Calculate your Dublin startup's burn rate with Irish labor costs, R&D tax credits, and Silicon Docks benchmarks. Compare to London and Berlin tech hubs.
Dublin has emerged as Europe's premier tech hub, home to the European headquarters of Google, Facebook, Meta, LinkedIn, and hundreds of fast-growing startups in Silicon Docks. But running a startup in Ireland's capital comes with unique financial dynamics that generic burn rate calculators miss entirely.
Your burn rate—the speed at which you spend cash each month—determines your runway and ultimately your survival. For Dublin founders, calculating burn rate accurately means accounting for Irish labor costs that sit between London's premium and Berlin's bargain, factoring in the 25% R&D tax credit that can dramatically extend runway, and understanding how Enterprise Ireland co-investment affects your cash position.
This guide provides a Dublin-specific framework for calculating, interpreting, and optimizing your monthly burn rate in EUR, with real benchmarks from Ireland's thriving startup ecosystem.
Burn rate is the net amount of cash your startup spends each month. It's calculated as monthly expenses minus monthly revenue. For a pre-revenue startup spending €50,000 per month with no income, your burn rate is €50,000. If you're generating €15,000 in monthly revenue, your net burn rate is €35,000.
The formula is simple: Burn Rate = Monthly Operating Expenses - Monthly Revenue
Your runway—how long until you run out of money—is equally straightforward: Runway (months) = Current Cash Balance / Monthly Burn Rate
What makes Dublin unique is the composition of those expenses and the funding environment that determines how long your runway needs to be.
Dublin occupies a middle position in Europe's cost hierarchy, significantly cheaper than London but more expensive than Berlin or Lisbon:
This positioning makes Dublin an attractive option for startups that need access to tier-one talent without London's crushing costs, or that want European multinational experience without Berlin's smaller talent pool.
To calculate your burn rate accurately, you need to account for every category of monthly spending. Here's how Dublin startups typically break down their expenses:
Salaries are the largest component of burn rate for nearly all startups. Dublin's tech salary benchmarks for 2025:
Remember to add employer PRSI (social insurance) at 11.05% of gross salary—a €60,000 salary actually costs €66,630 annually or €5,552 monthly when employer contributions are included.
Dublin office costs have stabilized after pandemic-era fluctuations. Silicon Docks remains the epicenter of startup activity, with flexible options:
Many Dublin startups stay in co-working spaces like Dogpatch Labs through Series A, leveraging community connections and flexible scaling without long-term lease commitments.
SaaS subscriptions and cloud costs scale with team size and product complexity:
For a 10-person team, expect €2,000-€4,000 monthly in software subscriptions.
Growth spending varies dramatically based on your go-to-market strategy:
Legal, accounting, and advisory costs are necessary but should be managed carefully:
Here's a realistic burn rate breakdown for a Dublin-based B2B SaaS startup with 8 people, post-seed funding:
With €800,000 in the bank post-seed, this startup has a 15.5-month runway before needing additional funding.
Ireland's R&D tax credit is one of Europe's most generous and can dramatically reduce your effective burn rate if your startup qualifies. The program offers a 25% tax credit on qualifying R&D expenditure, meaning for every €100,000 you spend on eligible R&D activities, you can claim €25,000 back from Revenue.
To qualify, your activities must seek to achieve scientific or technological advancement and involve resolving scientific or technological uncertainty:
If 60% of your team is working on R&D (common for pre-revenue product development), and your monthly personnel costs are €44,420 (including PRSI), your qualifying R&D expenditure is approximately €26,652 monthly or €319,824 annually.
Your R&D tax credit claim would be: €319,824 × 25% = €79,956 annually, or €6,663 per month
This effectively reduces your €51,620 net burn rate to €44,957 monthly—extending your 15.5-month runway to 17.8 months, buying you nearly 2.5 additional months without raising more capital.
The credit is typically claimed after your financial year-end and received 6-12 months later, so while it doesn't provide immediate cash flow, it's a significant planning factor for runway calculations.
Enterprise Ireland, Ireland's state agency for indigenous companies, provides multiple funding mechanisms that reduce burn rate or extend runway for qualifying startups:
Up to €50,000 in equity funding for early-stage startups with innovative products or services. This non-dilutive or low-dilution funding directly extends runway without affecting your cap table significantly.
For startups with potential to achieve €1M+ in sales and 10+ employees within 3-4 years, HPSU offers up to €500,000 in equity investment. Enterprise Ireland typically takes a 10% equity stake, but the funding terms are founder-friendly compared to institutional venture capital.
Co-funding for collaborative R&D projects with research institutions like Trinity College Dublin, UCD, or NUIG, which can offset development costs and extend technical runway.
Many Dublin startups layer Enterprise Ireland funding with private angel or seed rounds, effectively reducing their monthly burn rate by accessing cheaper-than-VC capital sources.
How long should your runway be? In Dublin's funding ecosystem, the answer depends on your stage and growth trajectory:
Dublin founders typically plan for 18-24 months of runway to give themselves time to hit milestones and raise the next round without desperation. Running out of cash with only 3-6 months left puts you in a weak negotiating position.
