How the ERC and Horizon Europe dashboards work, what the salary data reveals across countries, and everything the EC counts and does not count when pricing a person-month.
If you read our first piece on lump sum vs. actual cost grants, you already know how the mechanics work. But there is one question that keeps coming up from practically every team sitting down to build a lump sum budget: how much should I put for a person-month?
It sounds simple…it’s not.
Between the EU’s official benchmarking dashboards, the
- 1,720-hour rule,
- social security inclusions,
- VAT exclusions,
- vacation and parental leave quirks,
and the sheer spread of salaries across 27 member states plus associated countries, getting personnel costs right takes a bit of unpacking. That is what this article is for.
The European Commission (EC) has made available two separate benchmarking tools for lump sum personnel costs. They are not the same, and they should not be confused.
The ERC Personnel Costs Dashboard is specifically built for ERC Advanced Grant lump sum applications.
It shows the distribution of historical monthly personnel costs by country and by staff category, using data from funded ERC projects over a rolling six-year window. The data for Principal Investigators is drawn exclusively from Advanced Grant reports, while all other staff categories pull from the broader ERC grant portfolio.
The Horizon Europe (HE) Dashboard, found on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, covers the rest of the programme: Research and Innovation Actions, Innovation Actions, Coordination and Support Actions, and similar.
Unlike the ERC dashboard, it merges all staff categories into one view. It draws on data from 2022 to the present, supplemented by H2020 data from 2018–2020 where recent data is thin.
Key point: The ERC dashboard is used by evaluation panels for ERC Advanced Grant calls only. If you are preparing a standard HE lump sum proposal, the relevant benchmark is the Horizon dashboard on the Funding & Tenders Portal, not the ERC one. Using the wrong dashboard could mean you are comparing your budget against the wrong reference entirely.
Both dashboards use histograms with €500 bins and exclude extreme outliers below the 10th percentile and above the 90th percentile. The goal is to show realistic cost expectations, not the full statistical range. The date of the last data refresh is shown on each dashboard; once a call opens, the data is frozen until evaluation is complete to ensure a level playing field.
Each histogram bar represents the number of person-months that were funded at a cost within that €500 range. The underlying calculation divides total reported personnel costs by total person-months worked per staff category, per participant, per grant. It is therefore an average loaded cost meaning it reflects not just salary, but everything the employer pays on top.
This is important to understand. When you look at a data point saying a postdoc in Germany costs around €5,000 per month, that is not take-home pay. It is the total employer cost, covering gross salary, employer social security contributions, and other mandatory remuneration costs recorded in the beneficiary’s statutory accounts. Vacation pay, sick leave provisions, and pension contributions are already baked in where they form part of the employment contract or national law. So the number looks high relative to what a researcher actually receives. That is by design.
What the dashboards do not show: they do not tell you what salary is appropriate for a given role in isolation, they do not guarantee your proposed costs will be accepted, and they absolutely do not replace your institution’s own accounting practices. The EC is explicit that personnel costs must reflect what you actually pay, not what the dashboard says. The dashboard is a benchmark for evaluators to flag unusual proposals, not a price list.
If your costs are above the 90th percentile: you will need to justify this explicitly in your proposal. Exceeding the dashboard range by more than around 20% without explanation tends to attract scrutiny from panels. “This is what we pay” is a valid justification, but you need to say it clearly and, ideally, back it up with institutional salary scales.
Under HE, the EC uses 1,720 hours as the standard annual productive hours for a full-time employee. Divide that by 215 working days, and you get 8 hours per day. This is the basis for calculating the daily rate that feeds into personnel cost reporting for actual cost grants
But here is the practical implication that confuses people: the EC only pays for 215 day-equivalents per year per person, at most. If someone works 220 days on a project in a given year, only 215 of those days are claimable. The cap does not move.
Hours per year
Maximum 1,720 productive hours (215 days x 8 hours). Nothing above that is claimable, regardless of actual hours worked.
Holidays & vacation
Annual leave, public holidays, and sick days are not separately payable. They are embedded in the loaded cost through the 215-day ceiling.
Parental leave
Parental leave days can be deducted from the 215-day cap, preserving some day-equivalent budget when someone is on leave. This is an explicit allowance in the Annotated Grant Agreement.
Social security
Employer social contributions are included in eligible personnel costs. The full loaded employer cost, not just gross salary, is what you report and budget.
VAT
VAT is explicitly ineligible as a personnel cost. You cannot claim it back through the grant unless VAT is genuinely non-recoverable and you can demonstrate that.
Bonuses & supplements
Eligible if they arise from national law, a collective agreement, or the employment contract and if they were actually paid during the reporting period. Estimated or reserved bonuses are not eligible.
One of the most common confusions in proposal writing is the gap between “what we pay our researcher” and “what goes in the budget.” The answer lies in the employer’s burden, the costs the organisation carries on top of gross salary.
In most EU countries, employer social security contributions add between 15% and 40% on top of gross salary. France and Sweden sit at the high end (over 30% non-wage costs), while Romania, Lithuania, and Malta are considerably lower (under 6% in Romania’s case). Across the EU as a whole, non-wage costs represented around 24.7% of total labour costs in 2024 according to Eurostat.
