Total Donor Cost — what fundraising platforms actually cost your donors
Eight platforms measured on both sides, every figure dated. Verified August 2026.
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What Total Donor Cost Means
Total Donor Cost is everything a supporter's payment has to cover before the money reaches the mission — the platform fee, the payment processing, and any optional contribution added at checkout. One number, regardless of whose invoice each piece lands on.
It exists because "what does this platform cost?" has two different answers, and most published comparisons only give one. A platform can charge a nonprofit nothing and still take a share of each gift, if the share is requested from the donor instead. Both models are legitimate and both are in use. Neither is comparable to the other unless the same arithmetic is applied to both.
So every platform on this page is measured three ways:
Nonprofit-side cost
What leaves the organization's account or appears on its invoice.
Donor-side cost
What the supporter is asked to pay on top of their intended gift.
Total Donor Cost
The two combined, as a percentage of what the supporter intended to give.
Methodology
Reference transaction: one $100 gift paid by card, with the organization absorbing all fees rather than passing them to the donor.
Reference year: $1,000,000 raised across 10,000 gifts of $100 each. Annual subscriptions are included at their published list price. Per-transaction fixed fees are multiplied by 10,000.
Rules applied to every row:
Every figure comes from the vendor's own published pricing page, help documentation, or blog, fetched and dated. Nothing is taken from a competitor's blog, a review site, or a sales conversation.
Where a vendor does not publish a figure, this page says not published. It does not estimate, and it does not substitute a third party's number.
Processing is stated separately from platform fees, because vendors bundle them differently and a combined rate hides which is which.
A vendor's own published figure always beats our model. Where a vendor publishes both an acceptance rate and a contribution amount, those are used directly. Where it publishes neither, the row is marked unquantified rather than filled with a guess.
Donately is measured by the same rules as everything else, including where that is unflattering.
Total Donor Cost Comparison Table
* Zeffy's 16.95% is what a supporter is shown on a $100 gift, observed on a live checkout and dated, not a model. The rate moves with gift size, and both observations are on this page: 17% at $100, 15% at $300. The realized average across all donors is lower by an unknown margin, because some change the dropdown. Givebutter's tips-on row is now ranked on an observation of the same kind, dated 19 Aug 2026. GoFundMe Pro publishes its processing rate but not its subscription, so its row is a floor and cannot be ranked against a complete one. iDonate publishes nothing. Every figure on this page carries an evidence grade — see How we know each number.
** Habitat is not a row here because it is not a platform. It is a website build that includes Donately at a 1% platform fee. If you need a site and a donation platform together, that is the route to the 1% rate. On its own it does not belong in a per-transaction comparison.
What the table shows
On the amount a supporter is actually shown, the two platforms marketed as free to the organization are the most expensive options on this page. On the page's reference $100 gift, Givebutter with tips on presents 18.3% and Zeffy presents 16.95%, against 3.0% for Donately's license and 6.2% for Givebutter's own disclosed tips-off rate. Both findings rest on dated observations of live checkouts rather than models, which is the only reason this page states them.
Note what that means for Givebutter specifically: the same platform appears at both ends of this table. 6.2% with tips off, 18.3% with tips on. Nothing about the software changes between those two rows — only whether the donor is asked, and at what pre-selected amount.
Two qualifications, both of which belong next to it:
01
15% is the ask, not necessarily the average
Some supporters change the dropdown; Zeffy says two of three contribute and claims a 4% average, which this page reports and does not use — the arithmetic for why is in Why Zeffy's published 4% average is reported but not used, below. The realized figure sits somewhere below 15% and nobody outside the company can say where. What is certain is what the supporter is presented with.
02
The default is doing the work, and that is the mechanism worth understanding
A pre-filled 15% is not the same product as a blank field that says "add a tip if you like." Defaults get accepted — that is why they exist, and it is the most likely explanation for two-thirds acceptance on a voluntary charge. The organization did not choose that default, cannot edit it, and cannot switch it off.
The floor nobody can go below. Every platform here that runs on Stripe pays roughly 2.5% on a $100 gift — 2.2% + $0.30 — before charging anything of its own. Donately, Donorbox, Givebutter, Fundraise Up and Funraise all sit on top of that floor, so 2.5% is the theoretical best any of them can do. Zeffy absorbs the floor rather than passing it through, which is what makes its $0-to-the-organization claim true, and what makes the 15% the whole of the donor's cost rather than a layer on top of one.
And the reversal against the invoice is now stark. Ranked by what appears on a nonprofit's invoice, the two tip-funded platforms are first and cost $0. Ranked by what the supporter is asked to pay, they are the bottom two. Nothing about the money changed between those two orderings, only which side of the transaction was counted. That is the entire reason this page exists.
