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There are free Sentinel Hub accounts and commercial data packages available for pre-commercial exploitation, research and educational purposes, sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA). Check out the Network of Resources (NoR) Portal and this webpage for additional information, sponsorship procedure and evaluation criteria. To apply for sponsorship, follow these steps:

Select the Service


  1. Go to the NoR Discovery Portfolio, scroll down and click NoR Portfolio.
  2. Scroll down and click "Access it here" button at the Ready to use the NoR Portfolio? question.
  3. Select the DPaas Service Type under Service Filters on the left, to limit your results.

  4. Scroll down and search for Sentinel Hub VAS - EDC (you can find it quickly by pressing CTRL-F on your keyboard and writing Sentinel Hub into the dialog box).
  5. In the Sentinel Hub VAS - EDC result, click the Pricing Wizard button on the right.

Pricing Wizard


  1. Project Type: Choose a type of your project from the Project Type drop-down menu. Please note that commercial projects are not eligible for sponsoring.

  2. DPaaS, AH and IDE offerings: Select the Sentinel Hub subscription you need. Note that basic subscription is suitable for most use cases, but if you'd like to do batch processing, an enterprise account is required. Enter how many subscriptions you need, and for how long (as highlighted in blue on the image below).

    Note that ESA sponsorship is limited to 5000 EUR. The subscription type, amount (units) and duration all influence the cost. You can see the cost of the chosen subscription on the right, as is highlighted in red on the image above.

    Next, toggle on commercial data and additional processing units, if you need them. In commercial data, you will select the constellation and the amount of km2 for your project. Note, that constellations are priced differently, and the area size will impact the cost as well. Note that selecting a Sentinel Hub subscription is required, if you want to ask for commercial data.

    Make sure to combine your requested subscriptions and data so it doesn't surpass the 5000 EUR limit. You can see the final cost on the bottom of your Sponsored Resource List. If you surpass the limit, the application will warn you and you won't be able to complete the request. In that case you can either revisit the selected or choose to co-fund it.

    When your are finished with your selection among the other offerings, confirm it by clicking on the "Ask ESA for Sponsorship" button.

  3. Provide the information if your project is related to ESA and if you plan to fund part of the chosen offernings by selecting from the drop-down menus. When done, click the "Open Sponsoring Form" button.

Sponsoring Form


  1. Project Details: Enter the project name, coordinator name, official email address and the name and address of the organization the project belongs to.

  2. Project objectives: describe your project - what it's about, what are the expected results and benefits, who will benefit from them and in what form and at what conditions the results be available.
  3. Implementation Methodology: Describe the implementation methodology, and if you requested commercial data, justify the selected source and amount of km2. In the case that more than one user licence is requested please provide a justification.
  4. Results: Describe what results will be generated from this project and in what specific format. In case of Research and Education projects, specify if the results will be made available to the public.
  5. Justification for selected service(s) and provider: Describe why did you choose this service(s) and provider over the others.
  6. Applied before? Specify if this is the first time you have applied to NoR for sponsorship for this project. If you applied already before, enter the previous assigned NoR Sponsoring Request ID.

  7. ESA Project: If you indicated in the Pricing Wizard that your project is related to ESA, you will have to fill in the ESA related options (Technical Officer and Contract Number) here (as visible on the image below). If your project is not marked as related to ESA, you won't see these options. You can change the first indication by clicking "Back" on the top of the page and return to the Pricing Wizard.

  8. Sponsored Resource List: Here you can see the summary of your chosen resources.
  9. Slides with results: Within two months of the end of the Sponsorship period, you commit to provide by email a set of slides highlighting the project achievements to NoR@esa.int. From the drop-down menu select the expected date of submission of the set of slides.

  10. Export Sponsoring Request: When done, click on the Export Sponsoring Request button to export it in PDF, sign it and email it to ESA at nor-sponsorship-requests@esa.int. If your project is related to ESA, you will need to ask the technical officer to sign the document as well.

That's it! ESA will evaluate your request and let you know if it's granted.