Let me tell you about the most expensive line item most churches never look at. It isn't the copier lease or the electric bill. It's the little slice taken out of every single gift that comes in online.
Most of us picked a giving app years ago because a church down the road used it, or because the demo was nice. Then we never looked again. I get it. But giving fees are a percentage of your church's entire online income, which means even a small difference turns into real money over a year.
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So let's look at actual rates.
What a $100 gift costs you
Here are the published rates from each vendor's pricing page (checked October 22, 2026), and what that means for a single $100 gift. I did the math so you don't have to.
| Platform | Monthly fee | Card rate | $100 card gift costs | ACH rate | $100 ACH gift costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planning Center Giving | Free (≤10 gifts/mo), then $15–$239 | 2.15% + $0.30 | $2.45 | 0% + $0.30 | $0.30 |
| Every.org | $0 | 2.2% + $0.30 | $2.50 | Free | $0 |
| Tithe.ly | $0 | 2.9% + $0.30 | $3.20 | 1% + $0.30 | $1.30 |
| Givelify | $0 | 2.9% + $0.30 | $3.20 | No discount | $3.20 |
| Subsplash Giving | $0 + processing | 2.99% + $0.30 | $3.29 | 1% | $1.00 |
| Vanco ($0 plan) | $0 | 2.90% + $0.45 | $3.35 | 1.00% + $0.45 | $1.45 |
| Vanco ($54 plan) | $54 | 2.65% + $0.39 | $3.04 | 0.90% + $0.39 | $1.29 |
| Anedot | $0 | 3.3% + $0.30 | $3.60 | 0.3% + $0.30 | $0.60 |
| Overflow | $50 | from 2.75% + $0.30 | $3.05 | 0.50% + $0.20 | $0.70 |
| Zeffy | $0 | Zeffy covers it | $0 | Zeffy covers it | $0 |
A dollar or two per gift doesn't sound like much. Let's make it real.
The example that should make your treasurer sit up
Say your church takes $200,000 a year in card gifts, averaging $100 each. That's 2,000 gifts.
- On Tithe.ly at 2.9% + $0.30, you pay about $6,400 a year in fees.
- On Planning Center Giving at 2.15% + $0.30, you pay about $4,900, plus the tier fee. At roughly 167 gifts a month you'd be on the 200-donation tier at $32/mo, or $384 a year. Total: about $5,284.
That's about $1,100 a year back in your budget, from the same people giving the same amount. That's a mission trip scholarship. That's a new set of wireless mics. That's something.
And here's the bigger lever: ACH. Look at that table again. A $100 bank transfer costs $0.30 on Planning Center and $1.30 on Tithe.ly, versus $2.45 to $3.60 by card almost everywhere. Every giver you move from card to bank saves the church money every single week. Put a line about it in the bulletin. Mention it once from the stage. It works.
The "free" platforms, honestly
You probably noticed Zeffy at $0. It's real: Zeffy covers processing and nonprofits keep 100% of gifts. The catch is how it pays for that. Zeffy shows donors a pre-selected "contribution" at checkout, and in one test it was 17% on a $50 gift. A lot of donors miss it. If your people are giving $50 and accidentally adding $8.50, that's going to feel off when they notice, and some will.
Givebutter works similarly with tips, and its pre-selected tip confuses donors too. Every.org asks donors for optional tips as well, and requires 501(c)(3) verification.
None of that makes these bad tools. It just means "free" means "your donors pay instead," and you should decide if you're okay with that.
Watch-outs nobody puts on the pricing page
These come from real reviews and complaints, and I'm not going to soften them:
- Pushpay doesn't publish a price, and reviewers report auto-renewing multi-year contracts that are hard to exit. One reviewer said they were locked into $350/mo after their givers had already moved elsewhere. Another church had to give 3 months' cancellation notice and paid two providers at once. Read your contract carefully. See our Pushpay page.
- Givelify donors love the app, but there's no option for donors to cover fees, and with no ACH discount it gets expensive at scale.
- Tithe.ly has no giving contract, which I like, but reviewers have reported missed recurring gifts and tax-statement issues.
- Vanco has no contract either, but read the fine print: a $23.95/mo PCI non-compliance fee and $10/mo if you're not live within 30 days. One 2017 reviewer said Vanco held their donor data for months after they left.
- Subsplash had a church report a $40/mo price jump it couldn't drop because of a 2-year contract.
How I'd choose
- Pull last year's giving report. Total card giving, total ACH giving, number of gifts. That's all you need.
- Run your numbers through the table above. Ten minutes with a calculator.
- Check what your ChMS connects to. A cheaper giving tool that doesn't talk to your database means somebody is retyping gifts every Monday. Givelify, for example, has few ChMS integrations.
- Ask about the exit. How do you get your donor history out if you leave?
- Push ACH. Whatever you pick, this is the cheapest win you've got.
Want to see everything in one place? Browse all online giving tools with sourced pros and cons.
Stewardship isn't just what we ask of our people. It's how we handle what they give. A couple hours of homework here honors that.