Comparison

Stripe vs Tithely for Churches: 2026 Cost Compared

Stripe and Tithely both charge the same 2.9% + $0.30 per donation in 2026. The real difference is what comes around the payment: Tithely is a packaged giving platform, Stripe is a developer toolkit. For most churches, Tithely Plus costs about $5,340 over five years; building the same experience on raw Stripe lands closer to $14,000. Here is the honest cost math, plus where NFC tap plates fit either way.

May 13, 2026

9 min read

$8,660

5-year cost gap between Tithely Plus and a basic in-house Stripe build for a 200-seat church. Real Stripe transaction fees are identical to Tithely’s. The gap is what you build on top.

A smartphone tapping an NFC tap-to-give plate during a church offering, the kind of tap-to-donate experience that works with both Stripe and Tithely

The Short Answer (One Paragraph)

If your church has a developer on the team or a generous volunteer who builds web apps, raw Stripe can be the cheapest way to take a tap to donate. You pay 2.9% + $0.30 per gift, no monthly fee, and you keep complete control. If you do not have that developer, Tithely is almost always cheaper end to end because the giving page, recurring management, donor profiles, and tax statements come built in. Either way, NFC tap plates work the same way: the plate opens a URL, and the URL can be a Tithely giving page or a Stripe Checkout link without changing anything in the pew.

This is the rare comparison where the right answer depends almost entirely on whether you have engineering capacity, not on what features you want. The features are roughly the same once they exist. The question is who builds them.

Stripe Pricing for Churches in 2026

Stripe does not sell to churches differently than it sells to anyone else. The published 2026 rate is the same as Tithely’s: 2.9% + $0.30 for standard domestic card payments, with Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, and a long list of other wallets supported. There is no monthly fee, no setup fee, and no contract.

Stripe line item	2026 rate	Notes
Monthly fee	$0	No subscription
Setup fee	$0	Free Stripe account
Standard card	2.9% + $0.30	Same as Tithely’s processing fee
ACH direct debit	0.8% capped at $5	Often cheaper for large gifts
Nonprofit discount	2.2% + $0.30	Available for verified 501(c)(3) orgs that apply
Build cost (one-time)	$5,000–$15,000	To match a packaged giving platform’s features
Hosting + maintenance	$50–$200/month	Server, monitoring, security updates, occasional dev hours

The headline numbers look fantastic. The trap is that Stripe is a payment toolkit, not a giving platform. Out of the box, you get a way to take cards. You do not get a branded giving page, recurring donation management, fund designation, donor login, year-end tax statements, soft-credit handling, integrations with Planning Center or Breeze, or anything else a church-specific platform packages together. Most churches end up either building those pieces or stitching them together from add-ons.

The shortcut is Stripe Payment Links and Stripe Checkout. A church can set up a Payment Link in 10 minutes, drop it on a website, and start accepting donations. That works fine for a one-off campaign. It does not scale to a year-round digital giving for churches setup with recurring tithes and contribution statements. For that, you build, or you pay someone who has already built it. (For more on the broader church giving technology landscape, see our church giving technology guide.)

Tithely Pricing for Churches in 2026

Tithely’s appeal to small and mid-size churches is that the giving experience is already built. You sign up, paste your church info, brand the page, and the whole stack works on day one, including the donor side, the admin side, and the statement engine. The 2026 pricing splits into three tiers.

Plan	Monthly	Transaction	Includes
Tithely Free	$0	2.9% + $0.30	Basic giving page, donor portal, mobile-friendly checkout
Tithely Plus	~$89	2.9% + $0.30	Full giving features, contribution statements, custom funds
Tithely Pro	~$119	2.9% + $0.30	Advanced reporting, ChMS, full church platform suite

For a deeper dive on what the tiers include and the fee math at scale, see our Tithely pricing and fees breakdown or the Tithely vs Tap.Giving comparison. The headline for this post is that the Tithely transaction fee is identical to Stripe’s, and the Plus plan effectively pays for the giving experience itself.

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5-Year Cost: 200-Seat Church

Picture a 200-seat church receiving roughly $250,000 a year in online giving across roughly 1,800 transactions. The transaction fees are the same on both platforms (about $7,425 a year, or $37,125 over five years). To make the comparison fair, the table below strips those out and shows only the cost of the platform itself.

Line item	Stripe (in-house build)	Tithely Plus
Initial build / setup	$8,000 one-time	$0
Platform fee (60 months)	$0	$5,340
Hosting + maintenance (60 months)	$6,000 ($100/mo)	Included
Tax statement engine	Build or buy	Included
5-year platform total	$14,000	$5,340
NFC tap plates (200 once)	$800 one-time	$800 one-time
Tap.Giving 5-year hardware total	$800 (one-time, $0/month, $0 in transaction fees from us)

The $8,000 build estimate is conservative for a usable in-house Stripe stack with branded giving page, recurring schedules, donor login, fund designation, and a statement generator. We have seen churches pay $5,000 to a freelancer for a stripped-down version and $25,000 to a small agency for a polished one. The $100/month maintenance line is what most churches spend keeping it patched and supported. Skip that line and you skip the security updates.

For more comparison cost math at this size, see our 2026 donation technology comparison or the tap-to-give platform comparison.

Feature Comparison

A side-by-side feature view, assuming Stripe is being used as a raw payment processor with whatever the church builds on top.

