Is your project R&D?
Find out in 60 seconds — free.
Describe it in plain English. Get a verdict with the exact HMRC guideline paragraphs — and if it qualifies, a drafted claim narrative for your accountant. If it doesn't qualify, we'll tell you straight.
For UK limited companies. No card, no percentage fees. Informational, not a claim.
Example input — what you'd type
“We make chilled fresh soups. We tried to extend the shelf life of our beetroot soup from 7 to 18 days without artificial preservatives. Our food tech wasn't sure it was even possible at our pH… we ran maybe 15 reformulations with a lab doing challenge testing each round; some failed at day 10.”
Technological uncertainties: It was not readily deducible whether a stable 18-day formulation at near-neutral pH was achievable with clean-label methods. Established natural preservative systems that succeed in acidic products failed here…
— from the drafted HMRC Additional Information Form narrative, written for you.
51/51 correct verdicts in a 51-scenario stress test — every disguised non-qualifier caught. See the full run →
Built on the DSIT Guidelines — the government's legal definition of R&D
Cites its reasoning paragraph by paragraph
How it works
- 1
Describe a project in plain English
What you were trying to do, what went wrong, what you tried. No tax wording — a paragraph is plenty.
- 2
Get a cited verdict in about 30 seconds
Likely, possibly or unlikely — with the exact paragraphs of the UK R&D guidelines it rests on. If it's borderline, it asks you one question and updates the verdict when you answer.
- 3
Take a drafted claim narrative to your accountant
Qualifying projects get a drafted HMRC Additional Information Form narrative — baseline, advance, uncertainties, how you resolved them — plus a checklist of the evidence to gather.
We're not a claims farm
HMRC is rejecting bad R&D claims and investigating the advisers who filed them. R&D Radar applies the government's own definition of R&D — the DSIT Guidelines — and cites its reasoning paragraph by paragraph. That means it says no a lot. For example, none of these qualify:
- Unlikely
A fiddly website build on an established platform
effort and complexity aren't uncertainty
- Unlikely
New recipes, menus or flavours
culinary craft, not science or technology
- Unlikely
An 'innovative' marketing or business method
commercial novelty isn't a technological advance
- Unlikely
Adapting standard techniques to an awkward job
skilled work a competent professional could plan
A screener that tells you no is a screener whose yes means something — to you, to your accountant, and to HMRC.
Built for the companies that don't realise they do R&D
Most under-claimed R&D isn't in tech startups — it's in firms solving hard production problems who'd never call it “research”:
- Manufacturers changing materials or processes
- Food & drink producers solving shelf-life, stability or process problems
- Engineering and fabrication firms doing what had no established procedure
- Product and software teams building what off-the-shelf tools couldn't do
Solved a hard technical problem in the last two years?
It takes one paragraph to find out whether it's worth a claim.
Screen a project free