The portion of a grant budget that pays the salaries, wages, and associated benefits of staff working on the project, typically the largest single category in most research grants.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A 3-year R01 budget has 65 percent in personnel costs covering the PI, a postdoc, and a graduate student.
Is an instance
A Horizon Europe RIA includes 800,000 EUR in category A personnel costs across all beneficiaries.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
Equipment purchases are not personnel costs.
Not an instance
Travel reimbursements are not personnel costs.

Editorial commentary

Personnel costs (in Horizon Europe, budget category A) include salary, employer national insurance / social-security contributions, pension contributions, and other statutory or contractual employment costs. Effort is allocated to projects via timesheets or salary-allocation methods that comply with sponsor rules (e.g., 2 CFR 200.430 on compensation, 'effort certification' in US federal). Personnel costs are typically 50 to 80 percent of total direct costs in research-led projects.

References

US Office of Management and Budget Uniform Guidance 2 CFR 200.430; Horizon Europe Annotated Grant Agreement Article 6.

Also known as

Staff cost (grant) · Salary cost · Effort-based salary

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Personnel cost (grant)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/personnel-cost-grant" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/personnel-cost-grant",
  "name": "Personnel cost (grant)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/personnel-cost-grant",
  "description": "The portion of a grant budget that pays the salaries, wages, and associated benefits of staff working on the project, typically the largest single category in most research grants.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/funding-finance#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/personnel-cost-grant",
  "sameAs": [
    "Staff cost (grant)",
    "Salary cost",
    "Effort-based salary"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:58",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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