HHS / NIH — SBIR/STTR competition data
Data through FY2025
Phase I selection rate — out of everyone who applied, the percent that won. This one is reported by the SBA in its annual reports; we don't compute it.
Phase I→II conversion — out of the companies that already won a Phase I, the percent that later won the bigger Phase II. We compute this from linked award records.
Worked example. HHS / NIH's 15.9% selection and 22% conversion means about 16 in 100 applicants win a Phase I, and 22% of those go on to win a Phase II — so roughly 4 in 100 applicants end up with a Phase II.
The two awards are very different sizes. Phase I is the small proof-of-concept award; Phase II is the larger build award (at HHS / NIH, a median $314k against $1M in FY2025). Winning a Phase I is the cheap half of the story.
4,121 proposals → 654 awards. SBA SBIR/STTR Annual Report FY2022 (latest published edition; SBA lags ~2 years).
1,390 proposals → 439 awards (same source).
2022 Phase I cohort: 258 of 868 won a linked Phase II within 3 years. 121 of those Phase I awards were fast-track — the Phase II was committed at award time, not competed — so the organic rate is the one to compare your odds against.
NIH fast-track: one application covers both phases (R44/R42/U44 activity codes on the Phase I award), so the Phase II is committed at award time rather than competed after Phase I.
31% to first-time winners · n=1,126 awards.
Awards and typical amounts
| FY | Awards | Phase I | Phase II | Median Phase I | Median Phase II |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1,347 | 867 | 480 | $300k | $1.8M |
| 2022 | 1,380 | 868 | 512 | $300k | $1.9M |
| 2023 | 1,393 | 856 | 537 | $303k | $2M |
| 2024 | 1,225 | 732 | 493 | $311k | $2M |
| 2025 | 1,126 | 662 | 464 | $314k | $1M |
Phase I→II conversion by cohort
| Phase I cohort | Phase I awards | Linked Phase II | Organic (fast-track excluded) | Incl. fast-track | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 662 | 15 | 2% | 2% (78 fast-track) | provisional — cohort still inside the 3-year window |
| 2024 | 732 | 87 | 4% | 12% (102 fast-track) | provisional — cohort still inside the 3-year window |
| 2023 | 856 | 193 | 13% | 22% (118 fast-track) | provisional — cohort still inside the 3-year window |
| 2022 | 868 | 258 | 22% | 30% (121 fast-track) | |
| 2021 | 867 | 263 | 22% | 30% (126 fast-track) | |
| 2020 | 856 | 268 | 25% | 31% (116 fast-track) | |
| 2019 | 1,158 | 373 | 24% | 32% (178 fast-track) | |
| 2018 | 1,152 | 398 | 25% | 34% (168 fast-track) |
First-timers vs incumbents (Phase I only)
| FY | Phase I awards | First-time winners | 1–4 prior | 5+ prior |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 662 | 44% | 30% | 25% |
| 2024 | 732 | 42% | 31% | 27% |
| 2023 | 856 | 37% | 34% | 29% |
| 2022 | 868 | 43% | 31% | 25% |
| 2021 | 867 | 42% | 28% | 30% |
Most-awarded firms (last 5 FYs)
| Company | Awards | Total obligations |
|---|---|---|
| EPICYPHER, INC. | 29 | $50.3M |
| Minnesota HealthSolutions Corporation | 27 | $23.9M |
| ELECTRONIC BIOSCIENCES, INC. | 24 | $10.6M |
| PHYSICAL SCIENCES INC. | 21 | $18.1M |
| MUCOMMUNE, LLC | 20 | $15.7M |
| OREGON RESEARCH BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION STRATEGIES, INC. | 19 | $13.8M |
| CFD Research Corporation | 18 | $11.7M |
| BAEBIES, INC. | 17 | $16.1M |
| BIOSENSICS LLC | 17 | $24.8M |
| Biotherapeutics, Inc. | 16 | $7.5M |
Search HHS / NIH awards by topic code →
Quarterly-ish, and only when something's actually new — a new SBA report year, a new stat, a dataset update. The weekly refresh alone never triggers an email. No account, one-click unsubscribe, and every number on this page stays free and open either way.
Sourced vs computed: Phase I/II selection rates (applications → awards) come from the SBA's SBIR/STTR Annual Report — FY2022 is the latest published edition, and SBA itself calls the rates estimates because proposal cohorts span fiscal years. Phase I→II conversion and first-timer shares are computed by us from sbir.gov's public award records. Linked by firm + agency + topic code where topic codes carry (suffix-tolerant for DOE's phase renumbering), with a title-similarity fallback elsewhere. 70% of links match on topic, 30% on title; each pair's match_tier is in the downloadable CSV, so you can recompute under stricter rules. Firms are identified by federal UEI where available (99.5% of 2025 awards, down to 54% for 2001), with a normalized-name fallback for older records.
Fast-track and Direct-to-Phase-II: no agency publishes a fast-track flag, so we derive it — HHS/NIH: a Phase I record carrying a Phase II activity code (R44/R42/U44) plus its linked Phase II; NSF: the 2024 Fast-Track pilot solicitation (NSF 24-582). Where fast-track exists, conversion is shown both organic (fast-tracks excluded) and all-inclusive, because a fast-track Phase II was committed at award time, not competed. DoD's Direct-to-Phase-II share is different in kind: there is no marker at all, so our number is an inference (Phase IIs with no same-firm DoD Phase I in the prior 3 years), always labeled an estimate and kept visually separate from measured stats.
What nobody publishes: per-topic application counts are published by no one — not the agencies, and not the $500–$42,000-a-year intelligence platforms either; the data simply isn't public. Any per-topic number on this site is award-side only (who won, how often winners repeat), never your odds of selection.
Sources: sbir.gov award data · SBA FY22 Annual Report. Free to use; verify anything critical against the originals.