Church giving fee calculator
Enter what your church receives online in a year and how it arrives. The table shows what each giving platform would keep in fees.
On these numbers the lowest cost is $8,048 a year with Planning Center Giving, and the highest is $19,760 with Donorbox Standard, on Stripe.
| Platform | Cost a year | Share of giving | Card fees | Bank fees | Amex fees | Subscription |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planning Center Giving | $8,048 | 2.01% | $5,880 | $360 | $980 | $828 |
| Stripe, on your own giving page | $9,920 | 2.48% | $7,680 | $960 | $1,280 | $0 |
| PayPal, confirmed charity rate | $9,920 | 2.48% | $5,952 | $2,976 | $992 | $0 |
| Subsplash Giving | $10,412 | 2.60% | $7,896 | $1,200 | $1,316 | $0 |
| Tithely | $10,760 | 2.69% | $7,680 | $1,560 | $1,520 | $0 |
| Vanco THRIVE | $11,244 | 2.81% | $7,296 | $1,548 | $1,752 | $648 |
| Vanco GROW | $11,556 | 2.89% | $8,040 | $1,740 | $1,776 | $0 |
| Givelify | $13,040 | 3.26% | $7,680 | $3,840 | $1,520 | $0 |
| Donorbox Standard, on Stripe | $19,760 | 4.94% | $6,000 | $960 | $1,000 | $11,800 |
Each rate was read off the vendor's own pricing page on July 29, 2026.
How it is worked out
The calculator splits your yearly giving into card gifts, bank transfers and American Express gifts by the percentages you enter, and divides each amount by your average gift to count the gifts. For each platform it charges the published percentage on the dollars and the published flat charge on each gift, then adds twelve months of any subscription. Where a vendor caps the fee on one gift, the cap is applied to each gift.
A vendor that publishes no American Express rate or no bank transfer rate is priced at its card rate for those gifts. The table leaves out chargebacks, returned bank transfers and any discount a vendor gives without publishing it.
What each vendor publishes
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Planning Center Giving
US cards and debit at 2.15% + $0.30 per transaction, ACH bank transfer at 0% + $0.30 per transaction, international cards add 1.5%. The Giving subscription is a flat monthly rate set by donations per month: free to 10, $15 at 75, $32 at 200, $69 at 500, $115 at 1,000, $179 at 1,500, $239 unlimited.
No separate American Express rate is published for the US, so Amex gifts are priced here at the card rate. The ACH percentage is zero with no cap, which makes a large gift by bank transfer cost $0.30 and nothing else.
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Subsplash Giving
Giving at $0 a month, standard cards at 2.99% + 30 cents, ACH at 1%, read October 13, 2026. The 2.3% + 30 cents card rate on the same page belongs to Subsplash One, the larger platform, which has no published price. A program called GrowCurve is described as taking eligible churches "as low as 1.9%" on cards and "0.5%" on ACH.
No American Express rate is published, so Amex is priced here at the card rate. The GrowCurve thresholds are not published, so no reduced rate is modelled. Ask what qualifies a church, and ask in writing what happens when it stops qualifying.
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Vanco THRIVE
$54 a month, cards at 2.65% + $0.39 per transaction, ACH at 0.90% + $0.39. A footnote sets American Express at 3.99%, and the card footnote applies to every major brand except Amex.
The Amex footnote states the percentage and not the flat charge, so the plan flat charge of $0.39 is applied. Chargebacks are $25 and ACH returns are $5, neither of which this calculator predicts.
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Vanco GROW
$0 a month, cards at 2.90% + $0.45 per transaction, ACH at 1.00% + $0.45, American Express at 3.99%.
Vanco charges $10 a month to a church that does not meet a Vanco giving specialist within 15 days and have its giving page live within 30 days, a charge the table leaves out.
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Tithely
Cards and debit at 2.9% + $0.30, American Express at 3.5% + $0.30 and ACH bank transfer at 1% + $0.30, on a Giving plan that costs $0 a month.
The other Tithely products are separate subscriptions and none of them is counted here. Church management is $72 a month, a website is $19, a custom app is $89, the all-access bundle is $119.
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Givelify
Visa, MasterCard and Discover at 2.9% + $0.30 per donation, American Express at 3.5% + $0.30. No signup fee, no monthly fee, no maintenance cost, no refund fee.
The pricing page names no bank transfer option, so bank transfer gifts are priced here at the card rate.
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Stripe, on your own giving page
2.9% + 30 cents per successful domestic online transaction, and ACH Direct Debit at 0.8% with a $5.00 cap.
No separate Amex rate is published, so Amex is priced at the card rate. Stripe processes payments and does not keep giving records, produce a year-end statement, or split a gift across funds, so somebody has to build or buy that. Discounted nonprofit rates are not published on the pricing page and are not modelled.
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PayPal, confirmed charity rate
Charity transactions at 1.99% + a fixed fee, the fixed fee being $0.49 in US dollars, with 1.50% added on an international transaction. Standard commercial transactions run 3.49% + the same fixed fee.
The fee schedule publishes one confirmed-charity rate and no separate bank transfer rate, so every gift is priced at 1.99% + $0.49 here, including the bank transfer share. Moving giving off cards therefore changes nothing on this row. The charity rate requires PayPal to confirm the church as a charity first.
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Donorbox Standard, on Stripe
The Standard plan is free monthly and takes a 2.95% platform fee on donation forms, pages and QuickDonate. Stripe processing on top of that is 2.2% + 30 cents on cards, and ACH bank transfer at 0.8% capped at $5. The Pro plan is $150 a month and drops the platform fee to 1.75%.
The platform fee applies on top of processing, so it is added to every dollar here regardless of how the gift arrives. Donorbox is a general fundraising platform, and it is in the table to show what a general-purpose option costs beside a church processor.