Donorbox and Givebutter are two of the most popular online giving platforms for small and mid-sized nonprofits. Both let you build donation forms, sell event tickets, run peer-to-peer campaigns and take recurring gifts without a large upfront cost. They make their money in opposite ways. Donorbox takes a platform fee from each gift on its free plan and a smaller one on paid plans. Givebutter charges you nothing when donors are offered the option to tip Givebutter, and a flat fee when you switch tips off.
That difference means the cheaper platform depends on a single setting and on how your donors behave, which is why most comparisons of the two never give a straight answer. This page does the arithmetic on one $100 gift under each option, then compares payouts, recurring gifts, features, integrations and what it takes to move donors from one to the other. If what you need after that is to see which donors to follow up with, Gratefully can take a donor export from either platform on its free plan.
How we put this together. Every fee and term below was read on the vendors’ pricing pages and help centres on 18 September 2026, from India, and is shown as published in US dollars. The worked examples are our own arithmetic on those published rates. We have not run a campaign on either platform. Givebutter changed its pricing for accounts created from 9 September 2025, and this page uses the current Standard pricing unless it says otherwise.
Donorbox vs Givebutter at a glance
| Donorbox | Givebutter | |
|---|---|---|
| How it earns | Platform fee on each gift | Optional donor tips; flat fee if tips are off |
| Free plan fee | 2.95% on forms and pages; 3.95% on tickets and memberships | 0% with tips on; 3% with tips off |
| Paid plans | Pro $150 a month (1.75% to 2%); Premium on request (1.6% to 2%) | Givebutter Plus from $29 a month billed annually, for extra CRM tools |
| Card processing | Your own Stripe or PayPal account, at their rates | Covered by Givebutter with tips on; 2.9% + 30¢ with tips off |
| Payouts | Automatic from your Stripe account, every 2 business days in the US | Withdrawn manually; 3 to 5 business days per its help centre |
| Donor CRM | Donorbox CRM sold separately, price on request | Free CRM with unlimited contacts |
| Team logins | 5 on Standard, 10 on Pro, 30 on Premium | Unlimited users |
| Capterra (18 Sep 2026) | 4.8 from 625 reviews | 4.8 from 872 reviews |
| G2 (18 Sep 2026) | 4.6 from 1,530 reviews | 4.7 from 2,217 reviews |
What a $100 gift costs on each
How Donorbox charges
Donorbox’s pricing page lists a free Standard plan with platform fees of 2.95% on donation forms, fundraising pages, crowdfunding and organisation peer-to-peer, and 3.95% on event tickets, memberships and supporter peer-to-peer. Pro costs $150 a month, with a discount for yearly billing that the page does not quantify, and cuts the fees to 1.75% and 2%. Premium is priced on request, at 1.6% and 2%. The page is explicit that these are Donorbox’s fees only: “Other payment gateways fees may apply.” You connect your own Stripe or PayPal account and pay their rates on top, which Donorbox’s page lists at 2.2% + 30¢ for Stripe cards at the US registered nonprofit rate, 0.8% capped at $5 for ACH, and 1.99% + 49¢ for PayPal. Donorbox deducts its platform fee from each Stripe gift automatically.
How Givebutter charges
Givebutter’s pricing page says: “0% platform fees across all campaign types when tips are enabled. If you disable tips, a flat 3% platform fee applies.” With tips on, “Nonprofits don’t pay processing fees”, backed by what Givebutter calls the Givebutter Guarantee. With tips off, you also pay standard processing of 2.9% + 30¢ on cards and 1.9% + 30¢ on ACH, and you can ask donors to cover it, require it, or absorb it. Donors can edit or remove the tip on any gift.
One detail most comparisons miss: this is Givebutter’s Standard pricing, which applies to accounts created on or after 9 September 2025. Older accounts stay on Legacy pricing by default, where the tips-off fee is 1% on forms, 3% on pages and 5% on events. Many ranking pages still quote the Legacy figures as if everyone pays them.
The worked example
| Scenario, $100 card gift | Donor pays | You receive |
|---|---|---|
| Donorbox Standard, donation form, you absorb fees | $100.00 | $94.55 |
| Donorbox Standard, donation form, donor covers fees | $105.75 | $100.00 |
| Donorbox Standard, event ticket (3.95%), you absorb | $100.00 | $93.55 |
| Donorbox Pro, donation form, you absorb | $100.00 | $95.75, plus $150 a month |
| Givebutter, tips on, donor declines tip and fees | $100.00 | $100.00 |
| Givebutter, tips on, donor covers fees and tips 10% | $113.30 | $100.00 |
| Givebutter, tips off, you absorb | $100.00 | $93.80 |
| Givebutter, tips off, donor covers | $106.30 | $100.00 |
The Donorbox rows use Stripe’s nonprofit rate of 2.2% + 30¢; if you have not applied for it, Stripe’s standard 2.9% + 30¢ applies and a Standard-plan form gift nets $93.85. The $113.30 and $106.30 Givebutter rows are Givebutter’s own examples. Everything else is our arithmetic.
