Every "how much should I save for my kid" article eventually gives you a range and a shrug. This one gives you a number: $2,500 per child, per year. For a family in Quebec, that single figure does most of the work, and the reason is worth understanding, because it also tells you what happens if you contribute less, more, or all at once.
An RESP is the only account in Canada where the government hands you a guaranteed return the moment you contribute. In Quebec you collect that return twice, once federally and once provincially. The efficient contribution is the one that fills both taps without spilling, and it turns out to be a very specific amount.
This is the plain version of the math for 2026: where the $2,500 comes from, the finish line the lifetime caps set, how to catch up if you started late, the income-tested top-ups worth checking, and the two deadlines that quietly close the door. The public reference for the federal side is the Canada Education Savings Grant page; for the provincial side it is Revenu Québec's QESI page.
The one number: $2,500 a year
Two grants attach to your contributions:
- The basic CESG (federal) pays 20% on the first $2,500 you contribute per child each year. That is $500 a year, up to a lifetime maximum of $7,200 per child.
- The QESI (Quebec) pays 10% on that same first $2,500. That is $250 a year, up to a lifetime maximum of $3,600 per child.
Both grants cap out at exactly the same contribution: $2,500. Put in $2,500 and you collect $500 + $250 = $750. That is a 30% return, guaranteed, before the money buys a single unit of anything. No investment inside the RESP has to do any work for you to be up 30% on that contribution.
Contribute less than $2,500 and you leave grant on the table. Contribute more in the same year and the extra earns no grant at all, unless you are catching up (more on that below). So the annual sweet spot is not "as much as you can afford." It is $2,500, and then anything beyond that is a different decision with different math.
The finish line: $36,000, not $50,000
The RESP has a $50,000 lifetime contribution limit per child and, unusually, no annual contribution limit. That $50,000 ceiling is a red herring for grant purposes, because the grants run out long before you reach it.
Here is the clean version. The federal CESG stops at $7,200 and the QESI stops at $3,600. You hit both by contributing $2,500 a year for 14 years, then $1,000 in the 15th year, which is $36,000 total:
- 14 × $2,500 = $35,000, earning 14 × $500 = $7,000 CESG and 14 × $250 = $3,500 QESI
- + $1,000 in year 15, earning the last $200 CESG and the last $100 QESI
- = $7,200 CESG and $3,600 QESI, both maxed, on $36,000 contributed
Every dollar past that $36,000 earns zero grant. It still grows tax-sheltered, which is worth something, but it is no longer "free money" territory. So the grant-efficient plan is not $50,000. It is roughly $36,000, paced at $2,500 a year, ideally starting the year the child is born so the 15-year runway fits comfortably before they finish high school.
If you started late: catch up $5,000 at a time
Miss a year and the grant room does not vanish. Both the CESG and the QESI carry unused room forward. The catch is that you can only recover one extra year at a time.
In practice: contribute $5,000 in a year and you collect $1,000 CESG (the current $500 plus one caught-up $500) and $500 QESI (the current $250 plus one caught-up $250). That $5,000 is the annual ceiling on grant-earning contributions. Put in $7,500 and the third $2,500 earns nothing, because you can only pull forward one year's room per year.
So the rule for a family that is behind is simple: $5,000 a year until you are caught up, then drop back to $2,500. If your child is 8 and you have never contributed, you have enough years left to recover the full $7,200 and $3,600 at $5,000 a year, but the window is not infinite, which brings us to the deadline most people never see coming.
The 16/17 rule: the deadline nobody mentions
Grant is only paid up to the end of the year a child turns 17. But there is an extra gate for the years they turn 16 and 17. To collect any CESG in those two years, one of these must already be true by the end of the year the child turned 15:
- at least $2,000 has been contributed to the RESP (and not withdrawn), or
- at least $100 has been contributed in any four earlier years (and not withdrawn).
This is the trap for families who plan to "start seriously once the kid is older." If you contribute nothing until age 16, the door is already shut and you forfeit the last two years of grant, worth up to $1,500 in combined CESG and QESI. A tiny amount early, even $100 a year for four years, keeps the door open. The QESI follows the same age-17 cutoff, so the same early-contribution habit protects both.
The income-tested top-ups (check if they apply to you)
The $2,500 answer is the same for everyone. The extras below are only for lower- and modest-income families, and they stack on top:
- Additional CESG. An extra 10% or 20% on the first $500 contributed each year, so an extra $50 or $100 annually. The rate is set by adjusted family net income, using the same brackets as the first two federal tax brackets: for 2026, roughly $58,523 and $117,045 (these are indexed each year, so confirm the current figure). Families at or below the lower threshold get the extra 20%; those between the two get the extra 10%. The Additional CESG counts toward the same $7,200 lifetime cap.