This means a researcher on a €60,000 gross annual salary in Germany might cost the institution closer to €75,000–80,000 once employer social charges are included, which translates to roughly €6,200–6,600 per person-month in the budget, not €5,000. If you budget at the net salary level, you will underfund your project.
The table below gives an indicative picture of the monthly personnel cost ranges across key European countries for research staff. These figures are derived from Eurostat’s 2024 hourly labour cost data converted to monthly full-time equivalent costs (using 1,720/12 ≈ 143 hours per month). They are intended as a rough orientation, not as substitutes for checking the actual dashboards for your specific staff category and country.
Source: Eurostat labour cost data 2024. Monthly figures are illustrative estimates based on the 1,720 annual hours standard and do not represent official EC benchmarks. Ranges reflect variation across staff levels (junior to senior). Always consult the official ERC or HE dashboards for your specific country and staff category.
A note on associated countries: Switzerland, Norway, Israel, and other associated countries are also represented in both dashboards. Switzerland in particular tends to show some of the highest monthly personnel costs in the entire dataset, often approaching or exceeding €9,000–11,000 per month for senior researchers, given the local cost of living and institutional salary structures at institutions like ETH Zurich or EPFL.
The dashboards show historical data going back six years from the call year. A clear trend can be seen: personnel costs across Europe have risen substantially, particularly since 2021.
Eurostat data shows that average hourly labour costs across the EU have increased by nearly 18% between 2020 and 2024. Countries in Central and Eastern Europe saw even sharper rises: Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Hungary all recorded double-digit annual increases in 2023 and 2024 driven by wage catch-up and inflation dynamics.
Source: Eurostat (lc_lci_lev). 2018–2020 values estimated from trend series. These are whole-economy averages; research sector costs follow similar trajectories but may be higher.
Why does this matter for your lump sum budget?
Because the dashboards use a rolling six-year average, a salary that sits at the 70th percentile in the historical data might actually reflect a 2024 cost that is entirely mainstream or even slightly below-market.
In other words, the dashboards may understate current costs, especially in high-inflation environments. This is worth flagging in your budget justification if your proposed figures are above the dashboard median but well-grounded in your current institutional salary scales.
When you sit down to build your detailed budget table for a lump sum proposal, you are doing something the EC will scrutinise carefully. Unlike actual cost grants, where the financial reconciliation happens post-award, in lump-sum funding, the money is set at the proposal stage. Evaluators use the dashboards to sense-check your figures, and if something looks off, it can affect your budget negotiation or your overall score.
Use your institution’s actual cost accounting
The dashboards are benchmarks, not templates. You should calculate personnel costs based on what your institution actually pays gross salary plus employer contributions divided by 12 to get a monthly figure. Using the dashboard average as your budget number when your institution pays significantly more is a recipe for a funding shortfall that you will have to absorb.
Justify above-average costs clearly
If your proposed monthly costs are above the 75th percentile in the dashboard, say why. Common legitimate reasons include: the seniority and specialisation of the role, institutional salary scales benchmarked nationally or through collective agreements, a high-cost city like Paris, Amsterdam, or Zurich, or simply that your institution offers competitive packages to attract talent. Evaluators understand these realities; they just need to see the reasoning.
Account for cost increases over the project lifetime
If your project runs for three to five years, personnel costs will almost certainly rise during that period due to salary indexation, promotions, or collective agreements.
Lump sum budgets are fixed at award. This does not mean you should inflate your budget, but it does mean you should plan realistic cost trajectories and, where possible, build some buffer into your estimates, particularly in countries with strong collective bargaining traditions where annual salary increases are contractually guaranteed.
Do not forget indirect costs
HE provides a flat 25% indirect cost rate on top of eligible direct costs (excluding subcontracting). This overhead contribution covers rent, utilities, shared infrastructure, and administration. A project with €1 million in direct personnel costs will have an indirect cost contribution of €250,000, making the total project cost €1.25 million for the same effort. This amplifies any underestimation in your personnel figures.
Here is the logic in plain terms:
- Take the researcher’s gross annual salary.
- Add employer social security contributions (typically 15–35% of gross salary check your national rate).
- The result is the total annual personnel cost.
- Divide by 12 to get the monthly cost.
- Multiply by the number of person-months that the person will work on the project.
Then check where that monthly figure sits in the relevant dashboard histogram. If it is between the 10th and 90th percentile, you are in the clear. If it is outside that range, prepare your justification.
And remember: the benchmark covers costs that already occurred in the past, current costs, particularly in 2024 and 2025, may sit higher than the historical distribution suggests.
Getting personnel costs right in a lump sum proposal is genuinely one of the more demanding aspects of the entire budget exercise.
There are no fixed answers, only methods: use real payroll data, check the relevant dashboard for your programme and country, document your reasoning, and remember that the goal is a budget that you can actually implement, not one that simply clears evaluation.
If you are working through a lump sum budget and want a second pair of eyes, reach out to the Future Needs team at proposals@futureneeds.eu. We work through these calculations regularly and know where the friction points tend to be.
