Federal agency / NSF
National Science Foundation
- Canonical ID
- usaspending-agency:049
- Fiscal year
- FY2026
- Abbreviation
- NSF
- Budget justification
- Published ↗
National Science Foundation had $10.2B in budget authority for FY2026, the 27th largest of 111 top-tier agencies, and has obligated $2.8B of it so far.
FY2026 finances
Budget authority is what Congress made available; obligations are what has been committed; outlays are cash that has actually left the Treasury. The three are routinely confused and are kept apart here.
Budget authority
$10.2B
Obligated
$2.8B
Outlays
$6.3B
Share of federal budget
0.063%
Obligated 27.6% of available budget authority. Early in a fiscal year a low ratio is normal, not a sign of underspending — this figure means little without knowing which quarter it is.
How these figures are defined
Budget authority
Total budget authority available to the agency in the current fiscal year — what Congress has made available to spend, not what has been spent. Compare against obligations to see how much of it has actually been committed.
Obligated
Money the agency has legally committed this fiscal year through contracts, grants and other awards. An obligation is a promise to pay; the cash may leave the Treasury in a later year.
Outlays
Cash that has actually left the Treasury this fiscal year. Outlays lag obligations, sometimes by years, so a low ratio is normal early in a fiscal year rather than a sign of underspending.
Share of federal budget
This agency's budget authority as a share of all federal budget authority. USAspending reports it as a fraction; it is multiplied by 100 here and stored as a percentage, which is the only arithmetic applied to it.
Agencies of comparable size
Ranked 27th of 111 by budget authority. The five agencies either side are shown, because a bar chart against the Treasury's $4.5 trillion would render most agencies as a line one pixel wide.
- 1Department of Commerce$51.6B
- 2National Aeronautics and Space Administration$44.0B
- 3Small Business Administration$20.3B
- 4Railroad Retirement Board$18.2B
- 5Agency for International Development$17.0B
- 6National Science Foundation$10.2B
- 7U.S. International Development Finance Corporation$10.0B
- 8Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation$9.0B
- 9Securities and Exchange Commission$3.3B
- 10Millennium Challenge Corporation$3.0B
- 11Corporation for National and Community Service$2.7B
Sources & licence
Provenance
- U.S. Department of the Treasury
- Federal spending by agency and geography