Donorbox vs. Givebutter: which one actually costs less?

Donorbox and Givebutter are the two platforms small organizations search for most, and they price giving in almost opposite ways. Donorbox charges your organization a percentage of every gift and advertises a number that isn't the whole story. Givebutter charges your organization nothing—as long as your donors fund the platform through tips at checkout.

That difference is the entire comparison. Not features, not dashboards—who pays, and whether the advertised number matches the real one. We checked both platforms' own pricing documentation, and every figure below carries its verification date. By the end you'll have a recommendation, and it hinges on one question you can answer today.

What Givebutter costs: two different platforms in one

Givebutter's pricing splits into two regimes, and you need to know which one you'd be in before any comparison makes sense. Everything here comes from givebutter.com/pricing and their Help Center, verified April 2026, and applies to accounts created on or after September 9, 2025. (Older legacy accounts run a different 1%/3%/5% structure by product—if you opened your account before that date, your numbers differ from everything below.)

Regime one: tips on. Your organization pays $0 in platform fees and $0 in processing. Not reduced—zero. Givebutter covers processing costs the tips don't. For a small nonprofit, that headline is as good as it sounds on the org side of the ledger.

The money comes from somewhere, though, and it comes from your donors. At checkout, Givebutter prompts each donor to add a tip to the platform on top of their gift. The default has been reported at 15%, displayed as a percentage rather than a dollar amount—so a donor giving $100 sees a preset suggestion that quietly means $15 to Givebutter unless they change it.

Here's the part most comparisons skip. In June 2026, TruthInAdvertising published a piece arguing that Givebutter's tip default isn't meaningfully optional from the donor's side—that the combination of a preset percentage and the checkout flow's design means many donors pay it without registering that they had a choice. Whether you find that framing fair or harsh, the underlying mechanics are real: "free to the org" is funded by defaults your donors have to actively decline. Some organizations are fine with that trade. Some find it quietly at odds with how they want donors treated at the moment of generosity. You should decide which you are on purpose, not discover it later in a donor's annoyed email.

Regime two: tips off. Flip tips off and Givebutter becomes a conventional paid platform: a flat 3% platform fee, plus processing at 2.9% + 30¢ for cards and wallets, or 1.9% + 30¢ for ACH bank transfers (verified April 2026). All-in, that's 5.9% + 30¢ on a card gift and 4.9% + 30¢ on ACH. Givebutter does offer a donor-covers-fees option in this regime, which shifts the cost back to donors—politely and transparently this time, as a checkbox rather than a preset tip.

So Givebutter with tips off is not a cheap platform. It's one of the more expensive ones. The free version and the paid version are, economically, two different products.

What Donorbox costs: the 2.95% that's actually 5.15%

Donorbox advertises 2.95% on its Standard plan. That figure is accurate and incomplete in the same breath—it's the platform fee only. Payment processing is separate, and Donorbox's own published processing table (Help Center, updated April 2026) puts Stripe at 2.2% + 30¢ for registered nonprofits on cards and wallets.

Stack them and a small nonprofit on Standard pays 5.15% + 30¢ per card gift. On a $100 donation, that's $5.45 gone before the money reaches you. The 2.95% headline is not a lie—it's just never the number that leaves your bank account. This gap is common across the industry, and it's exactly what our donation fee calculator exists to surface: enter your monthly giving and it shows the real annual cost, not the advertised one.

A few more Donorbox specifics that matter at small-org scale, all verified April 2026:

• ACH is where Donorbox gets genuinely cheap. The 2.95% platform fee on bank transfers is capped at $25 per transaction, and Stripe's 0.8% ACH processing is capped at $5. A $5,000 bank-transfer gift costs $30 total—0.6%. If your giving includes a few large gifts a year, steering those donors to ACH changes your math substantially.
• Events and memberships cost more. Event ticketing, memberships, and supporter-driven peer-to-peer run 3.95% on Standard, not 2.95%.
• Crypto and stock donations run a flat 3.95% all-in—a capability that matters if you ever receive appreciated-asset gifts.
• The add-on economy is real. Standard is $0/month, but the features that make Donorbox sing are metered: Text-to-Give at $19–50/mo, Zapier/API access at $17/mo, Mailchimp at $8/mo, Planning Center integration at $50/mo, Salesforce at $50/mo, custom CSS at $85/mo. A Pro plan (sources differ on the exact price, $139–150/mo) drops the platform fee to 1.75% and bundles more in. Budget for the add-ons you'll actually use, not the $0 sticker.

