• Financial support
  • for individuals of up to €47,500 for six months or €79,167 for ten months
  • for small teams (max. of four people) of up to €95,000 for six months or €158,333 for ten months
• Support through consulting and coaching, e.g. in the areas of user-centered design, project management, security, founding, licenses
• Exposure for your project through our channels
• A network consisting of other grantees and alumni, other sponsors, potential partners and other contacts

Data security:
These are tools with a focus on privacy, secure communication and data transfer, and data minimization. This could be, for example, an encrypted and data-minimized messenger, easier or more secure access to VPN encryption or another “privacy by design” application.

Software infrastructure:
This includes software packages or standardized implementations of protocols that are necessary to write and operate applications. These elements are used by developers to reduce the number of work steps and form the basis for all the applications we use every day.

The submission period lasts for two months. We will let you know whether the jury has recommended your project for funding within eight weeks of the submission deadline, i.e. in March 2025.
Please note: We ask that you refrain from making inquiries about the status of applications before the beginning of March.

We will invite all selected projects, or one person per team, to a formal application workshop via video call. On this day (mid-March), you will receive support in preparing the formal application. This will then be submitted to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which will make the final decision on funding. Due to necessary processing times, the final funding decision from the ministry may not arrive until the start of the funding period in exceptional cases. Please bear this in mind if, for example, you want to arrange changes to working hours with employers.

We are convinced that ideas that are shared offer new starting points for projects and collaborations. We want to ensure that funded projects can continue to be developed in the future.

• You are a single developer or part of a team* of up to four people.
• Your idea is a software project.
• You are at least 18 years old.
• As a single developer, you are a resident of Germany, are self-employed** or a freelancer and pay your taxes here.
• For teams, the registered office of your GbR is in Germany, the places of residence of individual team members may be in other EU countries.

*Teams: Please read the questions under Funding before applying to find out what requirements apply to you.
**or (partially) released from work by your employer for the duration of the project. This means that you can continue to be employed part-time.

No. Teams must join together as a GbR (see funding section) to receive funding.

Not at all. Using the application form, you can briefly and clearly describe to the jury what you would like to implement: in concise texts that explain the core of your idea and make the connection to our funded priorities clear.
If your project is selected by the jury, you will then have to submit a somewhat more extensive formal application in accordance with the BMBF’s funding guideline. We will help you with the application and organize a joint application workshop for this purpose.

For class 01, for which funding starts on June 1st, 2025, you can apply from November 11th, 2024 to January 2nd, 2025.

You can apply for class 02 from October 1st, 2025.

Yes, but the Prototype Fund project should be clearly distinguishable within the project and have an independent degree of novelty, for example, if you plan to expand or supplement your project with a module. In any case, it must be clearly recognizable what will be developed during the funding period.

No.

The following applies to those of retirement age who are interested in funding: Only those who have reached the so-called standard retirement age are allowed to earn an unlimited amount in addition to their statutory pension. The standard retirement age is defined in the Sozialgesetzbuch VI definiert (§ 35 Sentence 2 SGB VI) uand is reached at the age of 67. Those who retired earlier are subject to income limits.

As a student, you must observe the working student rule: You cannot work on the project full-time while studying full-time, but only for a maximum of 20 hours per week during the semester for a period of six months.

Companies, universities, non-university research institutions and other institutions and associations are not eligible for funding.

Yes.

Yes.

Answer all questions on our application platform and click on “submit for review”. You will then receive an automatic email to set a password for the application platform.

If you need support or something does not work properly, you can reach us here:
info@prototypefund.de

Yes. Ideas can be submitted in German and English.

The maximum funding amount of €95,000 for teams is calculated based on the total number of working hours for two full-time positions, i.e. 1900 working hours or 950 working hours for each position, with a maximum hourly rate of €50 for the entire funding period. For individuals, the maximum funding amount is €47,500, i.e. a full-time position with 950 working hours at a maximum of €50 each. If the hourly rate needs to be higher, the number of hours must be reduced accordingly – you will also need to provide us with invoices to prove that you, as a freelance developer, have earned higher hourly wages (maximum €150). Teams name and price work packages, which, when added together, may not exceed the maximum funding amount (see above). The sums for the Second Stage are each based on one or two full-time positions with a duration of four months. Please note that the hourly wage in the second stage is capped at €50.

The number of hours indicated must be in reasonable proportion to the project idea. Think about how much time you will need to invest to implement the proposed prototype in advance. Realistic planning of the project scope is also one of the evaluation criteria of the jury. If you are employed part-time in addition to receiving funding from the Prototype Fund, the laws on occupational safety and health determine the upper limit for hours.

The BMBF’s funding decision is based on a recommendation from our jury. The jury supports us with its knowledge and experience in the areas of IT security, infrastructure, software building blocks and open source. The jury evaluates the numerous submissions in terms of their prospects of success, meaningfulness and added value for society.

The jury proposes 25 to 30 projects per round for funding.

As soon as the jury members have been determined, we will announce them on the website.

After the jury meeting, acceptances and rejections will be sent to the applicants. If you have any questions about the reasons for rejection, you can always ask for feedback at info@prototypefund.de.

Please understand that we cannot proactively send feedback to all applicants, provide notes from the jury, or give more specific information than general statements about the reasons for rejection.

