UKRI grant success rates vary sharply by research council and should never be read as a single UKRI-wide number. UKRI’s overall award rate fell from roughly 36% in 2017-18 to around 19% in 2024-25, but that headline figure blends councils where success runs at 20-24% (MRC, ESRC research grants) with response-mode schemes at the Arts and Humanities Research Council running below 7%. Administrators comparing options should read council- and scheme-level data, not the aggregate.
A UKRI grant success rate is the proportion of assessed applications that receive an award within a given council, scheme and financial year, calculated by UK Research and Innovation and its seven constituent research councils from data published in the annual investment and outputs series.
- What is a UKRI grant success rate, and how is it calculated?
- How do success rates compare across UKRI’s research councils?
- Why has the overall UKRI success rate fallen so sharply?
- Frequently asked questions
- What council-level data means for research administrators
What is a UKRI grant success rate, and how is it calculated?
A grant success rate is the number of applications awarded funding divided by the number of applications assessed in a scheme, within a defined financial year. UKRI publishes this metric through its investment and outputs publication, which lets users compare award rates, funding recipients and award values across all nine of its funding bodies: seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK.
Success rates are typically reported at three levels: UKRI-wide (an average across every council and scheme), council-wide (an average across one council’s schemes) and scheme-specific (a single funding call, such as AHRC’s Curiosity scheme or MRC’s Experimental Medicine Scheme). Each level tells a different story, and conflating them is the single most common misreading of UKRI funding statistics. UKRI’s own “What we’ve funded” hub, and its investment and outputs publication, are the primary sources for all three levels.
Success rates are driven by two inputs that move independently: the volume of eligible applications and the size of the available budget for that round. A scheme’s rate can fall even when funding holds steady, simply because application volume rises — which is precisely what has happened across most UKRI councils since 2018.
How do success rates compare across UKRI’s research councils?
The gap between UKRI’s headline figure and individual council performance is wide. MRC grants and ESRC research grants cluster around one-in-four to one-in-five applications funded, while AHRC’s most competitive response-mode schemes now fund fewer than one in fourteen applications. UKRI EPSRC funding data has not been reported as a single overall rate since 2015-2017, when it moved between 29% and 34%.
| Research council | Most recently published success rate | Scheme / notes | Data period |
|---|---|---|---|
| UKRI (all councils combined) | 36% falling to approximately 19% | All schemes, UKRI-wide average | 2017-18 to 2024-25 |
| Medical Research Council (MRC) | 24% overall; 16% for the Experimental Medicine Scheme | Research grants | 2022-23 |
| Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) | 15-20% (main research grant scheme); 25-35% for other opportunities; around 20% for early-career schemes | Research Grants scheme and related opportunities | Published May 2026 |
| Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) | 6.9% (Curiosity); 5.1% (Catalyst) | Applicant-led response-mode schemes | May 2025 |
| Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) | 32%, 34%, 29% (last published single overall rate) | Research grants; recent reporting has shifted to demographic-outcome analysis rather than a unified rate | 2015-2017 |
The spread matters more than any single average. AHRC’s applicant-led schemes have fallen from around 30% for Standard Research Grants and Fellowships in 2013-14 to single digits a decade later — a far steeper decline than MRC or ESRC have experienced over the same period. A researcher or grants office reading only the UKRI-wide figure would badly misjudge their odds in either direction, depending on which council they are applying to.
Why has the overall UKRI success rate fallen so sharply?
UKRI’s overall award rate has fallen because the number of grant applications assessed has roughly doubled since 2017-18, while available funding has not grown at the same pace. This dynamic has been reported consistently by Research Professional News and by Nature, both of which describe UKRI-wide award rates dropping below 20% by 2024-25.
The effect is uneven across councils because application growth itself is uneven. Response-mode humanities and social science schemes, which have comparatively few alternative funding routes in the UK, have absorbed disproportionate volume growth — a key reason AHRC’s Curiosity and Catalyst schemes now sit well below the UKRI average. Science and engineering councils with larger, more diversified scheme portfolios have been better able to spread demand.
- Rising application volume without matched budget growth compresses success rates fastest in schemes with the narrowest eligible pool of funders.
- Councils that report scheme-level breakdowns (MRC, ESRC, AHRC) show far more volatility than the smoothed UKRI-wide average suggests.
- EPSRC’s shift away from publishing a single overall rate towards demographic and outcome-based analysis makes like-for-like year-on-year comparison harder for applicants.
Frequently asked questions
What is the current UKRI grant success rate?
UKRI’s overall success rate has fallen from around 36% in 2017-18 to approximately 19% in 2024-25, according to UKRI’s published investment and outputs data as reported by Research Professional News and Nature. This is a blended average across all nine UKRI funding bodies and masks large differences between individual councils and schemes.
Which UKRI research council has the lowest success rate?
Among councils with published data, the Arts and Humanities Research Council currently reports the lowest rates, with its Curiosity and Catalyst schemes averaging 6.9% and 5.1% respectively as of May 2025 — down from around 30% for equivalent schemes a decade earlier.
Why do MRC and ESRC success rates differ so much from AHRC’s?
MRC and ESRC research grant schemes report success rates of roughly 20-24%, well above AHRC’s response-mode schemes. The gap largely reflects application volume growth relative to available budget: humanities and social science applicants have fewer alternative UK funders, concentrating demand onto a small number of AHRC schemes.
Has the UKRI grant success rate improved recently?
No council has reported a sustained improvement. UKRI’s overall rate has continued to decline as application volume keeps outpacing budget growth, and AHRC’s most competitive schemes have fallen further still, from roughly 30% in 2013-14 to single digits by 2025.
What council-level data means for research administrators
For institutions running a UKRI grant search across schemes, the practical implication is straightforward: budget planning, internal peer review and go/no-go decisions should be set against the relevant council and scheme rate, not the UKRI-wide average. A funding office citing “26% across UKRI” to a principal investigator applying to an AHRC response-mode scheme is giving that applicant a badly miscalibrated expectation.
Research administration teams should build a standing council-by-scheme reference table, refreshed each time UKRI or a council publishes new investment and outputs data, rather than relying on a remembered headline figure from a previous funding round. As application volumes keep rising across most councils, the gap between the UKRI-wide average and any single scheme’s real odds is likely to widen further, not narrow.
This is ultimately a data-literacy issue for research administration as a discipline: aggregate funder statistics are a starting point for policy conversations, not a substitute for scheme-level figures when advising an individual applicant or costing a grants pipeline.