Three conclusions follow. With tips on, Givebutter costs you nothing per gift, but the cost moves to your donors: a donor who tips 10% on a $100 gift is paying $10 to Givebutter rather than to you. With tips off, Givebutter’s flat 3% plus 2.9% + 30¢ is slightly more expensive for you than Donorbox’s free plan. And Donorbox Pro only pays for itself on volume: the 1.2-point saving on form gifts covers the $150 monthly fee at about $150,000 a year in form donations, our calculation, before the unpublished yearly discount.
Across a year
Scaling the same rates up shows where each option lands. These are the fees your organisation absorbs when donors do not cover them, all on $100 card gifts through donation forms, using our arithmetic:
| Raised online a year | Donorbox Standard | Donorbox Pro, incl. $1,800 subscription | Givebutter, tips off | Givebutter, tips on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50,000 (500 gifts) | $2,725 | $3,925 | $3,100 | $0 to you |
| $200,000 (2,000 gifts) | $10,900 | $10,300 | $12,400 | $0 to you |
At $50,000 a year the free Donorbox plan beats Pro comfortably; by $200,000 Pro has overtaken it. Givebutter with tips off is the most expensive column at both sizes, and Givebutter with tips on is the cheapest for you at any size, because the cost sits with donors who choose to tip.
Getting paid
This is a structural difference, not a detail. With Donorbox, the money goes to your own Stripe or PayPal account and never sits with Donorbox; its help centre says US, Canadian and Australian Stripe accounts pay out automatically every two business days, with the first transfer taking around seven days. With Givebutter, gifts land in a Givebutter balance on its Stripe account. Its help centre says funds become available on a 48 to 72 hour rolling basis, withdrawals “are not automatic” and must be started manually, payouts go through a manual approval process, and standard transfers take three to five business days. Its pricing page says two to three. Instant payouts cost 1.75% of the balance, up to $9,999 per payout.
If you want donations to arrive without anyone logging in to request them, Donorbox’s model is simpler. If you are happy to withdraw weekly, Givebutter’s is workable.
Recurring gifts
Both support monthly giving with a donor-facing way to manage plans, and handle failed cards differently. Donorbox retries a failed recurring charge two days after the first attempt, stops after three attempts, and gives the donor a 10-day window to update the card. Givebutter retries three times at 48-hour intervals and then pauses the plan until the payment method is updated, emailing both the admin and the donor. A paused plan can be resumed; a stopped one needs the donor to start again. Donorbox Pro adds a recurring upsell prompt on forms. Our guide to recovering failed recurring gifts covers what to do when cards fail.
There is a catch for Givebutter’s guarantee. Its help centre excludes recurring plans that began before 9 September 2025, gifts through payment methods that do not support tips such as DAFpay and card readers, and campaigns without tips. It also says imported recurring plans are not covered until you manually update each one while tips are enabled.
Features side by side
Campaign tools
Both offer donation forms, event ticketing, peer-to-peer, crowdfunding pages and memberships. Givebutter includes auctions, with its own fee rules, and lists text-to-donate among its free features. Donorbox sells tickets to auction events but we found no bidding or item-management feature on its pricing page, and its text-to-give is a paid add-on at $19 a month, or $50 for a custom keyword. Donorbox’s Live Kiosk for in-person giving costs $80 a month or $820 a year for the first device.
Donor management
Givebutter includes a free CRM: “You can add unlimited contacts and use every feature in Givebutter’s free CRM at no cost.” Givebutter Plus, from $29 a month billed annually at 250 contacts, $79 at 1,000 and $129 at 2,500, adds automated workflows, tasks, texting, custom reports, data hygiene and QuickBooks Online. Donorbox includes basic donor data and segmentation on every plan, and sells Donorbox CRM separately. Its pricing page says “Talk to Sales”, its CRM page asks new visitors to join a waitlist, and its help centre tells existing customers to contact their account manager for pricing. So Donorbox CRM is a live product with no published price.
Integrations
| Integration | Donorbox | Givebutter |
|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | Add-on, $8 a month | Listed on its integrations page |
| QuickBooks Online | Add-on, $50 a month | Givebutter Plus only |
| Salesforce | NPSP integration, $50 a month | Listed; via Zapier as a premium app |
| Zapier and API | Included on Pro; $17 a month otherwise | Free Zapier app |
| Donor CRMs | Little Green Light and Raiser’s Edge NXT as paid add-ons | Bloomerang native; Raiser’s Edge NXT via Omatic |
| Employer matching (Double the Donation) | Add-on, $40 a month | Listed on its integrations page |
Donorbox’s add-ons are itemised in its help centre article on costs, updated 16 April 2026. The more integrations you need, the more Donorbox’s monthly add-ons matter against Givebutter’s free tier. If you run a separate donor CRM, our guide to connecting Mailchimp to your donor CRM covers the email side.
