What donation platform fees actually cost you per year
Advertised rates hide half the cost. How the five fee architectures work, why ACH and per-gift fees move the math, and how to run your true annual number.
The Generosity.co editors ·
Somewhere on every giving platform's pricing page is a number with a percent sign, and it is almost never what you'll pay. Not because anyone is lying—the real costs are documented, usually in a help center article—but because the headline rate is the piece of the price that markets best. The rest shows up on your deposit statements.
This page explains how donation platform pricing is actually built, why two platforms with similar-looking rates can land thousands of dollars apart per year, and the three variables that move your bill more than the platform choice itself does. It's the editorial companion to our donation fee calculator, which runs this math on your actual numbers. If you have five minutes, go use the calculator. If you have fifteen, read this first—you'll understand what its results are telling you.
The advertised rate is not the rate
Here's the example that made us build the calculator. Donorbox advertises 2.95% on its Standard plan. That number is real—it's the platform fee. Payment processing is a separate charge: Stripe takes 2.2% + 30¢ per card gift from registered nonprofits, per Donorbox's own published processing table, verified April 2026. All-in, a small nonprofit on Standard pays 5.15% + 30¢ per card donation.
On $100,000 a year in card giving, the advertised number suggests $2,950 in fees. The real figure is $5,150 before per-gift charges. The gap is $2,200 a year—money you budgeted for ministry or programs that quietly went to fees instead.
Donorbox isn't an outlier and isn't hiding anything; every number above sits in their public documentation. This is just how their pricing is structured, and the same structure shows up elsewhere. Givebutter with donor tips turned off charges a 3% platform fee plus 2.9% + 30¢ processing—5.9% + 30¢ all-in on cards, verified April 2026. The lesson isn't "avoid these platforms." It's that the structure of the pricing tells you more than the headline number does.
The five fee architectures
Every giving platform we track prices in one of five ways. We call them architectures A through E, and once you can name them, pricing pages stop being confusing.
| Architecture | How it works | Examples | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Platform % + processing % | Two separate cuts stack on every gift; only the platform fee is advertised | Donorbox, Givebutter (tips off) |
| B | All-in rate | One published number covers everything | Givelify, Tithe.ly, Subsplash, EasyTithe |
| C | Interchange pass-through + tiered subscription | Processing at cost; the monthly tier is the revenue | MyWell, Planning Center Giving |
| D | Flat subscription, donor pays processing | Fixed monthly fee to the org; donors cover the rest, mandatorily | Nucleus, RebelGive |
| E | Free to the org, donor tips | No fees to you; the platform asks your donors to tip | Zeffy, Givebutter (tips on), Txt2Give |
Architecture A stacks a platform percentage on top of a processing percentage. The advertised number is only the first cut, which is why A produces the biggest gap between the rate you read and the rate you pay. With no monthly fee, A is tolerable at very low volume—but at any volume, it's the most expensive percentage structure per dollar raised.
Architecture B folds everything into one rate. Givelify runs 2.9% + 30¢ all-in on Visa, Mastercard, and Discover, verified July 2026. Tithe.ly's free plan is reported at 2.9% + 30¢ on cards and 1% + 30¢ on ACH—consistent across several secondary sources citing Tithe.ly's own pricing page as of July 2026, though we haven't retrieved it from Tithe.ly directly. B's headline looks higher than A's, and is frequently cheaper all-in. Watch for riders: EasyTithe's entry plan runs 3.0% + 39¢ on cards and 1.0% + 39¢ on ACH per figures Ministry Brands supplied to G2 in July 2026 (not from EasyTithe's own pricing page), plus a $10/month security fee that most comparisons miss. Continue to Give's Silver plan is reported at 3.2% + 45¢—a single detailed secondary source from February 2026, so verify before signing.
Architecture C passes processing through at or near cost and makes its money on a monthly subscription tier. MyWell charges interchange with 0% markup—they cite roughly 1.33% average on cards—plus a flat 30¢ per transaction, 0% on ACH, with tiers from $49 to $499 a month based on gifts per month, verified July 2026 from their own pricing page. Planning Center Giving runs 2.15% + 30¢ on US cards and a flat 30¢ on ACH, with subscription tiers from free up to $239 a month based on donation count, verified July 2026. C favors volume: the percentage savings grow with every dollar while the subscription stays flat.
Architecture D goes further—a flat subscription, no cut of any gift, and processing costs pushed to the donor automatically. Nucleus passes 2.7% on cards and a flat 25¢ on ACH to the donor, mandatorily; a church cannot choose to absorb them. Their subscription price isn't published, verified July 2026—you have to ask. RebelGive follows the same model, but four sources give four different subscription prices and their own site publishes no tier table, so get the number from them directly. D means your cost is fixed and your org nets 100% of every gift—if you're comfortable with your donors visibly paying the fees.