What the donor is actually asked for with "tipping"
Two platforms here are funded by an optional contribution requested from the donor at checkout. Neither publishes the suggested amount, so it cannot be taken from a rate card. It can be read directly off a live checkout.
01
Zeffy — $300 event registration
(observed 6 August 2026)
02
Zeffy — $100 gift
(observed 19 August 2026)
Four things follow that no vendor page states.
The contribution is pre-selected, not opted into. The amount arrives already filled in. A supporter who reads the total and pays is charged the higher figure without ever choosing to contribute. Zero is not among the presets: declining means selecting "Other", which opens an empty field and returns the total to the gift amount.
Because Zeffy absorbs processing, the ask is the Total Donor Cost. There is nothing else on top of it.
The suggested amount scales with gift size — 17% on $100, 15% on $300. That matches Zeffy's help centre, which describes the amount as set algorithmically and scaling down as the transaction grows. Across six live US forms, none presented below 15%; the one 9% sighting was on a Canadian site.
It applies to fee-for-service transactions, not only donations. The $300 example is a registration for a place on a team. The supporter is buying admission and is presented with a platform contribution on top of the price.
$100 is the figure this page ranks on, because $100 is the reference transaction throughout. The $300 registration is included because it shows the direction of travel and is the only fee-for-service example here.
01
Givebutter — $100 gift
(observed 19 August 2026)
18.3% as presented, and the higher of the two. It exceeds Zeffy's 16.95% at the same gift size because the processing fee sits on top of the tip rather than inside it. The two lines are shown separately on the summary screen, which is the distinction this page has been careful about throughout: one is a fee, the other is a tip, and the supporter is defaulted into both.
Neither platform publishes its acceptance rate, meaning how many supporters change the amount before paying. The realized average is unknown for both by the same margin. What is certain is what the supporter is shown, already filled in. On both platforms the contribution can be declined; the two decline paths are not equivalent, and both are described in the fair-dealing notes below.
Per $1,000,000 raised across 10,000 gifts
Zeffy's $169,500 is what supporters are asked for if they accept the pre-selected amount, at the $100 gift size this table is built on. That is more than five and a half times the Donately license at the top of this table, and twice the most expensive disclosed rate on it. The realized total is lower by an unknown margin; Zeffy's own 2023 claim of a 4% average would put it at $26,700, which this page reports but does not use. The gap between those two figures, $142,800 on the same $1M raised, is the size of what a customer cannot verify. This table assumes the full $1M is raised, the only volume at which the license reads 3.0%.
Donately's 4% plan is the highest nonprofit-side rate among the disclosed-rate platforms except Funraise — higher than Givebutter's 3% tips-off, and level with Fundraise Up. Both facts are stated because the methodology requires it.
Our own license, and the conditions on it
Donately's license is $5,000 prepaid, and $5,000 is all Donately makes** no matter how much you raise up to $1M. It does not cover Stripe or PayPal processing, which is charged on top at the standard rate.
So the 0.5% figure that circulates internally is Donately's share, not the donor's cost. Divide the prepay by what you actually raise, then add processing:
The license beats our 4% plan above roughly $125,000 raised, and our $99/mo plan above roughly $190,000. Below that it is the most expensive way to use Donately, and an organization raising $50,000 that prepaid $5,000 would be at 12.5% — worse than anything else listed here.
Past $1M raised the license does not end. It continues per transaction. So $1M is where the prepay stops buying anything extra, not a wall.
It also requires $5,000 in cash before a single gift arrives, which is a real constraint for exactly the small organizations this sector talks about serving.
What the arithmetic shows
01
A subscription beats a percentage above a threshold, and below it the reverse is true
Donorbox Pro beats Donorbox Standard above roughly $12,500 raised annually; Donately's $99/mo plan beats its 4% plan above roughly $60,000, and paying that subscription annually lowers the crossover further. Neither is "cheaper" in the abstract, and any platform that tells you its plan is cheaper without asking your volume is not answering the question.
02
A fixed per-transaction fee is regressive on small gifts
At $0.30 per transaction, a $10 gift carries 3% in fixed cost alone before any percentage applies; a $1,000 gift carries 0.03%. At Funraise's $0.60 the same $10 gift carries 6%. Organizations with many small gifts pay a materially higher effective rate than any headline suggests, and Funraise's fixed fee is double everyone else's on this page.
03
Quote-based pricing is itself a finding
Two platforms here, GoFundMe Pro and iDonate, publish no rates at all. iDonate states plainly that subscription, platform fee and transaction fee are all "based on your overall digital revenue volume." That is a legitimate way to sell software. It also means no prospective customer can compare them against anything on this page without entering a sales process, and nobody can check next year whether the rate moved.