- QESI increase. Quebec mirrors this with an extra 5% or 10% on the first $500, worth an extra $25 or $50 a year for eligible families. Revenu Québec sets the income brackets and indexes them annually; your promoter applies the right rate automatically.
- Canada Learning Bond (CLB). For lower-income families this one needs no contribution at all. It pays $500 the first year plus $100 a year, up to a $2,000 lifetime maximum per child, and it can be claimed retroactively up until the day before the child turns 21. If you qualify, open the RESP for the CLB alone even if you cannot contribute a dollar.
If money is tight, the priority order is: grab the free CLB first, then contribute whatever you can up to the first $500 to trigger the enhanced rates, then work toward $2,500 as your budget allows.
What not to do: the lump sum at birth
The single most expensive RESP mistake is funding it all at once. Say a grandparent offers $50,000 at the child's birth. Deposited as a lump sum, that $50,000 earns grant on only the first $2,500 that year: $500 CESG + $250 QESI = $750, once. No new contributions in later years means no more grant. You have used your entire $50,000 lifetime room and collected $750 of a possible $10,800.
Pace that same money at $2,500 a year instead and you collect the full $7,200 + $3,600 = $10,800. The paced approach gives up some tax-sheltered compounding on the front-loaded capital, but roughly $10,000 of guaranteed grant is very hard for that extra compounding to beat. If a lump sum is genuinely on the table and you want both the grant and the tax shelter, the usual move is to contribute $2,500 for grant each year and hold the rest outside the RESP until the grant years are done. Grant first, shelter second.
The Quebec gotcha: not every provider pays the QESI
One practical warning specific to Quebec. The QESI is not something you claim on your tax return. Your RESP promoter applies for it on the plan's behalf, and Revenu Québec pays it into the RESP once a year. The problem: not every promoter administers the QESI. Several self-directed and discount brokerage RESPs simply do not apply for it.
A Quebec family that opens a self-directed RESP at the wrong brokerage can do everything else right, contribute the perfect $2,500 a year, and silently forfeit the entire $3,600 because their provider never files for it. Before you commit, ask your provider one direct question: do you administer the QESI? If the answer is no, the $250 a year is reason enough to hold the RESP somewhere that does.
More than one child
Every limit here is per child: each has their own $50,000 contribution room, their own $7,200 CESG, their own $3,600 QESI. There is no family cap and no sharing of grant room between siblings while they are still accumulating. Two kids means two $2,500 targets. A family RESP that names multiple beneficiaries keeps the accounting in one plan, but the grant math is still counted head by head.
How Mozaic helps
I build Mozaic for people who, like me, hold accounts at more than one institution, and RESPs are one of the messiest cases. Grandparents often open a second plan for the same child. The $50,000 contribution room and the $7,200 CESG are enforced across every RESP a child has, at every institution, but no single provider can see the others. Over-contribute across two plans and the penalty lands a year later.
Mozaic connects to the major Canadian brokerages through SnapTrade and to the major banks through Plaid, all read-only, and adds your family's accounts into one picture in CAD. If a child's RESP is split between your plan at one institution and a grandparent's at another, seeing the combined contributions against the $50,000 and $7,200 ceilings in one place is exactly the kind of thing no bank dashboard shows you. Data lives in Google Cloud's Montréal region, under PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25; the full posture is at /security, and pricing is a flat $99 CAD/year at /pricing.
The bottom line
For a Quebec family, the efficient RESP contribution is $2,500 per child per year, which fills both the 20% federal CESG and the 10% Quebec QESI for a combined 30% guaranteed return. Pace it for about 15 years and you land the full $7,200 + $3,600 in lifetime grants on roughly $36,000 of contributions. If you are behind, $5,000 a year catches you up one year at a time. Keep a small amount flowing before age 16 so the teen-year grant does not lock you out, check whether the income-tested top-ups and the free Canada Learning Bond apply to you, and make sure your provider actually files for the QESI.
To see exactly what a given contribution earns this year, the free RESP grant calculator works out the basic CESG with no sign-up. For the definitions behind the acronyms, the RESP glossary entry keeps them in one place. And if you have a corner case I have not covered, a child who moves provinces, a plan split across three institutions, an over-contribution to unwind, email me at laurent.risser@mozaicfinance.com and I will add it to the next revision.