My Client's EDG Grant Just Got Approved. Here Is What It Actually Costs Him.
Everyone talks about EDG like it is free money. It is not. But once you stack it properly with SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit, the real number left on the table can get small enough that saying no stops making sense.
One of my clients got his EDG grant approved this week.
I build custom software for small business owners as a separate track from Snapbook, and this particular client has been sitting on a project for a while, unsure if the cost made sense for a business his size. He went through the Enterprise Development Grant process, and the approval came back this week.
Here is the part that surprised me. He did not hire a grant consultant. He filed the EDG application himself through the Business Grants Portal, and it turned out to be far more manageable than either of us expected going in. I sat with him along the way, helping him think through how to frame the project and the numbers, but the actual paperwork he handled on his own. No consultant fee eating into the budget, which means the savings run deeper than the grant percentage alone. Once we worked through what the approval actually means in dollars, his reaction was the same one I have seen a few times now. Relief, then a bit of regret that he waited this long to look into it.
Most business owners think EDG means someone else pays for the whole project.
It does not work that way. EDG is a co-funding, reimbursement based scheme run by Enterprise Singapore. As of 2026 the standard support level is 50 percent of qualifying project costs for SMEs. There was an enhanced 70 percent rate for sustainability related projects, but that expired at the end of March 2026, so for most transformation, automation, or capability projects, 50 percent is the number to plan around.
Reimbursement basis also matters more than people expect. You pay the vendor first, in full, then submit claims as milestones get completed and verified. The grant is not cash that shows up before you spend anything. It is money that comes back to you after you have already put it out.
None of this makes EDG less useful. It just means the "up to 50 percent" headline is where the thinking should start, not where it should stop.
What a $10,000 project actually looks like after EDG and SFEC.
To keep this simple and not put my client's actual invoice on the internet, I am going to use round numbers here. The shape of the math is the same either way.
This is where SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit comes in too, and where most business owners stop paying attention too early. SFEC is a one off $10,000 credit that Enterprise Singapore already notified certain eligible companies about, years ago. It is not something you apply for now. If your company was on that list, the credit is sitting quietly in your Business Grants Portal account, and it can offset up to 90 percent of your remaining out of pocket cost after EDG pays its share. Here is how it lays out on a $10,000 project.
| Line Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Total project cost | $10,000 |
| EDG support (50% standard rate) | $5,000 |
| Co-payment before SFEC | $5,000 |
| SFEC offset (up to 90% of co-payment, if eligible) | $4,500 |
| Actual out-of-pocket cost | About $500 |
That works out to roughly 5 percent of the original quote, once EDG and SFEC are both applied properly.
The catch, and it is a real one, is that SFEC eligibility was decided years back based on things like CPF contribution history and headcount at the time. If your company was never notified, this second layer simply is not available to you, and you are back to the 50 percent EDG math on its own, which is still worth having. Current SFEC balances are also set to expire on 30 Nov 2026, after which a new scheme replaces it. So it is worth logging into the Business Grants Portal to check your balance rather than assuming either way.
He also skipped the consultant fee entirely.
A lot of business owners assume EDG needs a grant consultant to shepherd the application through, and budget accordingly, sometimes a few thousand dollars just for that. My client's application did not need one. He filed it himself through the Business Grants Portal, and once the project scope and numbers were laid out clearly, the process itself was not the obstacle people expect it to be.
That is a saving on top of the EDG and SFEC math above, since it is one less line item eating into what is already a tight co-payment. If you are weighing whether to bring in a consultant, it is worth first checking whether your project is straightforward enough to file yourself. I helped my client think through the framing along the way, and I am happy to do the same for anyone else sizing up a similar project.
This is the gap between reading about grants and actually using one.
Most small business owners I talk to have heard of EDG in passing. Fewer have actually sat down and worked out what it means for their specific project, and almost nobody has checked whether they are still sitting on an unused SFEC balance from a few years back. It is the same pattern I keep running into across every business I touch, Snapbook included. The support or the tooling already exists, the gap is just that nobody translated it into a number that is easy to act on.
I have always leaned lean on purpose, small businesses, profit staying with the business and the owner rather than chasing scale for its own sake. Grant stacking fits that same instinct. It is not about the headline percentage, it is about doing the arithmetic properly before deciding a project is out of reach.
If you are sitting on a project and not sure the numbers work, that is usually the actual blocker.
I am not a grant consultant, and my client did not need one either. But I build custom systems for small business owners for a living, and I have now sat alongside a client through the actual EDG process, from framing the project to running the numbers to filing it himself through the Business Grants Portal. If you have a project in mind and the sticker price has been the thing holding you back, it is worth checking what your company's actual position looks like before writing it off.
If you want a second pair of eyes on whether a project of yours could realistically get supported this way, and whether you even need a consultant for it, that is part of what I help with through consultancy. Not selling a grant application service, just helping you see the real number before you decide.
Kevin Chia is a Singapore-based semi-retired entrepreneur. He co-built Vivre Activewear from the ground up before scaling it down to online only, builds custom software for small business owners, and is the founder of Snapbook.ai, a SaaS platform for Singapore SMEs. He writes about business, semi-retirement, and building things that actually work at kevinchia.sg.