How much does NIH spend on medical research each year?

NIH funded $42.2 billion of research projects in fiscal 2025, up from $27.8 billion in 2012, before adjusting for inflation. It peaked at $43.6 billion in 2023; the dip in 2013 was the federal budget cut known as sequestration. These are the projects NIH lists in RePORTER, grants and its own labs; NIH's full budget, which also pays for buildings and running the agency, is larger.

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Key facts

Measure: NIH funding (dollars). Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2025, is $42.2B.
  • That is up 52% from $27.8B in 2012.
  • The highest was $43.6B in 2023.
  • The lowest was $26.3B in 2013.

Source and date

Source
NIH RePORTER (National Institutes of Health)
License
Public domain (U.S. government work)
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “How much does NIH spend on medical research each year?” Chart. Data: NIH RePORTER (National Institutes of Health), https://reporter.nih.gov/ (data as of September 30, 2025). https://chart.ly/charts/nih-research-funding-per-year (accessed October 15, 2026).

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The data

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The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly.

Fiscal year NIH funding (dollars)
2012 27,808,835,719
2013 26,305,608,282
2014 27,837,957,741
2015 27,261,534,084
2016 29,203,858,546
2017 30,742,592,883
2018 32,904,481,035
2019 35,507,502,698
2020 39,734,139,364
2021 41,176,067,019
2022 42,278,811,528
2023 43,614,231,327
2024 42,725,045,164
2025 42,160,254,206

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