An incubator is an open-ended program that provides workspace, advisors, legal and accounting templates, and shared services to early-stage companies. Unlike an , an incubator usually doesn't take equity, has no fixed graduation date, and runs continuously instead of in cohorts. Many are run by universities, city economic-development offices, corporates, or non-profits.
You apply or get nominated. If accepted, you get desk space, access to advisors who hold office hours, introductions to lawyers and accountants who work with early-stage companies, and sometimes a small grant or a sponsor's cloud credits. There's no demo day and no enforced curriculum. The bet is that proximity to other founders and access to subject-matter experts will help you make better decisions on your own timeline.
Two practical differences. First, an incubator doesn't own a piece of you, so you keep 100% of the company. Second, there's no compressed program clock. You stay as long as you're productive, sometimes for years. The trade-off is that you don't get the brand-name signal of a top accelerator, you don't get a synchronized investor demo day, and the network effects are slower because there's no cohort moving through together.
Most pure incubators are free to participants. The operator (a university, a foundation, a city) covers costs through grants, sponsorships, or as part of an economic-development mandate. A few corporate-run incubators ask for a small equity stake or a right of first refusal on a future round; treat these as accelerators with a different label.
When you're very early, pre-product, exploring the problem, or working on something that needs more than 12 weeks to find shape. When the operator runs in your specific domain (a biotech wet-lab incubator, a hardware prototyping space, a non-profit social-venture incubator) and the equipment or expertise would otherwise be hard to get. Less so once you have product-market fit signal and need investor introductions on a deadline. The accelerator format compresses that timeline; an incubator doesn't.