GrantHero vs grant consultants: what founders wish they’d known
Traditional grant consultancies, Grantify being the best known, have helped plenty of companies win. But the same four things come up from founders who have used them: it’s slow, the sales approach is pushy, the up-front fee is big, and you still end up doing most of the work yourself.
You pay £3.5k to £10k up front. Then you do the work anyway.
A sales call to start, then a long questionnaire or a string of emails for you to fill, long gaps between replies, and a final application assembled from your answers that you then have to fix. The expertise is theirs; the effort is yours.
An expert on a call, AI doing the heavy lifting, and a draft that reads as one story.
A scoping call with a real grant expert, pre-fill from your own documents so you check rather than retype, an assessor-style review before submission, and an honest go / no-go up front. From £1,500, with no pressure to proceed.
What founders told us after using a consultancy
Unedited, from founders who came to us after working with Grantify, the best-known name in the market. The same four things come up every time.
“I paid over £5,000 to Grantify and was shocked at how much work I still had to do. Whilst it was useful, I thought the price tag was really hefty for the service delivered.”
“There was minimal human support and a huge effort was needed on our part to craft succinct answers to dozens of questions with tight word limits that they had set. We spent ages on it only to find they just mashed all our answers together into a final application that required yet more of our time to make it accurate and coherent. The extent of this process was not explained up front.”
“Good as it increases the chances of being selected but bad in the pushy nature of the sales, and they take no risk themselves, charging high upfront fees followed by a percentage of the award. Not value for money overall.”
“We felt the price (£4K) for the service wasn’t up to scratch. Mainly because there was no human contact during the filing of grants and reviews. All enquiries were done via email and took two weeks. The final application did not have a coherent story, they seem to randomly select paragraphs from our more detailed answers. We scored 66%.”
“I think they were also unrealistically positive about our chances of success, just wanted to take the up-front fee and let their automated system guide the process rather than really working hard with us to ensure the best chance of a positive outcome.”
Quotes shared with permission by GrantHero customers describing their prior experience.
Side by side
In the order you’d experience it, from first call to submission.
Quotes are from GrantHero customers describing prior experience with a named consultancy and reflect their individual views. Consultancy fee ranges are typical figures from publicly listed UK prices, October 2026. We are not affiliated with any firm named.
Same budget. More credible rolls.
Grants are a numbers game. A £5k consultancy fee buys one shot. The same money with GrantHero buys two to four, each one expert-reviewed, each one only entered because you had a real chance.
Illustrative. Based on typical publicly listed UK consultancy fees and GrantHero Review at £1,500 per application.
- You want a well-known consultancy on the invoice and budget isn’t a concern.
- You’re applying to a programme outside our funder coverage.
- You’re happy answering dozens of structured questions by email and waiting on replies.
- You want an honest read on your odds before anyone takes your money.
- You want a submission-ready draft in days, not weeks, reviewed by an expert to the same bar a top consultancy would hold it to.
- You’d rather spend £1,500 three times on winnable bids than £5k once.
See where you’ve got a real shot
Paste your website. Two minutes, no account, and we’ll tell you if the answer is “not yet”.
Also see: GrantHero vs Claude and ChatGPT · Why GrantHero