Church Giving App Fees Compared (2026): Tithe.ly vs Pushpay vs Givelify vs Planning Center

Every digital gift given to a church is taxed twice before it funds a single ministry hour: once by the card networks, and once by the software platform sitting between the giver and the church bank account. Most congregations have never calculated what that costs them in a year.

This guide puts the five platforms American churches actually use — Tithe.ly, Pushpay, Givelify, Planning Center Giving and Subsplash — side by side on published rates, shows the real dollar cost at five giving levels, and identifies the one change that recovers the most money for the ministry.

Apply this study

Set the number before you worry about the rails. Run our Tithe Calculator to fix your giving amount, then use the tables below to make sure the largest possible share of it lands in ministry.

How church giving app fees are actually structured

A church giving app fee is not one number. It is a stack of three distinct charges, and platforms market whichever layer makes them look cheapest.

• Interchange and processing — the percentage plus fixed cents taken per transaction. This is the layer everyone quotes. Typical published range in 2026: 2.15%-2.9% + $0.30 on credit and debit cards, and roughly 1% (often capped) on ACH bank transfers.
• Platform subscription — a flat monthly or annual fee the church pays for the software itself. Some platforms fold this into the transaction rate ("free" tiers), others quote it separately and can run from about $19/month to several hundred.
• Feature gating — text-to-give shortcodes, kiosk hardware, church management integration, and recurring-gift recovery tools are frequently priced as add-ons rather than included.

Two churches on the same nominal rate can therefore pay very different effective costs. The honest measurement is total platform spend divided by total dollars given over twelve months — the effective cost of digital generosity.

Church giving app fees compared (published 2026 rates)

The table below reflects each provider's publicly advertised pricing at the time of writing. Pushpay and Subsplash quote per-church, so their transaction rates vary by contract volume. Always confirm current rates directly with the provider before signing — pricing pages change quarterly.

Read the table with one filter: the ACH column matters more than the card column. The difference between 2.9% and 2.15% on cards is real but modest. The difference between a card gift and a bank-transfer gift is roughly two-thirds of the fee.

What the fee actually costs in dollars

Percentages hide the size of the loss. Here is the same gift processed at three common rate points, showing the dollars that never reach ministry.

Now scale it. A church receiving $1,000,000 per year entirely by card at 2.9% surrenders roughly $29,000 annually, before any platform subscription. The same million given entirely by ACH costs about $10,000. That $19,000 delta is a part-time staff salary, a full youth ministry budget, or the annual support of several missionaries.

This is not an argument against digital giving. Churches that moved to digital platforms consistently report higher per-household giving and dramatically lower seasonal volatility. It is an argument for routing digital giving intelligently.

The single highest-leverage change: move recurring gifts to ACH

One operational decision outperforms every platform switch. Recurring givers — the households who set a monthly amount and rarely change it — represent the largest, most predictable share of digital volume in most congregations. Moving that cohort from card to bank transfer cuts the fee on the church's most reliable income by roughly two-thirds, permanently, with no change of vendor.

How to actually make the switch

1. Set ACH as the default option in the giving form, with card as the secondary choice. Defaults drive behavior more than appeals do.
2. Label it honestly — "Bank transfer (lowest fee, more reaches ministry)". Givers who understand the fee overwhelmingly choose the cheaper rail.
3. Run one annual ask from the platform to existing recurring card donors, showing the specific dollar difference their switch produces over a year.
4. Do not add a guilt layer. 2 Corinthians 9:7 governs: "each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." Information is fine. Pressure is not.

Should givers cover the fee?

Nearly every platform offers a checkbox letting the donor add the processing cost to the gift so the church receives the full intended amount. Adoption typically runs high when the box is checked by default and the copy is plain.

Two cautions. First, a donor who gives $100 and covers a $3.20 fee has given $103.20; the church should receipt the full deductible amount according to its accounting policy and applicable tax guidance. Second, the tithe is calculated on income, not on what arrives net of fees — see our complete biblical tithing guide for how to set the figure before the rails ever enter the conversation. Covering the fee is generosity above the tithe, not a correction to it.

"Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." — 2 Corinthians 9:7 (ESV)

Tithe.ly complaints: what users actually report

Tithe.ly is the most searched platform of the five, and the most searched phrase attached to it is a complaint query. Reading the recurring themes across app-store reviews and church forums, the grievances cluster into four categories — and only one of them is about price.

• Payout timing — the most common complaint. Deposits arriving on a multi-day delay, with holds on new accounts or after a volume spike, catch churches that budget week to week.
• Support responsiveness — ticket-based support with slower turnaround than churches expect during a Sunday-morning outage.
• Donor-side friction — account creation, password resets and app updates interrupting habitual givers, which measurably suppresses one-time gifts.
• Fee surprise — not the headline rate itself, but discovering that the free tier's included features stop where the church's actual needs begin.

None of these are disqualifying, and the same categories appear in reviews of every competitor. Our full breakdown of features, tiers and alternatives is in the Tithe.ly review. The practical lesson: evaluate a giving platform on payout reliability and support first, and on the third decimal of its rate second.

A seven-question evaluation framework for church leaders

1. What is our effective rate? Total platform cost over twelve months divided by total dollars given. One number. Compute it before shopping.
2. What percentage of our volume is ACH? If it is under 40%, fix routing before switching vendors.
3. What is the payout schedule, and what triggers a hold? Get this in writing.
4. Does it integrate with our existing church management system? Duplicate data entry costs staff hours that dwarf a rate difference.
5. What happens to recurring gifts if we migrate? Recurring profiles rarely transfer between processors; a migration can silently cancel a large share of predictable income.
6. Is the contract annual or month to month? Enterprise platforms typically require a term commitment.
7. Is the donor experience three taps or eight? Friction suppresses giving far more than fees do.

Question five is the one that ends most migrations. Budget for a deliberate re-enrollment campaign, or the savings evaporate in lost recurring volume.

What Scripture does and does not settle here

The Bible names no payment rail. It does establish the principles that govern the decision. Faithful administration of other people's offerings is treated with unusual seriousness: Paul deliberately built an audited, multi-witness process for carrying the Jerusalem collection, "for we aim at what is honorable not only in the Lord's sight but also in the sight of man" (2 Corinthians 8:21).

Reducing avoidable leakage on entrusted funds is straightforward stewardship — the same logic Jesus applies in Luke 16:10, where faithfulness in very little is the test for faithfulness in much. Choosing a cheaper rail is not penny-pinching; it is refusing to spend the congregation's offerings on friction. Our Biblical Stewardship Hub works through that principle across the rest of the church budget, and the Christian Finance Apps Hub compares the wider tool landscape.

A short prayer

"Father, everything we handle here was given first by You. Make us careful with what Your people entrust to this church — unhurried in our decisions, honest in our accounting, and free from the fear that counts pennies while forgetting the poor. Let more of every gift reach the work You called us to. Amen."

Set the number first

Decide what to give before you decide how to send it.

Gross or net, salaried or self-employed — get your figure in under a minute, then pick the lowest-fee rail to deliver it.