Your application should use the GraphQL endpoint at https://api.xsortal.com:4000

All API requests should send an Authorization header along with your API key:

Authorization: Bearer d445Ug1lk7

Your API limits won't start until you perform your first API request. To help you get setup you can use our test API key as seen below:

Authorization: Bearer 123456789abcdefg

The test API key is unlimited and allows you to test your setup before switching to your live key. The test key will not return real-life grant results and will always return the same two sample grant results no matter which of the 4 limited queries (see below) you request.

Grants API – 5 Minute Matcher

We have a minimal HTML/CSS/JS code example that creates a basic grants matcher in a few minutes. You can view the code here: Grants API – 5 Minute Matcher

API limits are only applied on those queries which return grant results i.e.:

• allPurposes
• allGrants
• purpose
• grant
• relatedGrants

The API imposes limits based on your level of subscription package. The limits are imposed based on two metrics:

Number of unique requests per month x Number of results returned per request

Definition of a unique request

A unique request is any unique combination of arguments passed to any of the API limited queries listed above. Should you request a query using a combination of arguments that you've already used in the last month then results will be returned as normal and there will be no impact on your API limit count.

The following arguments have no effect on your API limit: orderBy, orderByDirection, perPage, currentPage

Should you exceed your API limit then you will receive the below as a response:

{
  "data": {
      "apiError": "You have reached your monthly API limit"
  }
}

Monitoring your API limits

The below X-API Response Headers are sent with every response:

Name	Description	Example
x-api-max-monthly-requests	How many unique requests your subscription alows per month	20
x-api-max-results-per-request	The maximum number of results returned per unique request	20
x-api-total-unique-requests-this-month	How many unique requests have been made this month	2
x-api-total-unique-requests-remaining-this-month	How many unique requests are remaining this month	18
x-api-start-date	When your first request was made	Tue Mar 11 2022 07:38:14 GMT+0100
x-api-limit-start-date	When your current API limit period started	11/02/2023, 07:38:14
x-api-limit-end-date	When your current API limit period will end	11/03/2023, 07:38:14

Our grants database contains thousands of grant. Each grant is broken down into various Funding Purposes. A single grant can have 1 or more Funding Purposes. A Funding Purpose is essentially the part of a grant that someone can apply to get money for.

It is recommended that your searches and results revolve around Funding Purposes rather than the overall encompassing grants as users apply for money at the Funding Purpose level.

Some examples of Funding Purposes are:

• Business Growth
• Job Creation
• Staff Development
• Working Capital

The full list of Funding Purposes can be obtained through the allFundingPurposes GraphQL query.

The main query you use to return a set of Funding Purpose results is allPurposes

The main query you use to return a single Funding Purpose result is purpose

Grant specific fields

Field	Type	Description	Example
id	integer	Unique number to identify the grant	62
url	string	The URL of the grants home page	https://www.cofundni.com
title	string	The title of the grant	Co-Fund NI Business Investment
openOrClosed	enum	Is the grant Open, Opening, Closed or Closing	Opening
currency	enum	The currency the grant amount is in ('£', '€', '$')	£
totalFundSize	integer	The size of the overall pot of money available across the grant's purposes - unformatted	50000000
totalFundSizeFormatted	string	The size of the overall pot of money available across the grant's purposes - formatted	5,000,000
provider1	string	The main provider of the grant	Invest Northern Ireland
provider2	string	The secondary provider of the grant	Clarendon Fund Managers
provider3	string	The tertiary provider of the grant	European Commission
fundingTypes	array	The types of funding provided	Equity Finance
purposes	array	The available purposes for the grant. See below for the Purpose specific fields	Business Growth
dateAdded	string	An ISO 8601 datetime string in UTC format of when the grant was added into our database	2026-05-18T14:30:00Z

