How does it work?
Grants Updates gives you the complete UK business grants file and keeps it continuously current. After subscribing, your unique access key unlocks downloads of either the full file or just the changes (new, updated, and closed grants) on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, in CSV or XLSX format. Files can be downloaded manually from your account or pulled automatically using our Grants API, so the subscription fits whether you’re working hands-on or building it into your own systems.
What files are available?
You can download full grants database dumps every day or update files that contain only those grants that have changed. The updates files are available as daily updates files, weekly update files or monthly update file depending on your needs. As update files (daily, weekly or monthly) contain only changed grant they need to be merged into your master file or database. Full daily files contain the full up-to-date version of the grants database on that day.
How do I get the files?
Once subscribed you’ll receive your unique Grants Updates Key, you can then download the files manually from the Grants Updates section of My Account Dashboard or alternatively download the file automatically. Any HTTP client that supports custom request headers can download files: curl, wget, Python requests, PowerShell, and so on. Authenticate with your Grants Updates Key as a Bearer token. The examples below use curl.
Download a specific file by date
curl --fail \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_GRANTS_UPDATES_KEY_HERE>" \
"https://getbusinessgrants.com/?gbg-grants-download=gbg_grants_full_2026_05_27.csv" \
-o gbg_grants_full_2026_05_27.csvAlternatively you can always fetch the latest file by using the _latest alias, for example:
curl --fail \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_GRANTS_UPDATES_KEY_HERE>" \
"https://getbusinessgrants.com/?gbg-grants-download=gbg_grants_full_latest.csv" \
-o gbg_grants_full_latest.csvUsing the _latest alias to download the latest daily update file:
curl --fail \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_GRANTS_UPDATES_KEY_HERE>" \
"https://getbusinessgrants.com/?gbg-grants-download=gbg_grants_updates_latest.csv" \
-o gbg_grants_updates_latest.csv--fail causes curl to exit with an error code if the request is rejected, rather than saving an error page to your file. Omit -o to stream the file contents to stdout instead of saving to disk, which is useful for piping directly into another command.What’s in the Files?
Each file contains the same set of fields, listed below. The only exception is the full file, which doesn’t include the final two fields (changeDate and changeType) since they only apply to update files. You can download a sample full CSV file here and a sample daily update CSV file here.
| Field | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
grantId |
Unique identifier for the grant. Stable across full and delta dumps. A grant with multiple purposes appears as multiple rows that all share this id. | 35154 |
id |
Unique identifier for the purpose row within the grant. Together with grantId this uniquely identifies a row. | 368121 |
url |
URL of the grant page. May or may not be the same as the purposeApplicationUrl below. | https://arts.wales/news-jobs-opportunities/creative-steps-fund-support-arts-wales |
title |
Title of the grant. | Creative Steps for Organisations (July 2026) |
provider1 |
Main provider of the grant. | Arts Council of Wales |
provider2 |
Second provider, where a grant has multiple providers. Empty otherwise. | |
provider3 |
Third provider, where a grant has multiple providers. Empty otherwise. | |
provider4 |
Fourth provider, where a grant has multiple providers. Empty otherwise. | |
fundTitle |
Title of the wider fund this grant belongs to. Empty if the grant is not part of a wider fund. | |
currency |
Currency symbol applied to all funding amount fields on this grant and its purposes. | £ |
totalFundSize |
Total amount of money available across all the grant's purposes, as a raw numeric value with no formatting or currency symbol. | |
totalFundSizeFormatted |
totalFundSize formatted with thousands separators. The currency symbol is not included — see the currency field. | |
openOrClosed |
Status of the grant. One of: open, opening, closing. | open |
dateAdded |
ISO 8601 datetime (UTC) of when the grant was added to the database. | 2026-04-14T19:04:18.000+01:00 |
lastChecked |
ISO 8601 datetime (UTC) of when the grant was last integrity checked by our team. | 2026-05-15T00:27:22.000+01:00 |
lastChanged |
Date the grant record last had any change (ISO 8601). Present in full dumps only — empty in delta rows. | |
hasFundingRounds |
Whether the grant has funding rounds. 1 = yes, 0 = no. | 1 |
schemeManagerType |
Classification of the body managing the scheme. | Enterprise Support Agency |
fundingPurpose |
The funding purpose this row represents. | Business Growth |
fundingPurposeDefinition |
A plain English definition of the fundingPurpose. | Business growth grants fund activities that help you increase sales or find new customers such as market research, marketing, website translation or the cost of launching a product. |
purposeTitle |
Title of the purpose as it would typically be displayed to an end-user. | Creative Steps for Organisations (July 2026) - Business Growth |
purposeUrl |
URL of the page describing this purpose. May be the same as purposeApplicationUrl, or may differ if the application is hosted elsewhere. | https://arts.wales/news-jobs-opportunities/creative-steps-fund-support-arts-wales |
purposeDescription |