04
A platform funded by an ask earns more when the ask is larger. A platform funded by a disclosed rate does not
This is arithmetic about incentives, not an allegation about conduct. It does not imply that any platform has raised its suggested amounts, and this page makes no such claim.
Worth your consideration
Where a fee sits, and whether you'd notice if it moved
Two structural points. Both are facts about how the models work.
Placement: a fee on your invoice behaves differently from the same money on a donor receipt
On a disclosed-rate platform the fee lands on your statement. You can see it, budget for it, put it in a board report, and argue about it. On a tip-funded platform the same economic cost leaves the transaction on the donor's receipt — so it never enters your books, appears in no report you run, and is set by a suggested amount you don't control.
Neither platform conceals the model. Both describe it on their own pages, and this page does not suggest otherwise. The point is narrower: one of those costs is auditable by you and the other isn't. If your board asks what fundraising cost last year, a disclosed rate answers the question and an optional contribution can't.
Drift: rates change, and only one kind of change is checkable
Prices move in every category, and a platform raising or cutting a rate is ordinary business rather than evidence of anything. What differs is whether you can tell.
- A published rate is auditable over time. A pricing page can be archived and compared. Givebutter's September 2025 restructure is the clean example: legacy tiered fees of 1% / 3% / 5% by campaign type became a flat 3% with tips off — a decrease for events and auctions, documented on their own blog and dated 24 September 2025.
- An optional contribution cannot be audited at all. Neither tip-funded vendor publishes a current default. Zeffy's realized average is on a post from 2023. There is no artifact from last year to compare with this year's.
That asymmetry is the finding. Not that anyone will raise the ask, but that if the ask grew, no customer could demonstrate it. A disclosed rate creates a record a customer can check against last year's. An algorithmically set default leaves nothing behind to check.
What this page will not claim
It will not say that any platform raises fees because it took venture funding. The causation isn't sourceable, and our own campaign guardrails rule out claims about a private company's finances — a rule written precisely because that kind of claim is unfalsifiable and discredits everything next to it.
What it does instead: every rate here is recorded with the date it was checked, and the log is public. If rates rise across this category, the evidence will exist on this page as a comparison a reader can make themselves.
Fair-dealing notes
Included because a comparison that omits them is not accurate.
How a donor declines, on each platform
The optional contribution is genuinely optional on both. Neither offers zero among its presets, and on both, declining means finding "Other". What happens after that is not the same, and a page comparing them should say so.
Givebutter's processing fee is separately declinable. The $3.30 line carries a Change control on the same screen, so a donor who does not want to cover processing can say so. Two opt-outs, both defaulted on.
Stated as mechanics rather than motive, because that is all an outside observation can support. Neither is hidden.
What each model is genuinely good at
- Zeffy's model is genuinely $0 to the organization. It covers all payment processing whether or not a donor contributes, and the nonprofit receives 100% of every payment. For an organization with no budget that is a real and defensible choice. The cost lands entirely on supporters, who can decline it.
- Givebutter absorbs standard processing when a donor declines to cover it, so the organization still receives the full gift. Givebutter publishes that even with tips off, 92% of donors choose to cover processing fees when asked (givebutter.com/blog/givebutter-guarantee, 24 September 2025). That figure is about processing fees, not tips, and this page does not conflate the two.
- Funraise reports ~90% of donors opt in to cover fees, which reduces the organization's effective cost below the table above wherever it happens.
Why Zeffy's published 4% average is reported but not used
Zeffy's blog states that "around 60% of donors give an additional voluntary contribution" and "when they do give, they give an average of 4%" (5 June 2023). This page reports that claim and does not adopt it as the cost basis. Three reasons:
- It is three years old and has not been restated on any current Zeffy property, while the acceptance rate is live on the homepage today.
- The mechanism is algorithmic and A/B-testable on Zeffy's own account. An average from 2023 describes an algorithm that has had three years to change, and there is no published series to compare against.
- It does not reconcile with a pre-selected 15% default, or with Zeffy's own statement about its costs. Zeffy says the contributions "cover our costs." Run both figures against a card-processing cost of roughly 3%:
A pre-selected default of 15% or more makes Zeffy's own "covers our costs" claim work. A 4% average does not. Both statements are Zeffy's; this page uses the one it could verify and reports the other as a dated claim. That is not an accusation of dishonesty — the 4% may have been accurate in 2023, or may measure something different. It is a statement about which figure survives checking.
Zeffy's row therefore carries the observed default. The realized cost across all donors depends on how many change it before paying, which only Zeffy can see. What is certain is what the supporter is shown, already filled in.
