The DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, or German Academic Exchange Service) is Germany’s central organisation for supporting international academic exchange and mobility. It is not a project-grant funder in the way DFG or the ERC are — DAAD’s core function is funding people, not research projects: scholarships and mobility grants that let students, doctoral candidates, postdocs, and academics move between Germany and the rest of the world. This guide covers what DAAD is, how it is structured and funded, its main research-relevant funding lines, who is eligible, and how it differs from Germany’s project-grant funder, DFG.
What DAAD is
DAAD is registered as DAAD e.V., a nonprofit association (eingetragener Verein) under German law, headquartered in Bonn with a Berlin office and a global network of regional offices and information centres. It was founded in 1925, dissolved during the Nazi era, and re-founded in 1950. Its members are German institutions of higher education and student bodies (Studierendenschaften), which elect its governing bodies — giving it, like DFG, a self-governing, membership-based legal form rather than a government-ministry structure, even though the large majority of its funding comes from public sources.
DAAD’s funding is drawn primarily from Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), supplemented by the European Union (DAAD serves as Germany’s National Agency for Erasmus+ higher-education cooperation), other federal ministries, and German industry and foundations. According to DAAD’s own published figures, it supports more than 140,000 students, researchers, and academics annually and describes itself as the world’s largest funding organisation of its kind, awarding upwards of 100,000 individual scholarships a year across a total annual budget in the hundreds of millions of euros. Since 1925 it has funded several million scholarship holders in total. Exact annual figures shift year to year — always check DAAD’s own published facts-and-figures page for the current numbers before citing them in a proposal or report.
DAAD vs. DFG: two different kinds of German funder
Researchers and administrators new to the German funding landscape frequently conflate DAAD with DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). They are separate organisations with different mandates, and the distinction matters for anyone budgeting a project or advising a researcher:
- What each funds. DFG funds research projects — it awards grants to a principal investigator or research team to carry out a defined programme of work, typically covering staff, equipment, and direct project costs over a multi-year funding period (see DFG’s Walter Benjamin Programme and its individual vs. coordinated programmes). DAAD funds people and mobility — scholarships, research stays, and exchange placements that support an individual’s time working, studying, or researching in a different country, generally without funding a standalone research project budget.
- What the money covers. A DFG grant is a project budget: it can include staff positions, consumables, travel, and equipment tied to a specific research plan. A DAAD grant is typically a personal stipend plus supplementary allowances (health insurance, a travel allowance, sometimes a rent or research-cost subsidy) paid to the individual grant holder to cover their cost of living and mobility during the funded stay — it is not designed to fund a lab, a research team, or institutional overhead.
- Who applies. DFG proposals are typically written by an established researcher (often already holding or pursuing a position in Germany) describing a research programme. DAAD applications are typically made by the individual seeking to move — a doctoral candidate, postdoc, or academic — often naming a host institution and supervisor in Germany (or, for outbound DAAD programmes, a host abroad) rather than describing a fundable multi-year project.
- Institutional role. A German host institution accepting a DAAD-funded researcher issues an invitation or hosting confirmation but does not typically administer DAAD funds as an institutional grant the way it would a DFG award — the stipend is paid to the individual. This has real implications for how a receiving institution’s research office should track a DAAD-funded visitor: as a hosted individual with their own funding, not as a subaward or subcontract.
In short: if the question is “who will fund my multi-year research programme in Germany,” the answer is more likely DFG (or another project-grant funder). If the question is “who will fund my time doing research in Germany, or a German researcher’s time abroad,” the answer is more likely DAAD.
Main DAAD funding lines relevant to researchers
DAAD administers a large catalogue of scholarship and mobility programmes, searchable through its official Scholarship Database. The programmes most relevant to research administrators supporting doctoral candidates, postdocs, and faculty include:
Research Grants (doctoral candidates and postdocs)
DAAD Research Grants fund short- and long-term research stays in Germany for doctoral candidates and early-career postdocs who are not already based at a German university. These grants pay a monthly stipend plus supplementary allowances (health/accident/liability insurance support and, depending on the programme, a travel or rent allowance) directly to the researcher for the duration of a defined research stay carried out under a German host supervisor. Funding durations and current stipend rates change periodically and are published in each programme’s own DAAD scholarship-database listing — verify the specific figures for the programme and application round you are using directly on daad.de rather than from a secondary source, since aggregator sites frequently lag or generalise DAAD’s own published rates.
RISE Germany
RISE (Research Internships in Science and Engineering) places undergraduate students from selected partner countries into summer research internships in German university labs, working alongside a doctoral candidate or postdoc supervisor. It is aimed at building an early academic exchange pipeline rather than funding established researchers.
