Most comparison pages are written by the company that wants to win, which is why almost none of them are useful. This one is too, so here is how we have tried to make it worth reading: every claim about Funraise below is quoted from Funraise's own site or help center, with the date we read it, and where Funraise matches us we say so plainly rather than leaving the row out.
Every screenshot on this page is labeled with whose product it shows.
What does Funraise cost?
Funraise publishes a free plan and a fee schedule, which is more than most of this market does, and they deserve credit for it.
The free plan comes with an eligibility condition, in their words: "Funraise is a free, fee-based, fundraising and donor management platform for organizations raising under $1 million annually." Setup is genuinely free too—asked "Are there setup fees?" their pricing page answers "Nope."
The fee schedule is where the real price lives:
| Free | Premium Plans | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fees | 5% | 0–3% |
| Processing fees | 2.9% + 60¢ | 2.9% + 60¢ |
Premium plan pricing is not published; it is a conversation with sales. American Express costs more on top: "American Express payments incur an additional 1% fee."
Two things are worth pausing on. 5% is the highest published platform fee on this entire comparison, ours included. And the 60¢ per transaction is double the 30¢ that is standard across the rest of this market, which matters most on small gifts: on a $25 donation, 60¢ is 2.4% on its own.
"Free" here means the donor pays
This is not a criticism, it is a description, and Funraise is open about it. Their pricing page carries the badge "~90% of donors cover fees", and explains: "When donors cover fees, the additional amount covers both Funraise's platform fee and a portion of processing fees." Their help center adds that "Fee coverage is preselected on a Giving Form".
So the free plan is free to the organization because the 5% is moved onto the donor, by default, at checkout. Economically that is close to the tipping model Zeffy and Givebutter run, with the difference that the money is framed as covering your costs rather than supporting the platform.
Whether that is a good trade is a judgment about your donors, not a fact we can settle. What we would say is that a 5% platform fee is a large thing to ask a donor to absorb by default, and it is worth knowing the number before deciding how you feel about it.
What does Clerestory cost?
3% per transaction, and that is the whole of our price. No license fee, no per-seat pricing, no modules, no support tiers, no minimum and no contract, and no revenue ceiling on eligibility. Stripe processes the payment on your own Stripe account at 2.2% + $0.30, the non-profit rate our customers receive.
Across every payment we processed through August 2026, our customers' all-in cost—software and card processing together—was 3.148%. Bare Stripe at its standard 2.9% + $0.30, with no software at all, would have cost 3.177% on the very same payments.
Fee coverage is offered in Clerestory too, on every transaction type including memberships. The difference is what the donor is being asked to absorb: our platform fee is 3% and it is a ceiling, not a floor. Our published Terms of Service say it plainly: "At higher processing volumes, the platform fee may be adjusted or capped at a mutually agreed rate."
Clerestory vs Funraise, feature by feature
Read the right-hand column carefully. "Not documented" does not mean Funraise cannot do it. It means we searched Funraise's published documentation for it on 3 September 2026 and did not find it. If it exists and we missed it, tell us and we will correct this page.
| Capability | Clerestory | Funraise |
|---|---|---|
| Price published on the vendor's own website | Yes, 3% per transaction | Yes for the free plan and the fee schedule; Premium plans are quote-only |
| Process on your own Stripe account | Yes | Yes, as a separate gateway—though "Funraise Payments can not be connected to an existing Stripe account" |
| Donor option to cover processing fees | Yes | Yes, and preselected by default |
| Card readers and in-person hardware | Yes | Yes, the Stripe Reader M2 |
| Walk-up point of sale | Yes | Yes, the mobile app with a Stripe Terminal reader |
| Optional donation added to a ticket purchase | Yes | Yes, via a donation ask amount on the ticket form |
| Memberships as a product with a term and expiry | Yes | Not documented—a search of their help center for "membership" returns release notes and an integration to a different system, and no membership feature article |
| Timed-entry admission | Yes | Not documented—an event carries one date and time, and the published ticket fields carry no time |
| Sales tax on retail items | Yes | Not documented—the ticket builder's tax field is a tax-deductible amount, which is a different thing |
| Online store or gift shop | Yes | Not documented—a help center search for "merchandise" returns nothing |
| Retail inventory reduced automatically by a sale | Yes | Not documented—a help center search for "inventory" returns nothing |
| Self-service kiosk | Yes | Not documented—a help center search for "kiosk" returns nothing |
| Liability waiver captured at registration | Yes—versioned, required before payment, with signer, timestamp, IP and version hash recorded | On the roadmap—the only waiver mentions are release notes marked "In Progress" |
| Correct tax receipt per 501(c) entity, per transaction | Yes | Not documented—one tax ID per organization, with subaccounts as separate accounts |
| Class or workshop registration | Yes | Not documented—registration means event attendee or peer-to-peer fundraiser signup |
Clerestory does all fifteen. Funraise matches us on six of them, which is more than most platforms on this list, and we have left those six in plainly because a comparison that finds the competitor lacking on everything is one nobody should trust. Their in-person setup is real, their ticketing is well built, and they let you bring your own Stripe gateway, which most of this market does not.
