Methodology

Every page on RankList is built from publicly published funding data. This page explains exactly how that data moves from official sources to the listings you see, so you can judge its reliability for yourself.

1. Collection

We ingest opportunities only from official open-data APIs and feeds — we do not scrape websites. Current sources are the EU's Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), the UK's Contracts Finder (OCDS), and the US federal Grants.gov Search API. Each source, and the open licence it is published under, is listed on our data sources page.

2. Refresh & expiry

We pull new postings daily and automatically expire opportunities once their application deadline has passed, so listings stay current. Funding bodies can still amend or withdraw an opportunity at any time — always confirm the details on the official source before applying.

3. Normalisation

Sources describe the same things in different ways, so we map them to one consistent structure:

• Sector — EU/UK opportunities carry CPV classification codes, which we map to a single set of canonical sectors; US categories are free text, which we match by keyword to the same set.
• Region — normalised to country (and where available, sub-region) so opportunities can be browsed geographically.
• Amount — funding values are converted to a common currency (USD) for comparison, with the original value preserved.
• Deadline — parsed to a consistent date so closing dates sort and expire reliably.

4. Scoring & ranking

Where we rank opportunities, the order is produced by an objective, weighted model over attributes such as data completeness, funding amount, and recency — not by any payment. The same formula is applied to every opportunity in a list. Rankings are informational and are not advice about whether you should apply.

5. Quality gate

Not every record contains enough information to be genuinely useful. Pages that fall below a minimum data-completeness threshold are marked noindex and kept out of our sitemap, so search engines and readers only encounter pages with substantive content. This is a deliberate choice to favour quality over volume.

6. Independence & corrections

RankList is independent and not affiliated with any funding body. Any sponsored or promoted placement is clearly labelled. If you find an error, email hello@grantsfeed.com and we will review and correct it.