If your project is selected by the jury, you will then have to submit a formal application in accordance with the BMBF’s funding guideline. We will support you in this process in the formal application workshop and help you complete the formalities. If the jury has imposed conditions on your project idea, these will be incorporated. In addition, further documents must be submitted. The BMBF will use this application to decide whether a project will receive funding.

Here is a checklist of the documents to be submitted for project approval:

For all:

• formal application (essentially consists of the initial application),
• de-minimis declaration (you will receive a template from us),
• a positive bank statement (at least the balance of your own contribution of 5% of the project scope),
• declaration of the criminal liability of subsidy fraud (you will receive this from the DLR).

For Teams:

• (Civil-law) partnership (GbR) contract (one person must be authorized to represent the partnership, you will receive a template from us)
• the postal addresses of all GbR members,
• details of the GbR bank account (can also be done after approval),
• GbR tax number/registration with the tax office (can also be done after approval).

In addition to the regular six-month funding, there is the option to apply for a ten-month funding. You indicate this in your initial application and describe what you want to achieve in the four additional months - the so-called Second Stage. The Second Stage is no longer primarily about technical work on the project, but about bringing the project into use and making it known. The focus is on user testing, outreach, community building, licensing, and, if necessary, developing a business model. In the Second Stage, you will participate in coaching sessions that match your needs.

In the fourth month of the regular funding phase, you submit a (short) application for the Second Stage. This is followed by a presentation to a committee of judges, representatives of the Prototype Fund and the DLR Projektträger. After this presentation, a decision will be made on whether to grant Second Stage funding.

In the Second Stage, you can apply for a maximum of €63,333 as a team and €31,667 as an individual; these sums are based on two or one full-time positions over four months. The hourly wage is capped at €50.
Projects that receive funding for ten months also take part in the Demo Day after six months. After the Second Stage has been completed, a workshop is held with a few guests, at which the project results are presented and discussed in detail.

Up to 30 projects will be funded for six months with up to €95,000 (teams) or €47,500 (individuals). 10 to 15 projects will be funded for a further four months with €63,333 (teams) or €31,667 (individuals).

The funding is mainly provides for the working hours on the project as well as overhead costs. Personnel costs are calculated based on the hours you work multiplied by your approved hourly rate. Overhead costs are all costs that cannot be directly attributed to individual cost units, such as costs for office supplies. For these costs, you can claim a flat rate of 5% of the personnel costs in the application process.

The funding amount is always a maximum of 95% of the total project budget. The remaining minimum of 5% is the self-contribution – i.e. the time you invest in the project. You have the option of proving that you can actually contribute this time free of charge by providing evidence of other income (e.g. from an employment relationship or from contracts) or savings.

Teams must form a Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts (GbR). No other legal form is permitted for teams that receive funding through Prototype Fund.

All team members receiving funding from the Prototype Fund must be registered as resident in the EU. However, the registered office of the GbR (and the place of residence of the managing director) must be in Germany. Teams selected for funding by the jury submit the formal application as a civil-law association (GbR). The applicant is always the GbR – all persons who are to receive funding must be united in the GbR: subcontracting to third parties is not permitted. You appoint a project manager or another partner as managing director, who legally represents the GbR externally (and, for example, participates in the application workshop and signs the appilcation).
We will provide you with a template for setting up a GbR when you submit your application – only then is it necessary to set one up. If you want to be funded as a team, you should also identify the individual components of the project and assign them to the people in the team.

The Prototype Fund is also a research program: It is important to us to be in active exchange with our projects in order to better understand how developers cooperate, how innovation is created and where we can particularly support you along the way. That’s why there are a couple of obligatory and voluntary exchange formats, and a sustainability evaluation. We ask all projects to take the exchange seriously, because this way we can address problems more quickly and help you if necessary. In addition, the exchange helps us to evaluate the program and make improvements if necessary.

These are the mandatory dates for the funding recipients:

• kick-off workshop (full day in Berlin, all team members, around June 1st)
• scheduled exchanges during the funding period
• demo day (full day in Berlin, all team members, around December 1st)
• Second Stage final workshop (full day in Berlin, all team members of Second Stage projects, around April 30th).

Payment is made in installments based on work performed, at the beginning of each new quarter.
Example: If funding begins on June 1st, 2025, you can retroactively access the funding amount for the work performed in this quarter at the beginning of the new quarter from July 1st, 2025.

At the end of the six-month project period, we invite all grantees to a Demo Day. This day is designed to showcase the prototypes and share the experiences you have had as developers during the funding period. The Demo Day is open to the public, so you can also talk to future users and other interested parties. We will connect you with coaches and other sponsors during the project period. As part of the Prototype Fund network, you will remain closely connected to the program and other participants even after the project period. The project descriptions will also remain available on our website after the end of the funding period.
After ten months, a semi-public final workshop will be held for the Second Stage participants, with a few invited guests. The focus here is on a detailed presentation of the projects.

In addition to publishing the code in an open source repository at the end of the project, you will create a short and generally understandable project report for the funding agency, which will also be published. Examples from previous years can be found here. About a year after the funding, we will also contact you for a sustainability evaluation – a follow-up discussion in which we look forward to learning about further project development.

The software must be published under an open source license. The code must be publicly accessible (e.g. via a public Github or Bitbucket repository). Here is a guide on open source licenses.