Understanding how Dublin's cost structure compares to peer European tech hubs helps you plan competitive compensation, set realistic budgets, and communicate effectively with international investors.
London remains Europe's largest tech ecosystem but with significantly higher costs:
The 20-25% cost advantage means Dublin startups can extend runway by 3-6 months compared to London peers with the same funding round, or can hire 2-3 additional team members for the same budget.
Berlin offers lower costs but with trade-offs in talent depth and ecosystem maturity:
Berlin's cost advantage is real but smaller than commonly assumed, and many founders find Dublin's access to experienced talent from Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and other tech giants worth the 15-20% premium. Engineers with 5-10 years at multinational tech companies bring product development discipline, scalability thinking, and international best practices that accelerate growth.
Whether you're using a spreadsheet or a dedicated burn rate calculator tool, follow this process to get accurate results and actionable insights:
Pull your expenses from the last 3-6 months and categorize them into the buckets outlined earlier: personnel (including PRSI), office, software, cloud, marketing, professional services, and miscellaneous. Use your accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks, or Sage) or export bank statements if you're pre-revenue and tracking manually.
Add up all expenses for the period and divide by the number of months. If you had a one-time expense (legal fees for fundraising, equipment purchases), consider excluding it or averaging over a longer period to avoid skewing your baseline burn rate.
If you're generating revenue, subtract your average monthly revenue from average monthly expenses to get your net burn rate. If you're pre-revenue, your gross burn and net burn are identical.
Estimate your annual qualifying R&D expenditure, calculate the 25% credit, divide by 12 months, and reduce your effective monthly burn by that amount. Remember this is cash you'll receive later, not immediate cash flow, but it's critical for runway planning.
Divide your current cash balance by your net monthly burn rate (adjusted for R&D credit if applicable). This is how many months you can operate before running out of money.
Project how your burn rate will change as you hire, scale marketing, or increase revenue. Build best-case, base-case, and worst-case scenarios to understand your range of possible outcomes.
Not all burn rates are created equal. Here are warning signs that your spending is outpacing your progress:
When runway gets tight, founders face pressure to cut costs. Here's how to reduce burn strategically without destroying your growth trajectory:
Most SaaS companies offer startup discounts, annual prepay savings, or lower-tier plans. Review your subscriptions quarterly and cancel tools with less than weekly usage. Switching from Slack paid to free, Figma unlimited to Professional, or HubSpot Premium to Starter can save €500-€1,500 monthly.
If brand advertising isn't delivering clear ROI, pause campaigns and redirect budget to performance channels where you can track cost per lead and customer acquisition cost. Many Dublin startups waste €3,000-€8,000 monthly on LinkedIn ads that generate awareness but no pipeline.
AWS and GCP costs can spiral quickly. Audit your instances, databases, and storage for over-provisioning. Right-sizing instances, moving to reserved capacity, and deleting unused resources often cuts cloud bills by 20-40%.
Instead of full-time hires for design, content, or QA, consider contractors or part-time specialists. You'll save on employer PRSI, benefits, and can scale up or down as needed. A full-time designer at €55,000 costs €61,078 with PRSI; a contractor at €400/day for 10 days monthly costs €48,000 annually.
Every hire should be justified by clear impact on revenue or product milestones. If you can push a hire by 3 months without materially damaging growth, that's €15,000-€25,000 in preserved runway.
Investors expect transparency about burn rate and runway. In monthly updates or board meetings, provide:
Irish and European investors particularly value capital efficiency. Demonstrating that you're extending runway with R&D tax credits or Enterprise Ireland co-funding shows you're maximizing available resources.
How does your burn rate compare to other Dublin startups? While every company is different, here are rough benchmarks based on stage:
If your burn rate is 50%+ above these benchmarks without corresponding revenue traction, you're likely overspending and should audit your budget.
Dublin founders have access to world-class tools and resources for financial planning and burn rate management:
Learn from these frequent errors that inflate burn unnecessarily:
Don't wait until you have 3 months of runway to start fundraising. In Dublin's market, raising capital takes time:
Start fundraising conversations when you have 9-12 months of runway remaining. This gives you time to run a competitive process, negotiate favorable terms, and avoid accepting desperate deals because you're weeks from running out of cash.
Your burn rate is the most critical financial metric for your startup's survival. In Dublin's competitive tech ecosystem, founders who master burn rate management extend runway, preserve equity, and position themselves for sustainable growth.
Calculate your burn rate monthly, track it against benchmarks, optimize spending without sacrificing growth, and communicate transparently with investors. Layer in Ireland's R&D tax credits and Enterprise Ireland support to maximize every euro of capital.
Ready to calculate your burn rate and model your runway scenarios? Use the Dublin Burn Rate Calculator at ICanPitch to build financial models tailored to Irish startups, compare your metrics to Dublin benchmarks, and plan your path to the next funding milestone.
Try our free startup calculators to make informed decisions about your equity and fundraising.
Explore Calculators →