Erasmus+ Eligible Costs: Lump Sums & Budget Rules

Which costs are eligible in Erasmus+? Start with the action, call year and funding model in your grant agreement. There is no single staff, travel or overhead rule that applies to every Erasmus+ project.

Actual costs, unit costs or lump sums?

• —Actual costs: declare eligible expenditure actually incurred, following the agreement's rules on staff, purchases, VAT and supporting records.
• —Unit costs: support is calculated using eligible units, such as participants, days or distance bands. Keep evidence that the funded activity and units occurred; the action sets the rates.
• —Cooperation Partnerships: the Programme Guide provides lump sums of €120,000, €250,000 or €400,000. Describe activities, work packages and expected results. The project-management work package may receive at most 20% of the total project budget.

Worked example: a Cooperation Partnership budget

Illustration only—not a ZEUS client result or an approved budget. For a €250,000 grant, a €40,000 management allocation is 16%, below the 20% ceiling. The remaining €210,000 must be allocated to implementation work packages. This arithmetic alone does not establish eligibility: justify resources, activities, deliverables and co-financing, then check the call and agreement.

What evidence should you keep?

• —Lump sums: retain evidence of the agreed work and results—such as training materials, attendance records, outputs and acceptance records. Payment is not simply reimbursement of each invoice; incomplete or poor implementation can reduce the grant.
• —Unit costs: retain proof of the eligible units and generating activity. Actual-cost categories require the accounting records and other evidence specified in the agreement. Keep statutory records even when invoice-by-invoice reporting is not required.
• —Staff, travel, equipment and subcontracting: check the action's specific rules before classifying a cost. There is no universal three-quote threshold or rule that every freelancer must be a subcontractor. Under Cooperation Partnerships, subcontracting must not cover core activities and must be described as required in the application.

Can the grant pay an external proposal writer?

The Programme Guide's financial conditions state that hiring external organisations or individuals to draft the application or subsequent reports is not eligible under the grant. Do not include ZEUS proposal-writing or report-drafting fees as reimbursable costs. Any separately purchased advisory support must be scoped and financed accordingly.

Before you commit a cost

• —Identify the exact action, call year, funding model and signed agreement; do not reuse another programme's rates.
• —Check the activity, timing, procurement, VAT and no-double-funding requirements that apply to the relevant budget category.
• —Map each activity to a work package, responsible partner, result and required evidence. Ask the granting agency when the documents leave a point unclear.

Official rules to check

• Erasmus+ Programme Guide: Cooperation Partnerships
• Erasmus+ Programme Guide: financial conditions

Need help with your project budget?

For a proposal, review the grant-writing service. For an ongoing project, tell us the action, call year, funding model and budget question. A short description is enough to begin; the signed agreement governs eligibility.

• Grant-writing and proposal-budget support
• Discuss project-management support