Free-text description of the purpose. | The scheme aims to support individuals and organisations who have experienced barriers to accessing Arts Council funding with their professional, business and organisational development. Funding of between £500-£10,000 is available for Early-stage/Exploratory Phase projects. Funding of between £10,001-£50,000 is available for Second Stage/Testing and Development Phase projects. Funding of between £50,001-£75,000 is available for Third Stage/Development of a Sustainable Business Model projects. |
purposeApplicationUrl |
URL an applicant should use to apply for this purpose. May or may not be the same as purposeUrl. Empty if no separate application URL is set. | |
purposeTotalSize |
Total funding available for this specific purpose, as a raw numeric value. Present in full dumps only — empty in delta rows. | 0 |
purposeSizeMin |
Minimum funding amount available for this purpose, as an integer in the grant's currency. Empty if no minimum has been specified. | 10001 |
purposeSizeMinFormatted |
purposeSizeMin formatted with thousands separators. The currency symbol is not included — see the currency field. Renders as the literal string "NULL" when no minimum has been specified. | 10,001 |
purposeSizeMinContext |
Context, if any, of the purposeSizeMin (e.g. "Guarantee lasting 5 years"). | |
purposeSizeMax |
Maximum funding amount available for this purpose, as an integer in the grant's currency. Empty if no maximum has been specified. | 75000 |
purposeSizeMaxFormatted |
purposeSizeMax formatted with thousands separators. The currency symbol is not included — see the currency field. Renders as the literal string "NULL" when no maximum has been specified. | 75,000 |
purposeSizeMaxContext |
Context, if any, of the purposeSizeMax (e.g. "70% of £60 million project costs"). | |
purposeDates |
Key dates such as Start Date for Application and Application Deadline, or "Ongoing" for purposes with no specified dates. | Application Deadline: 8th July 2026 |
purposeRegionIsUK |
Whether the purpose covers the whole of the UK. 1 = yes, 0 = no. | 0 |
deadlineDate |
ISO 8601 datetime (UTC) of the deadline by which an application must be submitted. Empty if there is no fixed deadline. | 2026-07-08T00:00:00.000+01:00 |
fundingTypes |
Pipe-separated list of funding types available on the grant. | Business Grants |
subFundingPurposes |
JSON array of the more fine-grained sub funding purposes associated with this purpose, each with its own definition. | [{"subFundingPurpose":"Business Development and Expansion","subFundingPurposeDefinition":"A broad category of funding designed to support established businesses (typically Small and Medium-sized Enterprises - SMEs) in their efforts to grow, improve, and increase their capacity or market reach."}] |
regions |
JSON array of regions this purpose applies to. Each entry has region, regionType and a display label. A purpose covering the whole UK typically lists each country twice — once with regionType "nuts" and once with regionType "country". | [{"region":"Wales","regionType":"country","displayRegion":"Wales"},{"region":"Wales","regionType":"nuts","displayRegion":"Wales"}] |
sectors |
JSON array of sectors this purpose applies to. topLevel flags broad parent categories (empty string when not a top-level sector). | [{"sector":"Audio and Visual","topLevel":"Arts, Entertainment & Recreation"},{"sector":"Creative","topLevel":"Arts, Entertainment & Recreation"}] |
businessTypes |
JSON array of business types this purpose is available to. businessTypeContext is null when no qualifier is set. | [{"businessType":"Medium Business","businessTypeContext":null,"fundingAmount":"90.00","fundingAmountContext":"Up to"},{"businessType":"Micro Business","businessTypeContext":null,"fundingAmount":"90.00","fundingAmountContext":"Up to"},{"businessType":"Small Business","businessTypeContext":null,"fundingAmount":"90.00","fundingAmountContext":"Up to"}] |
changeDate |
Date the change was applied to the grant (ISO 8601). Present in delta dumps only — empty in full dumps. | 2026-05-22 |
changeType |
Type of change recorded (New, Removed, Re-added or Updated). Present in delta dumps only — empty in full dumps. New: Brand new grant added into the database Removed: The grant has been removed from the database. There may be a reason attached such as Removed - Closed, Removed - Under Review or Removed - Duplicate of 12345 Re-added: The grant has been re-added back into the database after previously being Removed Updated - One or more of the Grant or Purpose fields have been updated |
Updated |
JSON values
Some columns (such as subFundingPurposes, regions, sectors and businessTypes) contain values that look unusual — full of curly braces {}, square brackets [] and quotation marks. This format is called JSON, and it’s used when a single cell needs to hold more than one piece of information at once.
For example, a funding purpose might apply to several types of business, and each one may have its own conditions. Rather than spreading this across many rows or columns, it’s all packed into a single cell:
- Medium Businesses can claim up to 80% of the fund
- Small Businesses can claim up to 70% of the fund
Both pieces of information sit together in the businessTypes cell, keeping related details grouped in one place and would be represented as the JSON shown below:
[{"businessType":"Medium Business","businessTypeContext":null,"fundingAmount":"80.00","fundingAmountContext":"Up to"},{"businessType":"Small Business","businessTypeContext":null,"fundingAmount":"70.00","fundingAmountContext":"Up to"}]If you’d like to work with these values as separate rows or columns rather than as packed text, Excel can do this natively using its built-in Power Query feature (found under the Data tab). Power Query can read the JSON content and expand it out — turning a single cell containing multiple business types, for example, into a clean list with one row per business type. This makes filtering, sorting and analysis much easier. A step-by-step guide for doing this will be available soon.