€12,000 once, €30,000 in Bavaria, 30 percent in year one: what actually pays towards a service robot in Germany in 2026

Funding databases sort by purpose: digitalisation, energy efficiency, innovation, business start-up. 'Service robot' is not a purpose but a device. That is why it appears in no programme title, and why the question is not which programme funds robots, but which programme a robot fits into as an expense. That can only be decided from the wording of the respective guideline, not from a headline. Three questions are enough for any candidate: which expenses are eligible? Who may apply? And what is excluded? The third is the one most applications fail on, because it is not in the brochure.

From the equalisation fund of the long-term care insurance, in the years 2019 to 2030, 'a one-off grant is made available to every outpatient and residential care facility to promote digital applications, in particular to relieve care staff, to improve nursing care and for stronger involvement of people in need of care'. Eligible are 'purchases of digital or technical equipment and associated training'. Up to 40 percent of the funds spent are subsidised, at most a one-off grant of €12,000 per facility. That is the statute. The detail is set by the guidelines of the GKV-Spitzenverband of 8 April 2019, amended on 12 July 2023, and by an orientation guide of the Federal Ministry of Health in its April 2024 version.

For a robot, four passages in these texts decide. First: all outpatient and residential care providers licensed under § 72 SGB XI are eligible, so home-care services too. Second: the main purpose of the purchase must be 'in particular the relief of care staff, the improvement of nursing care or the promotion of stronger involvement of people in need of care'; the guideline names 'improved workflows and organisation in care' among the eligible subjects. A transport robot moving laundry and supplies between store and residential unit can be brought under that; a cleaning robot for the dining room is already further from the wording. Third: the orientation guide's list of examples names software, hardware such as PCs and tablets, billing systems, time recording, e-learning and Wi-Fi as a technical prerequisite. Robots are not in it. But they are not in the exclusion list either, and the guide says explicitly that no funding is given 'if it is not clearly recognisable' that the aim is to relieve care staff. Recognisability is therefore the task of the application: it has to describe which runs and manual steps disappear, not which technology is being bought. Fourth: purchases in connection with a leasing contract are eligible according to the guide, and the application can be made retrospectively for equipment already purchased, at the latest by 31 December 2030.

The trap is the word 'one-off'. The grant has been available since 2019. Whoever used it in recent years for tablets, documentation software or Wi-Fi has used it up in whole or in part. It can be split across several purchases, but the €12,000 is the ceiling per facility for the entire period. Whoever received €8,000 in 2020 has €4,000 left for the robot. Whoever does not know the remainder of their allowance asks the care insurance fund that pays out the grant before writing the application.

The Digitalbonus Bayern has been relaunched, its runtime is set to 31 December 2027, and the programme page says what changed: 'New technologies take priority: the Free State wants to fund robotics and AI more strongly, and other things had to make way.' Funding area 2.1, digitalisation, covers the 'development, introduction or improvement of products, services and processes as well as migration and porting of IT systems and IT applications in the company, in particular through the use of robotics, artificial intelligence, digital twins and modern simulation techniques'. And then the sentence that sets this programme apart from all the others: 'For robotics measures under funding area 2.1, the robot hardware can additionally be funded.' Otherwise devices, plant and machinery are explicitly excluded; robot hardware is the named exception.

The amounts: the Digitalbonus Standard pays a grant of up to €7,500, the Digitalbonus Plus up to €30,000 'for measures with particular innovative content', each at a funding rate of up to 50 percent of eligible expenditure. The Standard is available once per funding area during the programme's runtime, the Plus only once in total. Consulting and training for the solution being introduced may make up to half of the eligible expenditure.

The conditions it fails on: eligible are small businesses in the commercial sector, meaning trading businesses within the meaning of the German Trade Tax Act, with fewer than 50 employees and at most €10 million in annual turnover or balance sheet total, that have a place of business in Bavaria and deploy the measure there. A non-profit care provider is not a trading business; a Bavarian building services contractor with 40 employees is. Excluded are measures for which, before approval, 'a legally binding order was placed or a contract for the provision of a service was awarded (possibly only verbally)', as well as replacement purchases and measures based on a legal obligation. The sequence is therefore mandatory: application, approval, order. Since May 2025 the application requires an ELSTER business account of the company itself, and applications are accepted through a quota released monthly. Whoever is late in the month waits for the next one.

