting a proposal.
You can find published accounts for any UK grant-making trust on the Charity Commission register, the OSCR register, and the CCNI register. For a broader picture of actual grants awarded across the UK sector, search GrantNav, it holds over £100 billion of UK grants data published to the 360Giving standard.
3. Set up deadline alerts so you never miss an application
Most databases let you save searches and receive email digests, but you should also keep a master calendar of every deadline you are tracking. A two-week internal deadline before the real one is standard practice. Missed deadlines are the most preventable reason grants are lost.
4. Showcase your results
Funders give to organisations they trust to deliver. Lead with concrete outcomes: people supported, pounds raised for beneficiaries, community impact metrics. If you are new, lead with your founding story, the specific change you intend to create, and an honest budget. Specificity beats polish.
5. Make it personal
Before you submit your application, learn who the decision-makers are at the funder. A short, well-targeted email to a programme officer asking one clarifying question is often the difference between a generic proposal and one that lands. Relationships compound over years.
For most small UK charities, the best free stack is: Charity Excellence Funding Finder for UK trust, foundation, statutory, and corporate grants; UK Government Funding Finder for central and devolved government grants; and GrantNav for researching what funders have actually awarded. All three are free, and together they cover the vast majority of UK funding available to small charities.
Start by identifying your funding strategy: government grants, trust and foundation grants, National Lottery grants, or corporate grants. Then use the free tools above to search by cause area, geography, and award size. Filter hard for eligibility before you apply. As your grants programme grows, consider adding a paid tool such as Funds Online (DSC) to deepen your research.
Search the Charity Commission register for the grant-making trust's published Trustees' Annual Report and accounts: most include a grants-made schedule showing recipients and award amounts. For Scotland, use the OSCR register. For Northern Ireland, use the CCNI register. For a broader picture across the UK sector, GrantNav holds over £100 billion of published grant records from funders who report to the 360Giving standard.
It depends on the funder. Many trust and foundation grants require a Charity Commission number (England and Wales), OSCR registration (Scotland), or CCNI registration (Northern Ireland). National Lottery Community Fund's Awards for All programme is open to some unregistered community groups. Government grants and corporate grants vary by programme. CICs and unincorporated associations are eligible for some grants but excluded from others. Always check the eligibility criteria before applying; if you are not registered, a partnership with a fiscal-host charity is one route to access restricted funding.
grant database helps you discover and qualify funding opportunities. A grant management system tracks your applications, deadlines, reporting requirements, and funder relationships after you have found the grants. Most small UK charities start with a grant database (discovery) and manage their small pipeline in a spreadsheet. Once you have three or more live applications at any given time, a dedicated management system becomes worth the investment.
It varies considerably. Small grants (under £10,000) from programmes such as National Lottery Awards for All can be decided in six to twelve weeks. Trust and foundation grants often take three to six months from application to decision. Large statutory grants can take six to twelve months or longer, including procurement stages. Corporate grants vary by company cycle. Build a rolling pipeline rather than relying on a single application, and aim to have grants at multiple stages simultaneously.
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Look for people who attend related events, follow relevant Facebook groups, or subscribe to aligned newsletters.These aren’t just potential donors—they’re your future advocates.
Look for people who attend related events, follow relevant Facebook groups, or subscribe to aligned newsletters.These aren’t just potential donors—they’re your future advocates.
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