The performance of companies is one of the most important issues that investors, creditors, managers and governments pay attention to. Financial corruption affects the performance of companies. Company managers can use profit management or innovative activities to improve the performance of companies. The purpose of this research is to explain the relationship between research and development costs and financial performance, emphasizing the role of the moderator of financial corruption. This research is applied in terms of purpose and correlational in terms of nature and causal method. The statistical population of the research was all the companies admitted to the stock exchange in the period of 5 years from 1396 to 1400, which were selected through systematic exclusion sampling and a total of 123 companies were studied. The findings of the research show that between research and development costs and There is a positive and significant relationship between financial performance and there is no significant relationship between financial corruption and financial performance. Also, financial corruption does not moderate the relationship between research and development costs and financial performance. Therefore, in companies where cash is spent on research and development activities, the performance of the company improves.