Funding Purpose specific fields

Field	Type	Description	Example
id	integer	Unique number to identify the purpose	204796
grantId	integer	The id of the grant this purpose is attached to	62
fundingPurpose	string	The type of funding purpose	Business Growth
fundingPurposeDefinition	string	Definition of the funding purpose	Business growth grants fund activities that help you increase sales or find new customers such as market research, marketing, website translation or the cost of launching a product.
purpose_title	string	The title of the purpose	Co-Fund NI Business Investment
purposeUrl	string	The URL of the purpose's home page	http://www.cofundni.com
purposeApplicationUrl	string	The URL of the purpose's application page	https://www.cofundni.com/company-application-form.aspx
purposeSizeMin	integer	The minimum amount available for this purpose - unformatted	150000
purposeSizeMinFormatted	integer	The minimum amount available for this purpose - formatted	150,000
purposeSizeMax	integer	The maximum amount available for this purpose - unformatted	1000000
purposeSizeMaxFormatted	integer	The minimum amount available for this purpose - formatted	1,000,000
purposeDescription	string	Description of the purpose	The Co-Fund NI programme aims to invest alongside private investors such as business angels or business angel syndicates into eligible SMEs.
purpose_dates	string	Contains the relevant date or dates of the purpose. Could also display, for example, Ongoing if there are no relevant dates	Start Date for Applications: 9th January 2023 Application Deadline: 19th March 2023
purposeRegionIsUK	integer	Does this purpose cover the whole of the UK? 1=true 0=false	0
deadlineDate	integer	An ISO 8601 datetime string in UTC format, if any, of the purpose's deadline date	2026-05-18T14:30:00Z
dateAdded	integer	An ISO 8601 datetime string in UTC format of when the purpose was added into our database	2026-05-18T14:30:00Z
regions	array	The regions this purpose applies to	North West South East
sectors	array	The sectors this purpose applies to. Can also show "All Sectors" if the purpose isn't sector specific	Construction Manufacturing
businessTypes	array	The business types this purposes applies to	Small Business Medium Business

When using the allPurposes query to fetch results there is a default ordering that takes place to ensure the results returned are the most relevant ones. The default ordering occurs under the following conditions:

1. No orderBy specified but a sector argument is specified
2. orderBy is '"sector"
3. No orderBy specified but a location/region is specified
4. orderBy is "region" or "location"

Sector ordering

Sector ordering occurs for the following examples:

query {
  allPurposes(sector: "Construction") {
    ...
  }
}

1st level ordering	2nd level ordering	Comment
1. exact sector match DESC 2. sectors including the given sector DESC 3. All Sectors DESC	purpose_size_max DESC	Results only assigned to the given sector(s) are returned first, followed by those results that are assigned to more than 1 sector(s) including the given sector, followed by those sectors assigned to no specific sector (All Sectors). Results within each sector result group are ordered by purpose_size_max DESC

query {
  allPurposes(
    funding_purpose: "Business Innovation"
    orderBy: "sector"
    ) {
    ...
  }
}

In this example, as no sector was specified but orderBy is "sector", results are returned in sector alphabetical order with those assigned to All Sectors coming after those with an assigned sector.

Location/Region ordering

Location or region ordering occurs for the following examples:

query {
  allPurposes(location: "Dudley") {
    ...
  }
}

1st level ordering	2nd level ordering	Comment
region DESC	purpose_size_max DESC	Results are returned in location heirarchy order (Town -> City -> LGA -> County -> NUTS -> Country). In the example above results will be returned in the order where region matches Dudley -> Dudley District -> West Midlands -> England -> United Kingdom. Within each of those region levels results are ordered by purpose_size_max DESC

query {
  allPurposes(
    funding_purpose: "Business Innovation"
    orderBy: "location") {
    ...
  }
}

In this example, as no location was specified but orderBy is "location", results are returned in location heirarchy order (Town -> City -> LGA -> County -> NUTS -> Country) with those assigned to the whole of the UK coming at the end.

If you ONLY wanted the Dudley results returned, and not any results from the region heirarchy, you can use the locationOnly argument of the allPurposes query. When locationOnly is passed and set to 1, ONLY extact region matches are returned, in this example only results for Dudley would be returned.

27th May 2026

• Fields that returned a Unix Timestamp now return a ISO 8601 DateTime

23rd March 2026

• Updated all arguments to use camelCase as opposed to the old snake_case

23rd December 2025

• Added a new argument and result field into the allPurposes and allGrants queries called Fund Title (fund_title) which shows the title of the fund (if any) such as UK Shared Prosperity Fund or Growth Guarantee Scheme. There's also a new query called allFundTitles which returns all the available fund titles.

4th December 2025

• We've cleaned up some fields to make them more consistent, for example, the allFundingPurposes query now returns the field funding_purposes as opposed to fundingpurpose.

• We've also moved to a more detailed/fine-grained list of sub funding purposes. You can see the new list by using the allSubFundingPurposes query. This new list enables you to find much more relevant grants for your clients.

28th January 2025

• The location argument to both the allPurposes and allGrants queries will now handle regional name variations. For example, Cardiff is also known as Caerdydd in Welsh and is assigned to "Cardiff / Caerdydd" in our database. You can now search for either "Cardiff / Caerdydd", "Cardiff" or "Caerdydd" and the same results will be returned in each case.

8th January 2025

• Updated the GrantHistory definition to reflect the new Removed reasons.

10th December 2024

• Documented the new grantsHistory query.

21st November 2024

• Documented the new sub funding purpose field. It's used in the new allSubFundingPurposes query, as an argument and return value for both allGrants and allPurposes.