STTR by the numbers

Totals

• 2,193new NIH STTR awards, FY2015 to FY2025
• 192new NIH STTR awards in FY2025
• 801NSF STTR awards, FY2015 to FY2025
• 59NSF STTR awards in FY2025

Years are US federal fiscal years (1 October to 30 September). FY2026 is left out of the charts: Fiscal year 2026 ended on 2026-09-30, under four weeks before these counts were read. The counts were still well below the previous years and are kept out of the charts as not yet comparable.

1. National Institutes of Health

NIH made 2,193 new STTR awards in 11 years.

NIH marks STTR grants with two activity codes: R41 for Phase I (a feasibility study) and R42 for Phase II (full development). "New" means the award was issued as a new application, not as a continuation of earlier support. NIH funds more STTR work than these new awards alone, which the second chart shows.

2. National Science Foundation

NSF made 801 STTR awards in 11 years.

NSF's award database labels its STTR funding with two program element codes, one for Phase I and one for Phase II. The count below is every award first made in the year under either code. It is a smaller programme than NIH's.

3. What the numbers do and do not show

Counts of awards, nothing more.

• They count awards, not dollars. No award amounts are shown, so a bar says how many awards were made, not how much money they carried.
• They are made to other organisations. Each award went to a small business carrying out cooperative research with a research institution partner, as the STTR explainer on the funder page sets out from the official directive. None went to INSTAR Lab.
• They are two agencies only. NIH and NSF are two of the agencies that run STTR. The others are not counted, so these are not totals for the whole programme.
• They are not a measure of how hard an award is to win. The counts include no application numbers, so they say nothing about success rates.
• NIH and NSF are counted differently, because their databases record awards differently. Compare years within one agency, not the two agencies against each other.
• INSTAR Lab has no grant award. The chief executive officer attested to this on 2026-09-13. That is Record source SRC-007, a statement by management, not an audit. Grants awarded to INSTAR Lab by federal, state and private funders. The attestation does not name STTR or SBIR awards separately.

To see what individual STTR awards look like, read STTR in practice. For the rules of a collaboration, see how an STTR collaboration works.

4. Where the numbers come from

Two public databases, read on October 24, 2026.

The page is built from a saved snapshot of the counts, so nothing is fetched when you open it. Every figure is a count the agency's database returned for one query, except NSF's counts by state, which count the awards in one listing per fiscal year and phase. Totals on this page are plain sums of those counts.

NIH RePORTER Project API (V2)

Each figure is meta.total from one query with limit 1. R41 is the NIH STTR Phase I activity code and R42 is Phase II. "New awards" adds award_types ["1"], the NIH application type for a new award. A Phase II that follows a Phase I is often issued as a competing continuation (type 2) and so appears only under funded projects; the Phase II share of "new awards" is therefore a floor, not the full Phase II picture. "Funded projects" has no award-type filter, so it counts every project record (new, continuing and supplement) funded in the fiscal year. Fiscal years use NIH fiscal_years, 1 October to 30 September. Other NIH STTR-related codes are not counted. Phase I plus Phase II is checked against a separate query for both codes.

Endpoint: POST https://api.reporter.nih.gov/v2/projects/search

Show the exact NIH query bodies

new-phase-i
{"criteria":{"fiscal_years":["<FY>"],"activity_codes":["R41"],"award_types":["1"]},"include_fields":["ProjectNum"],"offset":0,"limit":1}

new-phase-ii
{"criteria":{"fiscal_years":["<FY>"],"activity_codes":["R42"],"award_types":["1"]},"include_fields":["ProjectNum"],"offset":0,"limit":1}

new-total
{"criteria":{"fiscal_years":["<FY>"],"activity_codes":["R41","R42"],"award_types":["1"]},"include_fields":["ProjectNum"],"offset":0,"limit":1}

funded-phase-i
{"criteria":{"fiscal_years":["<FY>"],"activity_codes":["R41"]},"include_fields":["ProjectNum"],"offset":0,"limit":1}

funded-phase-ii
{"criteria":{"fiscal_years":["<FY>"],"activity_codes":["R42"]},"include_fields":["ProjectNum"],"offset":0,"limit":1}

funded-total
{"criteria":{"fiscal_years":["<FY>"],"activity_codes":["R41","R42"]},"include_fields":["ProjectNum"],"offset":0,"limit":1}

state-new-total
{"criteria":{"fiscal_years":["<FY>"],"activity_codes":["R41","R42"],"award_types":["1"],"org_states":["<ST>"]},"include_fields":["ProjectNum"],"offset":0,"limit":1}

institute-new-total
{"criteria":{"fiscal_years":[2025],"activity_codes":["R41","R42"],"award_types":["1"],"agencies":["<IC>"]},"include_fields":["ProjectNum"],"offset":0,"limit":1}

Replace <FY> with the fiscal year and <IC> with an institute abbreviation. The count is the meta.total field of the reply.

NSF Award Search web API

Each figure is metadata.totalCount from one request with rpp 1 and the documented ProgEleCode filter. NSF program element 150500 is named "STTR Phase I" and 159100 "STTR Phase II" in the API's own award records. The date window is the documented award date (dateStart, dateEnd), from 1 October to 30 September to match NIH fiscal years, so each count is awards first made in that year. An award is counted once per phase even if it lists other program elements as well.

Request: GET https://api.nsf.gov/services/v1/awards.json?ProgEleCode=<code>&dateStart=10/01/<FY-1>&dateEnd=09/30/<FY>&rpp=1, with code 150500 or 159100. The count is response.metadata.totalCount.

By state (read on October 24, 2026): For each fiscal year and phase, one request lists every award with the same ProgEleCode and award-date window as the yearly counts, with rpp 1000 and offset 0, and the listing must hold exactly metadata.totalCount distinct awards. One request is used because the API does not return pages in a stable order, so paging through smaller pages can repeat or skip awards. Each award is counted under its awardeeStateCode; one with no code, or a code outside the 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico, is counted as not assigned. An award listed under both phase codes in one year is counted once in each phase, as in the yearly totals.

Listing: GET https://api.nsf.gov/services/v1/awards.json?ProgEleCode=<code>&dateStart=10/01/<FY-1>&dateEnd=09/30/<FY>&rpp=1000&offset=0. The state is each award's awardeeStateCode.

Left out on purpose

• SBIR.gov, the programme's own portal, refuses automated requests, so it is not used.
• Other agencies that run STTR (for example the Departments of Defense and Energy) are not counted.
• Award amounts, and counts found by searching award text for the word STTR, which would be guesswork.

The snapshot is regenerated with pnpm run data:sttr.