Donorbox also lets donors cover the fees at checkout—an opt-in checkbox, not a preset tip, which is a meaningful difference in how it lands.

Side by side

All figures verified April 2026 from each platform's own documentation.

	Donorbox Standard	Givebutter, tips on	Givebutter, tips off
Monthly cost	$0	$0	$0
Platform fee	2.95% (3.95% events/memberships)	$0	3%
Card processing	2.2% + 30¢ (Stripe nonprofit)	$0 to the org	2.9% + 30¢
All-in, card gift	5.15% + 30¢	$0 to the org	5.9% + 30¢
ACH	2.95% capped at $25 + 0.8% capped at $5	$0 to the org	3% + 1.9% + 30¢
Who funds the platform	Your org (donors can opt to cover)	Donors, via tips—default reported at 15%	Your org (donors can opt to cover)
ChMS integration	Planning Center add-on, $50/mo	None	None

Who Donorbox actually serves

Donorbox is built for organizations that run giving as an operation. Multiple funds and designated giving, recurring donation management, crypto and stock gifts, and an integration bench—Planning Center, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Zapier—that connects donations to the rest of your systems. Churches that need giving data flowing into church management software will find Donorbox plus the Planning Center add-on workable; Givebutter has no equivalent path.

The honest cost of all that is the honest cost: 5.15% + 30¢ on cards is expensive, and if fees are your primary concern you should read our Zeffy review before signing anything, because the genuinely free option exists and we recommend it where it fits. But among paid percentage-fee platforms, Donorbox's ACH caps and integration depth are real advantages that compound as you grow.

Who Givebutter actually serves

Givebutter is built around campaigns with energy: fundraising events, peer-to-peer pushes, auctions, team pages, supporter-driven momentum. The product feels like a fundraising tool that also processes payments, where Donorbox feels like a payment tool that also does fundraising. For a parent group rallying around a school auction or a small nonprofit running one big annual campaign, that orientation is worth something.

And with tips on, it costs the organization nothing—which for an org counting every dollar is not a small thing. The price is the tip prompt in front of every donor, defaults and all. If that model interests you, the same trade-off powers several platforms, and our breakdown of free donation platforms and the catch covers how the economics work across the category.

What Givebutter doesn't serve: organizations that need ChMS integration, or the documented stock and crypto giving Donorbox offers. And with tips off, it's simply a more expensive Donorbox—5.9% + 30¢ against 5.15% + 30¢ on cards, with no ACH cap and a thinner integration bench. Almost nobody should choose Givebutter with tips off; the tips are the product.

Our recommendation

The decision splits cleanly on one question: are you willing to put a tip prompt—with a reported 15% percentage-based default your donors must actively decline—in front of every person who gives to you?

If yes, choose Givebutter with tips on. Zero cost to your organization is a real advantage, the event and peer-to-peer tooling is genuinely good for campaign-driven fundraising, and donors who object to the tip can decline it. Go in with clear eyes about the TruthInAdvertising criticism—the default works because many donors don't change it—and check the tip experience yourself with a test donation before you launch.

If no, choose Donorbox. You'll pay 5.15% + 30¢ on cards, and you should say that number out loud before signing up, because it's nearly double the advertised 2.95%. But you get the stronger platform for organizations that operate like organizations—integrations, multi-fund giving, ACH caps that reward large gifts, crypto and stock support—and your donors are never nudged toward a payment they didn't intend.

Don't choose Givebutter with tips off. At that point you're paying more than Donorbox for less platform.

Before you commit either way, run your own numbers through the donation fee calculator—the winner changes with your gift sizes, and ACH-heavy giving in particular tilts the board toward Donorbox. And if neither model sits right, the full platform hub covers the rest of the field, including the best overall picks for small nonprofits.