The waiver row, stated carefully
We want to be precise here rather than score a point. Funraise's help center contains no waiver feature article. What it does contain is the same line in four separate release notes—April, May, June and August 2026—listed under In Progress: the ability to link waivers in checkbox questions on events.
So the honest reading is that Funraise is building toward it and has been for at least five months. It is not a gap they have ignored; it is a gap that is still open. If waivers matter to you, ask them for a date.
Memberships are the row that decides most museum evaluations
Funraise has recurring subscriptions, which handle a supporter giving monthly. What we could not find documented is a membership: a thing with a level, a term, an expiry date and a renewal. A search of their help center for "membership" returns release notes, a peer-to-peer article, and an integration that connects Funraise to Daxko Operations so donors can be matched to members held in that other system.
For an organization whose members are recurring donors, a subscription is the right shape and Funraise handles it well. For one whose membership expires in March and has to be renewed, with benefits attached, it is a different object.
What one sale looks like
This is the Clerestory kiosk mid-transaction. Six of the rows above are visible in one screen.
Funraise has the card reader and can take that payment in person. What is not documented on their side is what is being sold: the admission, the shop item, the stock count and the sales tax.
If you run more than one 501(c) entity
Funraise documents subaccounts, which let a parent organization manage and report on child organizations. What is not documented is each entity carrying its own EIN onto its own receipts; the organization record holds a single tax ID.
In Clerestory each entity is a payment account. Its own EIN, its own tax classification, its own bank account, and its own tax notice on the receipt. Every campaign routes revenue to the account you choose, so the gift lands against the right entity and the receipt carries the right EIN at the moment it is sent.
Which is the better fit for your organization?
Funraise is a well-built fundraising platform with a strong events product, real in-person payment hardware, and unusually open pricing. On six of the fifteen rows above it does exactly what we do, which is the most of any platform on this list apart from Altru.
If your organization raises money through donation forms, recurring gifts, peer-to-peer campaigns and a gala, and your in-person work is taking payments rather than selling admission and merchandise, Funraise is built for that.
Two questions decide it the other way.
What is the platform fee, and who pays it? On the free plan it is 5%, preselected onto the donor, and about nine in ten of them absorb it. Ours is 3%, it is a ceiling, and it is the same number whether or not the donor covers it.
Does the institution have a door? Timed admission, a gift shop with stock and sales tax, a membership that expires, a waiver a parent signs, and two EINs on two sets of receipts are all things we could not find documented on Funraise's side. If most of that describes your week, you are comparing a fundraising platform to an operations platform.
If you are large enough that a percentage of everything makes you uneasy, say so early. Our terms already provide for the platform fee to be adjusted or capped at a mutually agreed rate at higher processing volumes, documented in writing between us and published where you can read it before you ever speak to us.
How we checked
On 3 September 2026 we read Funraise's own pricing page and help center, and verified every quote and every rate above against the live pages in a browser rather than trusting an automated fetch. We did not use G2, Capterra, or any comparison site, and we did not treat marketing pages as evidence of what the software does.
Where we say something is not documented, we ran the search in Funraise's own help center and read the rendered results. We validated the method first on a term that does return results, so that an empty result means an empty result rather than a broken search.
One thing we deliberately did not claim: Funraise publishes two different figures for its ACH rate in two places, so we have not quoted either. And we make no claim about who the merchant of record is, because Funraise does not publish one.
Screenshots labeled Clerestory are from a Clerestory demo organization with test data. Screenshots labeled Funraise are from Funraise's own website. Every quote is reproduced as it stood on 3 September 2026. Documentation moves and products change. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