National Agency for Erasmus+
DAAD administers the higher-education strand of Erasmus+ on Germany’s behalf, funding student and staff mobility, joint degree programmes, and institutional partnerships between German universities and partner institutions across Europe and beyond. For a research office, this is the relevant DAAD channel when the mobility in question is a formal Erasmus+ exchange rather than an individually-awarded DAAD scholarship.
University partnership and internationalisation funding
Beyond individual scholarships, DAAD funds programmes aimed at institutions rather than individuals — supporting German universities’ international partnerships, joint degree development, and structured doctoral programmes with international partner universities. Research offices at non-German institutions negotiating a formal partnership or joint programme with a German university may encounter DAAD funding on the institutional side of that agreement, distinct from the individual scholarships above.
Outbound funding for German researchers (PROMOS and related lines)
DAAD also funds the reverse direction — German students and researchers going abroad — through programmes such as PROMOS, administered via German home universities rather than applied for directly with DAAD. This matters for non-German institutions hosting a DAAD-funded German visiting researcher, who should expect the funding relationship to run through the visitor’s German home institution.
Who is eligible
Eligibility varies by specific programme, but common threads across DAAD’s individual research-mobility grants include: the applicant is not already based long-term at the German host institution; there is a defined, time-limited research stay with a named German host supervisor or institution; and, for doctoral/postdoc research grants specifically, there are typically limits on how long ago the applicant’s doctorate started or was completed (DAAD’s own programme pages state the current cut-offs for each round — these change and should be checked per application cycle rather than assumed from a prior year). Applicants who intend to complete an entire doctorate at a German university generally apply through a different DAAD or partner-institution doctoral-funding line rather than the short/long-term Research Grants aimed at visiting researchers.
How to apply
Nearly all DAAD funding lines are applied for through DAAD’s online Scholarship Database and portal, where each individual programme has its own eligibility page, deadline, and required documents. Typical requirements for a research-stay application include a CV, a research proposal or statement of purpose, a letter of invitation or acceptance from the named German host supervisor/institution, academic transcripts, and (depending on programme and career stage) reference letters. Because DAAD funds a stay tied to a specific host, securing the host institution’s invitation or confirmation early is usually the practical bottleneck in the application timeline — research administrators advising an outbound or inbound DAAD applicant should treat that step as the one to start first, not last.
Notes for research administrators
A few practical points distinguish hosting or advising on a DAAD-funded researcher from managing a conventional sponsored project:
- No institutional award to set up. Because the stipend is paid to the individual, a receiving institution generally does not need to establish a sponsored-project account, negotiate indirect costs, or execute a subaward agreement the way it would for an incoming project grant — though it will typically still need to issue a formal invitation/hosting letter and may have its own visiting-researcher or visa-sponsorship process to run in parallel (comparable in spirit, though not identical in mechanics, to the process covered in CASRAI’s guide to the J-1 exchange visitor visa for postdocs and visiting researchers in the U.S. context).
- Insurance and immigration still need institutional attention. DAAD grants typically include a contribution toward health/accident/liability insurance, but visa sponsorship, local registration, and any institutional access requirements (building/lab access, library, IT accounts) for the visiting researcher are usually still the host institution’s responsibility to arrange.
- Track it as an incoming visitor, not a subaward. Research offices that maintain a visiting-researcher or academic-guest register should log a DAAD-funded stay there, separately from the institution’s sponsored-project portfolio, since no institutional grant funds are involved.
Frequently asked questions
Is DAAD the same organisation as DFG?
No. Both are German, Bonn-headquartered, self-governing membership associations, but DFG funds research projects while DAAD funds individual scholarships and mobility/exchange stays. See the comparison above, and CASRAI’s separate DFG guide for DFG specifically.
Does a DAAD grant fund a research project’s costs, or just the researcher’s living costs?
DAAD funding is structured as a personal stipend plus supplementary allowances for the grant holder’s living, insurance, and mobility costs during the funded stay. It is not designed to fund a project’s staff, equipment, or consumables budget the way a DFG or comparable project grant would.
Who administers DAAD funds at the host institution?
Generally no one on the institutional-finance side — the stipend is paid to the individual researcher, not routed through the host institution’s grants accounts. The host institution’s role is typically limited to issuing an invitation/hosting confirmation and, where applicable, supporting visa and registration steps.
Can a non-German researcher apply for DAAD funding to work at a German university?
Yes — DAAD’s Research Grants and related programmes are aimed specifically at researchers based outside Germany who want to carry out a defined research stay at a German host institution, subject to each programme’s specific eligibility rules and career-stage limits.
Where can I find current DAAD funding amounts and deadlines?
Directly on DAAD’s official Scholarship Database (daad.de), on the specific programme’s own listing page. Amounts, durations, and eligibility cut-offs are revised periodically, so treat any figure from a third-party summary (including this guide) as indicative and verify against DAAD’s current listing before relying on it for an application or budget.
