Aplos Giving vs Tap.Giving: 2026 Cost Compared

The Short Answer (Read This First)

Aplos and Tap.Giving are not the same kind of product. Aplos is a recurring software subscription that runs your church accounting, donor database, and online donation form from one login. Tap.Giving is a passive piece of hardware: a printed disc with an NFC chip the size of a grain of rice, one per seat, no battery, no monthly fee, no platform of its own.

For a 200-seat church in 2026, the Aplos Core plan totals about $11,340 over five years in platform subscription alone, before Stripe takes its 2.9 percent plus $0.30 from every gift. Tap.Giving plates for the same room total $800 once at $4.00 per plate, with free shipping and no recurring cost. Both can power tap to give, tap to donate, and NFC giving in your service, but the price profile is the opposite shape: Aplos is a monthly bill, plates are a one-time line item. Most churches do not have to choose. They keep their accounting solution and add NFC tap plates at every seat.

What Aplos Giving Is (and Who Uses It)

Aplos started as nonprofit fund accounting software and grew sideways into a full operations suite. Today the platform bundles a general ledger, fund accounting, donor management, contribution statements, custom report builders, an event registration tool, and a hosted online giving page. The giving page is one feature inside the larger accounting product.

Churches choose Aplos when the bookkeeper, not the worship-tech volunteer, is driving the software decision. The pitch is unified: gifts land on the donation page, the deposit shows up in the ledger, and the year-end statement runs out of the same system. For churches that need fund accounting at all, that consolidation is the real value. The in-pew giving experience is incidental to the product. Givers click a link, fill out a form, and pay with a card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay through Stripe.

That last part is what makes NFC tap plates and Aplos complementary, not competitive. The plate hands a giver's phone a URL, then steps out of the way. The URL can be your Aplos donation page, your Tithely page, your Pushpay page, your Subsplash, Donorbox, Givelify, Anedot, Planning Center Giving, or Nucleus Giving page. The chip does not care. For a deeper read on how the underlying chip standard works, see how tap to give works for churches and our church NFC tags guide.

Aplos Pricing in 2026

Aplos publishes pricing on a public page, which is a useful signal of confidence. The numbers below are list pricing as of 2026; Aplos regularly runs first-months-discounted promos, and the annual billing option trims a bit off the headline. Confirm current numbers on aplos.com before signing.

Source: Aplos public pricing page and current Stripe rate card as of 2026. Promotional rates and annual-billing discounts vary. The Core plan is the most common landing spot for a church that wants donor records and contribution statements alongside accounting.

The pattern to notice: the monthly fee is for the accounting and donor side, and you keep paying it whether one person gives this month or 200 people give. There is no hardware in the box, so the in-room giving experience is whatever the giver chooses to do with the link on their phone. That is where NFC tap plates fit. For another close-up of recurring-fee giving stacks, see our Breeze ChMS giving comparison and the hidden costs of church giving platforms post.

Tap.Giving Plate Pricing for Churches

Our pricing has one shape: per plate, one time, free shipping. No monthly fee, no setup fee, no transaction fee from us. The plate ships with adhesive backing, pre-drilled screw holes for permanent mounts, and a QR code printed on the front as a fallback for any phone that cannot read NFC.

Promo code WELCOME10 takes 10% off your first order. Free shipping, 2-3 week delivery, no contract. Full tier detail and quantity breaks up to 1,000+ plates are on our pricing page, or you can start an order directly.

5-Year Total Cost: A 200-Seat Church

Here is the math for a 200-seat church running $150,000 a year through its giving platform. Column one assumes the church uses Aplos Core for both accounting and the donation page. Column two assumes the church keeps whatever accounting and giving page it already has, and adds 200 Tap.Giving NFC tap plates at every seat. Both columns include Stripe processing fees because those exist regardless of hardware.

The point is not that Aplos is overpriced. For a church that needs fund accounting and donor management, $189 a month is reasonable compared to hiring a bookkeeper or buying QuickBooks Nonprofit plus a separate giving tool. The point is that the subscription is buying you accounting, not in-pew giving. Adding NFC tap plates does not require leaving Aplos and does not add a second monthly bill. Plates and Aplos solve different problems.

The lift side of the math is real too. Churches using NFC tap plates have reported in-service donation lifts of 300 percent or more, with 81 percent of attendees willing to give in service when a tap option is available compared to 24 percent who actually do without one. Tap to give is roughly 42 times more engaging than a printed QR code, and 53 percent of NFC givers in church studies are first-time givers. For the detail behind those numbers, see the NFC giving ROI numbers post. For independent context on church giving trends, the ECFA publishes annual data worth reading before any platform decision.

Feature Comparison

Aplos and Tap.Giving live at different layers of the church giving technology stack, so this is less a head-to-head chart and more a "what does each one actually do" reference.

For a side-by-side that includes additional contactless giving options, see our tap to give platform comparison and our contactless church collection plate guide. For accounting-plus-giving alternatives in the same lane as Aplos, the best church donation technology of 2026 post is the right starting point.

When to Pick Aplos Anyway

Honest carve-out: situations where Aplos earns its monthly fee and is the right call even if you also want tap-and-give hardware in the room.

• Your treasurer is a volunteer and needs fund accounting they can actually use without an accounting degree.
• You need contribution statements, year-end letters, and donor records inside the same tool that holds the general ledger.
• You run multiple funds, restricted gifts, or grant-funded ministries and want one source of truth instead of two systems to reconcile.
• You currently pay for QuickBooks Online plus a separate giving tool and the consolidation alone makes the math work.

Even when Aplos is the right back end, the in-room experience still benefits from physical tap tags for churches at every seat. The plate hands the phone the Aplos donation URL, the giver pays in eight seconds, and Aplos books the gift like any other web donation. Many of our customers run exactly that stack: Aplos for the books, NFC tap plates for the offering. If you want to think through whether the combination fits, walk through how it works, then grab a plate quantity that matches your seats.

FAQ: Aplos and Tap.Giving Questions