Other German states have digitalisation programmes of similar shape. Whether they include robot hardware is again decided only by the respective guideline; this article names none whose wording it has not checked.

The third instrument is not a funding programme but a sentence in the Income Tax Act, and it applies to every tax-paying business in Germany. § 7 (2) EStG allows, for movable fixed assets 'acquired or produced after 30 June 2025 and before 1 January 2028', depreciation in declining annual amounts instead of straight-line depreciation. The percentage may be 'at most three times' the straight-line rate 'and may not exceed 30 percent', applied to the remaining book value each year.

What that means for a robot depends on its useful life. At seven years the straight-line rate would be around 14 percent, three times that exceeds 30, so the 30 percent cap applies. Of a machine costing €60,000, €18,000 may be written down in the year of purchase instead of around €8,600, and 30 percent of the remaining value in the second year. In total no more is depreciated, only earlier; the advantage is a lower tax burden in the first years and hence liquidity, not money given away. It applies only to whoever carries the asset on their balance sheet. Whoever leases the robot or pays for it as a service depreciates nothing, because the lessor is the owner.

The date is the condition: acquired before 1 January 2028. For a machine delivered only in 2028 the rule no longer applies, and what follows it has not been decided as of September 2026.

KfW's ERP-Förderkredit KMU, programme numbers 365 and 366, finances 'plant and machinery, land, buildings and construction costs, furnishings, operating and business equipment, company vehicles, software' plus running costs and inventory. Eligible are companies with fewer than 250 employees and at most €50 million in annual turnover or €43 million in balance sheet total; for investments up to €25 million per project is possible, with terms of up to 20 years, and KfW writes: 'You can finance purchases, running costs and material and goods inventories at 100 %.' A service robot is a machine and fits.

Only, it is a loan. It is applied for through the company's own bank, at an interest rate the bank sets on creditworthiness, and repaid in full. The programme contains no grant. The repayment bonuses of 3 and 5 percent that sit next to 'KfW' on funding lists belong to the ERP-Förderkredit Innovation, 513 and 514, and there only to tiers 2 and 3, which require the company's own research and development activity or the implementation of innovations it developed itself. Even tier 1, without a bonus, requires the company itself to meet an innovation criterion, such as 20 percent annual revenue growth or a 10 percent research share. A care home buying a transport robot is not an innovation project in the sense of this programme, and whoever claims so in the application loses time at the bank.

The instruments do not exclude one another; they act at different points. The SGB XI grant lowers the purchase price for a care provider by up to €12,000, provided the allowance is still open. The Digitalbonus lowers it for a small Bavarian commercial business by up to €7,500 or €30,000, provided nothing has been ordered yet. Declining-balance depreciation shifts the tax burden on the remainder backwards, provided the business carries the machine itself and it is delivered before 2028. The KfW loan finances what is left.

A sequence follows from that by itself. Before choosing a vendor: ask the care insurance fund about your own allowance under § 8 (8), or in Bavaria check whether the company is under 50 employees and €10 million and whether the current month's quota is still open. Before ordering: the application, because a verbal commitment to the dealer costs the grant in Bavaria. Before the contract form: the question of purchase or rental, because depreciation belongs only to the owner and the SGB XI grant does include leasing but then follows a different application logic. And before the delivery date: the date, because two of the three instruments have an end date that belongs in the order.

This article rests on the statutory text of § 8 (8) SGB XI and § 7 (2) EStG in the version on gesetze-im-internet.de, the guidelines of the GKV-Spitzenverband of 12 July 2023, the orientation guide of the Federal Ministry of Health of April 2024, the programme pages of the Digitalbonus Bayern and KfW's product pages for programmes 365/366 and 513/514, each read in September 2026. Funding rates, quotas and deadlines are changed by the bodies that run them; the Digitalbonus by its own account was relaunched and its funding content changed in the process. Whoever writes a number from this text into an application checks it at source first. Programmes of other German states, municipal funds, agricultural programmes and the special rules for hospitals are deliberately not included, because their wording was not checked for this article. And none of the instruments named says anything about whether the robot works in the operation. A subsidy lowers the price of a bad purchase; it does not prevent one.