How we know each number
Not every figure on this page is known the same way, and treating them as equivalent would be the easiest way to get this page wrong. Each one carries a grade.
The rule that follows: no row is ranked against another unless both are grade A or B. That's why GoFundMe Pro sits outside the ordering despite now having a published processing rate — the rest of its cost is grade C at best.
The grades behind the incomplete rows
Two cautions about the grade C and D figures
A directory listing is a vendor's own marketing, one step removed. Capterra and GetApp figures are submitted by the vendor and may be stale. Two independent listings agreeing on GoFundMe Pro's $299 makes it worth reporting; it does not make it a rate we can put in a total.
Most of the readily available commentary on these vendors is written by their competitors. The detailed fee breakdowns that surface first in search are published by rival platforms — including analyses of Givebutter, of GoFundMe Pro, and of Zeffy. A comparison page that quoted a competitor's characterization of another competitor's pricing would deserve everything that came its way, and this page doesn't. Where a grade D figure is the only thing available, the row stays empty and the gap is recorded below.
Open data gaps
Published deliberately, because a comparison that hides what it doesn't know isn't one. Any vendor who wants a row corrected or added is invited to send documentation.
The rule that follows: no row is ranked against another unless both are grade A or B. That's why GoFundMe Pro sits outside the ordering despite now having a published processing rate — the rest of its cost is grade C at best.
The grades behind the incomplete rows
Two cautions about the grade C and D figures
A directory listing is a vendor's own marketing, one step removed. Capterra and GetApp figures are submitted by the vendor and may be stale. Two independent listings agreeing on GoFundMe Pro's $299 makes it worth reporting; it does not make it a rate we can put in a total.
Most of the readily available commentary on these vendors is written by their competitors. The detailed fee breakdowns that surface first in search are published by rival platforms — including analyses of Givebutter, of GoFundMe Pro, and of Zeffy. A comparison page that quoted a competitor's characterization of another competitor's pricing would deserve everything that came its way, and this page doesn't. Where a grade D figure is the only thing available, the row stays empty and the gap is recorded below.
FAQs about influencer donations
Does a "free" fundraising platform actually cost nothing?
It costs the organization nothing. The cost moves to the supporter as an optional contribution requested at checkout. On two live checkouts observed in August 2026, a $100 gift was presented as $116.95 on Zeffy and $118.30 on Givebutter with tips enabled. Both platforms describe this model on their own pages.
Which platform has the lowest Total Donor Cost?
Of the platforms publishing a complete rate, Donately's license is lowest at 3.0% on a $100 gift, but only at a full $1M raised. At $250,000 the same license is 4.5%, and at $50,000 it is 12.5%, the most expensive figure on this page. GoFundMe Pro and iDonate publish no complete rate and cannot be ranked.
Can a donor decline the optional contribution?
Yes on both platforms, though neither offers zero among its preset amounts. On Zeffy, selecting "Other" leaves the contribution field empty and the total drops to the gift amount, which is two clicks. On Givebutter, "Other" opens a $10.00 stepper, so reaching zero takes roughly thirteen presses. Observed 19 August 2026.
Does Total Donor Cost include payment processing?
Yes, and it is stated separately before being combined, because vendors bundle processing differently and a single blended rate hides which part is which. Every platform here running on Stripe pays roughly 2.5% on a $100 gift (2.2% + $0.30) before charging anything of its own. Zeffy absorbs that floor rather than passing it through.
Why doesn't this page use Zeffy's published 4% average?
Zeffy's blog states that donors who contribute give an average of 4% (5 June 2023). This page reports that figure and does not adopt it: it is three years old, the amount is set algorithmically, and at Zeffy's own two-of-three acceptance rate it would not cover card processing.
What does Donately cost?
Three options, none of which asks the supporter for a contribution. A $5,000 prepaid license covering up to $1M raised, which is 3.0% at that volume and more below it. A $99/month plan at 2%, which is 4.5–5.2%. Pay-as-you-go at 4%, which is 6.5–7.2%. Processing is charged on top of all three.
How often are these figures checked?
Quarterly, with the next scheduled review in November 2026. Every figure carries the date it was verified, and the change log records previous figures rather than overwriting them, so movement across the category stays visible on this page over time. Corrections are welcome and credited.
How this page is maintained?
- Reviewed quarterly. Next scheduled review: November 2026.
- Rate history is the point of the change log. Each revision records the previous figures rather than overwriting them, so drift across this category becomes visible on this page over time.
- Every figure carries the date it was verified. A figure without a date is a figure we would not publish.
- Corrections are welcome and credited. If a figure here is wrong or out of date, send the vendor page and it will be corrected in the next revision, or sooner if the error is material. A page that asks vendors to publish their numbers has to accept corrections to its own.