Architecture E is free to the organization because the platform monetizes your donors instead, through a tip prompt at checkout. Zeffy charges 0% platform and 0% processing—genuinely, verified July 2026—for registered US and Canadian nonprofits. Givebutter with tips on works the same way. Txt2Give's pricing page says $0 a month funded by donor tips, but their own site states three different prices across three pages, so confirm with them before signing anything. E is the cheapest architecture for your books by definition; whether it's cheapest for your donors is a different question, and we've written about what the catch is with free platforms and a full Zeffy review.
The point of the taxonomy: the architecture, not the headline rate, decides who wins at your volume and gift size. A and B favor low volume, because no subscription beats any subscription when giving is small. C and D favor higher volume and larger gifts, because a fixed cost shrinks as a percentage of a growing number. E shifts the cost off your books entirely and onto your donors' judgment.
The three levers that move your bill more than the platform does
Picking a platform feels like the decision. Usually three other variables matter more.
Card versus ACH mix
ACH—direct bank transfer—is dramatically cheaper than cards on nearly every platform, and most small organizations barely use it.
On Planning Center Giving, a $100 card gift costs $2.45 in fees; the same gift by ACH costs a flat 30¢, verified July 2026. On Donorbox Standard, a nonprofit pays 5.15% + 30¢ on a card gift, while ACH runs a 2.95% platform fee capped at $25 plus 0.8% processing capped at $5, per their April 2026 documentation—so a $1,000 ACH gift costs about $30 against $51.80 on a card. Nucleus prices the difference at its starkest: 2.7% on cards versus a flat 25¢ on ACH, verified July 2026.
The practical move costs nothing: ask your recurring givers—the people already committed to monthly gifts—to switch from card to bank transfer. A handful of conversions among your largest recurring donors can save more than switching platforms would.
Donor fee-cover
Most percentage-priced platforms offer a checkbox at checkout inviting the donor to cover the fees—Donorbox, Tithe.ly, MyWell, Givebutter (tips off), and Continue to Give all do, per their vendor documentation. Architecture D makes it mandatory. Every gift where the donor covers the fee is a gift that costs you roughly nothing, so the percentage of donors who check the box directly scales your bill down.
That rate varies by congregation and cause, and we won't invent a benchmark for it. Estimate yours conservatively, then test it against reality after a quarter. It's an input in the calculator precisely because it swings the answer so hard.
The subscription crossover
Percentage plans and subscription plans cross at a specific volume, and the only question is which side of the crossover you're on. A worked example, all card gifts averaging $40, org absorbing fees:
At $2,000 a month in giving (50 gifts), Givelify at 2.9% + 30¢ costs about $73 a month—roughly $876 a year. MyWell's $49 tier plus ~1.33% and 30¢ per gift costs about $91 a month—roughly $1,087 a year. The percentage plan wins by around $200 a year.
At $10,000 a month (250 gifts), Givelify costs about $365 a month—$4,380 a year. MyWell's $99 tier comes to about $307 a month—$3,684 a year. The subscription plan now wins by roughly $700 a year, and the gap keeps widening as giving grows.
Somewhere between those two volumes sits your crossover. Where exactly depends on your average gift and your card/ACH mix, which is why a table can't answer it and the calculator can.
Per-transaction fees eat small gifts
The quietest number on any pricing page is the per-transaction fee, and it hits hardest where gifts are small. A fixed 30¢ on a $20 gift is 1.5% before any percentage applies; Continue to Give's reported 45¢ is 2.25% of that same gift. Stack the percentages on top and a $20 card gift on Donorbox Standard costs a nonprofit $1.33—6.65% of the donation.
On a $200 gift, that same 30¢ is 0.15%. Rounding error.
This is why average gift size matters as much as total volume. A congregation of text-givers sending many small gifts should weight the per-transaction fee heavily and look hard at architectures with low or donor-paid fixed fees. An organization living on a few large monthly gifts can nearly ignore it.
What to do with this
Run the calculator with your real annual volume, average gift, and card/ACH split. That's the whole recommendation, and here's the reason: every worked example on this page changes with your inputs, and the platform that wins at $2,000 a month with $40 gifts loses at $10,000 a month with $100 gifts. The pattern to expect—percentage plans (A, B, E) win at low volume, subscriptions (C, D) win as volume and gift size climb, and your ACH share bends the whole curve—tells you what the answer will look like. The calculator tells you what it is.
Then read the comparison for your situation: the best donation platform for small nonprofits or the best giving platform for small churches, and the rest of our giving platform coverage. Every fee figure we publish carries a verification date, because a comparison that won't tell you when it last checked is asking you to trust a snapshot of unknown age—and in this category, the snapshot is usually the advertisement.