Which accelerator, if any?
You don’t need to read about forty-five accelerators, and you won’t have to. This file holds the 45 US programs that were still running when we checked, with the terms they actually offer, and the filter below cuts them to the four or five worth applying to. The equity math, the live deadlines and the visa reality are all further down, along with an honest answer to whether you should do any of this at all. Answer the three questions in Section A and we’ll build your shortlist.
Nobody sponsors your visa
The standard path on an Indian passport is a B-1 visitor visa for the batch itself, then an O-1A for the long term. ESTA, the visa-waiver scheme some countries get, is not open to Indian passports. An acceptance strengthens an O-1A petition, but it doesn’t cover any of the types of proof on its own. Start your evidence file six to twelve months before you need to work legally: press, funding documents, judging invites and published work. And retain an immigration lawyer early, rather than relying on forum threads. The full path is in the visa file.
You’ll need a US company first
Most of these invest only in a Delaware C-corp, or a short list of accepted foreign parents like Cayman and Singapore. If you have an Indian private limited company, that means a flip: moving the company under a new US parent. The flip is effectively one-way. It also triggers Indian tax on the share swap, plus filings under India’s foreign-exchange rules (FEMA). Book the cross-border consult before an acceptance forces the timeline. The mechanics live in the entity file.
Which of the 45 are for you
Answer three questions and the tables below shrink to your shortlist. Most people should be applying to four or five of these, not thirty. Two terms come up in the tables: a SAFE is the standard investment contract these programs use, and MFN means your terms automatically match the best any later investor gets.
Nothing you pick here is sent anywhere. Only the checklist further down is saved in your browser.
Terms shown are what each program publishes. Several are ranges because the program tailors the deal per company, and a few conflict between the program’s own pages. So get the current SAFE in writing before you sign anything. Logos load live from each program’s own domain. Where none is served, the tile falls back to an initial.
Deadlines that are actually live
Counted from today, in your browser. The dated rows are confirmed; everything in the second box is a window to watch rather than a date to trust.
What one point of your company buys
Cash divided by equity taken, for the eighteen programs that publish both. This is the only number that makes the offers comparable, and it spans a factor of thirty.
Read it carefully rather than top-down. HF0 and Neo lead because they take very little for a lot, and Neo’s equity is capped at 5% of your next round rather than taken up front. Alchemist sits at the bottom because its check is tiny, not because it’s a bad program. For enterprise founders, the six months of B2B-specific help is the product, and the money is incidental.
Is any of this worth 7 to 10 percent?
Pick whichever is true of you today.
Either way, check the low-cost stack first. Z Fellows, Inception Studio, Solo Founders and the nine equity-free programs on this page all cost little or nothing. Try them before you price ten percent of your company.
What to do now
Tick these off as you go. Saved in your browser.
{{ progress }}
Good to know
Sources · checked Jul 2026
Deal terms are each program’s own published numbers, not offers. Check the program’s site before you plan around anything here.