Moving recurring donors between them
From Donorbox to Givebutter. Givebutter’s migration guide lists Donorbox among the Stripe platforms you can move from. Because a Donorbox organisation owns its Stripe account, you copy the customer records to Givebutter’s Stripe account yourself; Givebutter says its part is free and most copies finish within 72 hours. Two warnings from the same guide. Migrated recurring gifts assume you cover the 2.9% + 30¢ processing fee, and under the Standard pricing rules imported plans sit outside the guarantee until you edit each one with tips enabled. And imported plans are not cancelled on the old platform automatically, so you must stop them to avoid charging donors twice.
From Givebutter to Donorbox. Donorbox charges $195 per migration batch for live recurring donations, waived on Premium, and estimates four to six weeks. Its list of platforms it has migrated from does not include Givebutter, which does not prove it cannot be done, but because Givebutter donors’ cards sit in Givebutter’s Stripe account, you depend on Givebutter releasing them. We could not find Givebutter’s policy on that, so ask before you commit to either direction.
Our nonprofit CRM migration guide covers the rest of a platform move.
What reviewers say
Both are well rated. On Capterra, read on 18 September 2026, each scores 4.8, Donorbox from 625 reviews and Givebutter from 872. On G2, Givebutter scores 4.7 from 2,217 reviews and Donorbox 4.6 from 1,530. Review scores will not settle this one; the fee model and payout process will.
Which one should you choose?
- Choose Givebutter if you are comfortable offering donors a tip, want a free CRM with unlimited users and contacts, and run auctions or events. On Standard pricing with tips on, your per-gift cost is zero.
- Choose Donorbox if you do not want a tip prompt on your forms, want funds paid automatically into your own Stripe account, or already run a separate CRM and just need forms. At high volume, Pro’s lower fees can pay for the subscription.
- Check your account date if you already use Givebutter. Accounts created before 9 September 2025 are on Legacy pricing, where the numbers above are different.
For more, see our Donorbox review, Givebutter review, Donorbox pricing guide and Givebutter pricing guide. If you are weighing Fundraise Up too, our Fundraise Up vs Donorbox and Givebutter vs Fundraise Up comparisons cover it, and Donorbox alternatives covers the wider field.
Turning gifts into relationships
Neither platform is built to tell you which of your donors is about to lapse or is ready to give more. That is where a donor intelligence layer helps. Gratefully has no Donorbox or Givebutter connector, so you bring in their donor and gift exports through its CSV import with smart field mapping. It then builds one deduplicated view of each donor, ranks who needs attention with a reason for each, and drafts outreach from each donor’s history for you to review. It is not a CRM or a giving platform.
Gratefully’s pricing page, read on 18 September 2026, has a Free plan, and new accounts start with a 14-day trial of its Advanced plan with no card required before moving to Free. Paid plans start at $79 a month billed yearly. See our Gratefully review.
Disclosure: Zilwaris, the consultancy run by AI Tools Bakery’s founder, does paid advisory work for Gratefully. Gratefully did not pay for this placement, and it is assessed on the same criteria as everything else on this site.
Where the facts on this page come from
- Donorbox: pricing page, and help centre articles on costs and fees (updated 16 April 2026), payouts, failed recurring payments, recurring migrations and the migration fee, read 18 September 2026.
- Givebutter: pricing page, and help centre articles on Standard pricing, Legacy pricing, tips, withdrawals, recurring plans, QuickBooks and recurring plan migration, read 18 September 2026.
- Capterra and G2 ratings, read 18 September 2026.
- Gratefully: product and pricing pages, read 18 September 2026.
The bottom line
On a $100 card gift, Donorbox’s free plan leaves you $94.55, Givebutter leaves you $100 with tips on and $93.80 with tips off. Givebutter is the cheaper choice for your organisation if you are content to ask donors for a tip, and it adds a free CRM and auctions. Donorbox suits organisations that want no tip prompt, automatic payouts to their own Stripe account and a lighter tool alongside an existing CRM. If you switch, plan recurring donors carefully: imported plans start outside Givebutter’s guarantee, and Donorbox charges $195 a batch to bring them in.
Written by
FazFaz is the founder of AIToolsBakery. Some tools here are tested hands on. Others are assessed from vendor documentation and pricing verified on the live page, and every review says which one it is. Sponsors can buy a position in a guide. They cannot buy the score, the criticism, or silence about a better option.
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