Every few weeks someone tells us about a phone call, an email or a website that offered them a grant for a fee. Sometimes it is an outright scam. More often it is a legal business selling access to information the government publishes for nothing. Both are worth recognising quickly, because a small business owner's time is the scarce thing here, not the grant.
This is how the regulators describe the problem, and how to check any approach in a few minutes.
Two things the government never does
The Australian Government's business site puts it plainly: it will never ask you to pay for access to government grant information, and it warns against websites that charge fees for grant-related services.[1] Grants are awarded on merit, so there is no such thing as paying for special access or consideration.[1] The same page warns about sites that mimic official ones with government logos and misleading web addresses.[1]
Scamwatch adds the second half: the government does not cold call offering grants, and it does not charge a fee to release grant funds.[3] Its older alerts describe the classic version, an unsolicited call from a fake department asking for a fee to release money that does not exist.[3]
Those two rules screen out most of the traffic. Nobody legitimate rings you out of the blue with a grant, and nobody legitimate needs a payment before funds can be paid to you.
The warning signs, in the regulators' words
Scamwatch's guidance on unexpected-money scams lists being asked to pay money up front, such as taxes or fees, and states that government departments and trusted companies will never ask for an upfront payment to claim a grant or rebate.[4] Its 2026 impersonation alert adds unexpected requests for personal or financial information, especially with a sense of urgency, unsolicited links, and sender addresses that do not end in .gov.au.[5]
GrantConnect itself carries a warning on its homepage about phishing and scam emails impersonating the portal.[6] The scale is not trivial: the ACCC reported that in 2025 Australians made 481,523 scam reports, with 274,577 involving a loss and total losses of $2.18 billion.[7]
Put together, the checklist for any grant approach is short:
- Did you initiate the contact? If not, be suspicious.
- Is there a fee to receive, release, unlock or process the grant? If yes, walk away.
- Does the sender's address, and the website it links to, end in .gov.au? Check it, do not trust the logo.
- Are you being hurried? Urgency is a technique, not a deadline.
- Are bank details, sign-in details or identity documents being requested early? Legitimate grant applications ask for those inside an official portal, not by reply email.
Paid grant databases are a different animal
A paid grant database is usually not a scam. It is a subscription to a curated list of programs that are, in the main, already published on GrantConnect for Commonwealth grants,[6] on business.gov.au, and on state and council sites. The ACCC noted more than a decade ago that some third-party sites charge fees to lodge applications that business owners can lodge themselves for free, and its advice was not to avoid all services but to do your homework first.[2]
The honest test for a subscription is whether the time it saves is worth more than the fee. For a large organisation applying constantly, it can be. For a tradie or a sporting club that applies once or twice a year, the free official finders are usually enough, and the real gap is not finding programs but working out which one actually fits.
What a legitimate consultant looks like
Grant & Tender Co charges for its work, so it is fair to say what a legitimate paid service should and should not do.
- It charges for time and expertise, never for access to the grant or for releasing funds.[1]
- It does not claim insider influence or guaranteed approval. Grants are decided on merit by the administering body.[1]
- It names the official program page and lets you verify every claim yourself.
- It tells you when you do not fit, and when the free option is the right one.
- It has a verifiable ABN, a real address and a phone number that is answered.
- It asks for your bank details only for its own invoice, never to receive grant funds on your behalf.
If a service fails any of those, the fee is the least of the problem.
If you have already paid or shared details
Report it to Scamwatch so the pattern is visible to others, and contact your bank immediately if money or account details were handed over.[4] If a myGov or ATO-branded message was involved, the impersonation alert on Scamwatch sets out the reporting steps.[5]
Regulator pages were checked on 7 September 2026. Nothing above is legal or financial advice.