The article analyzes the current practice of applying the basic tools of financial support for research and development in small business in the Russian Federation, reveals the reason for the low eficiency of the tools and presents proposals to increase the eficiency of public inancial support for research and development in small business. The study concluded that the use of tools to increase the interest of small businesses in research and development (grants, soft loans and bank loans, subsidies for reimbursement of costs and interest rates, contribution of cash and other assets of the authorized institutions to the share capital, government contracts for research and development and public procurement of innovative products) which are proven abroad, has not led to the desired results due to the lack of consistency in the government policy of inancial support for small innovative companies, its focus on the decision of local, isolated problems; the speciic conceptual approach to the implementation of inancial support, the existing imbalance in the use of certain instruments of support and imperfection of their application. To improve the eficiency of public inancial support for research and development in small business in Russia the author proposes to develop and adopt a comprehensive program to support research and development in the sector of small and medium-sized enterprises, which should provide massive support to pre-seed and seed stage innovative companies «seedbed» and «seed stage», as well as support for research and development of small and medium-sized enterprises through the mechanisms of recurrent funding. Implemenation of the program will allow to link fragmented activities of federal executive bodies and Institutes for Development on the content, timing and resources; to expand the range of potential recipients of support and their interest in accelerating the implementation of the results of research and development; to take prompt decisions on the amendments to the program actions resulting from the analysis of programme’s target performance indicators.