Feature	Stripe (raw)	Tithely Plus
Branded giving page	Build or use Payment Links	Included
Recurring donations	API supports it, you build the UI	Included
Donor login portal	Build it	Included
Year-end tax statements	Build or buy	Included
Fund designation	Use metadata, build UI	Included
Apple Pay / Google Pay	Yes	Yes
Text-to-give	Build via Twilio	Included
ChMS integration	API integration work	Planning Center, Breeze, others
NFC tap plate support	Yes, plate opens any Stripe URL	Yes, plate opens your Tithely giving page
Monthly fee	$0	~$89
Build cost	$5K–$15K typical	$0

Notice how many rows say build it on the Stripe side. That is exactly the gap a giving platform fills. If you already have a developer on staff, those gaps are interesting projects. If you do not, every one of them is a hidden cost.

When to Pick Stripe Anyway. When to Pick Tithely Anyway.

Pick Stripe if…

You have a developer on staff or a long-term volunteer who can support a custom build for years
You want full control over the donor experience and data ownership
Your giving page needs unusual logic (capital campaign tiers, matching gifts, complex fund splits)
You qualify for Stripe’s 2.2% + $0.30 nonprofit discount and high volume makes the difference real

Pick Tithely if…

Nobody on staff writes code or wants to support a custom giving stack
You need contribution statements without building them yourself
You want a packaged donor portal and recurring management on day one
You value vendor support over hands-on control

There is no shame in either answer. We have seen great pastoral budget decisions on both sides. What we have not seen work well: a small church without a developer trying to white-knuckle a custom Stripe build because the fees looked cheaper on paper. The build-it-yourself savings disappear the first time the giving page breaks at 9:55 a.m. on Easter Sunday.

How NFC Tap Plates Fit With Either

Tap.Giving is hardware, not software. Our NFC tap plates do one thing: open a URL when a phone gets close. That makes them platform-agnostic. The plate you order today works with whichever payment stack you choose, and it keeps working if you switch later.

Using Tithely? The plate opens your Tithely giving page. The giver pays in their browser with Apple Pay, Google Pay, or a card. Tithely handles the receipt and the statement.
Using a custom Stripe Checkout page? The plate opens your Stripe URL. Stripe handles the wallet flow. Your in-house tools handle the receipt and donor record.
Switching from one to the other? Re-encode the plates with the new URL. The hardware does not change.

Pricing is the same regardless of which giving platform sits on the other end: $4.50 each for 100 to 199 plates, $4.00 each for 200 to 399, and $3.50 each for 400 or more. Free shipping, no monthly fees, no transaction fees from us. Code WELCOME10 takes 10% off your first order. See full pricing for quantity breaks up to 1,000 plates, or the tap-and-give pricing table on our pricing page.

NFC giving runs about 42x more engagement than QR codes in our customers’ data, and roughly 81% of in-service participation from members who tap. That lift compounds whether you process the donation through Stripe or Tithely. The choice between Stripe and Tithely is the platform decision. The choice to put a contactless church collection plate on every pew is the in-service donation decision. They are separate, and both matter. For more on the second one, see our contactless collection plate guide or how tap to give works.

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FAQ

Is Stripe cheaper than Tithely for churches?

On transaction fees alone, Stripe and Tithely are nearly identical: both run about 2.9% + $0.30 per donation in 2026. Stripe charges no monthly fee, while Tithely Plus is around $89/month and the free plan is $0. The catch with Stripe is that raw Stripe is a developer toolkit, not a giving platform. To get a Tithely-equivalent experience, churches end up paying a developer roughly $5,000 to $15,000 upfront and $50 to $200 a month in hosting. Tithely is usually cheaper for any church without an in-house engineer.

Can I use Stripe directly to accept church donations?

Yes. Stripe offers Payment Links, Stripe Checkout, and a full API. A small church can spin up a Payment Link in 10 minutes and start accepting donations from any phone. The trade-off is everything around the payment: tax statements, recurring donation management, donor profiles, fund designations, and integrations with church management systems all have to be built or bolted on separately. Tithely (and other church-specific platforms) packages all of that out of the box.

Does Tithely use Stripe under the hood?

Tithely processes payments through its own card processor, not Stripe. Several other church platforms (Donorbox, Givebutter, Anedot) do use Stripe as their underlying processor, which is why their effective rate is the same 2.9% + $0.30. From the church’s perspective, the practical difference is who builds and supports the donor-facing tools, not who clears the card.

Do NFC tap-to-give plates work with both Stripe and Tithely?

Yes. Tap.Giving plates open whatever URL you encode them with. If your church uses a Tithely giving page, the plate opens that. If your church uses a Stripe Payment Link or a custom Stripe Checkout page, the plate opens that. The plate is just a printed sign-post for a URL; the giving platform on the other end can be anything that accepts donations on the web.

Which is better for a small church on a tight budget?

For most small churches without a developer, Tithely’s free tier or a similar platform (Givelify, Donorbox free, Anedot) is the cheapest practical path. The 2.9% + $0.30 processing fee is the same as Stripe, and the donor-facing tooling is included. Pair that with a one-time order of NFC tap plates (starting at $4.50 each, or $3.50 each at 400+) and the in-service donation friction drops to about 8 seconds without adding a monthly bill.

Can churches use Stripe to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay donations?

Yes. Stripe Checkout and Stripe Payment Links both support Apple Pay and Google Pay out of the box, and that wallet support flows through any NFC tap-to-give plate that opens a Stripe URL. Tithely’s giving pages also support Apple Pay and Google Pay on supported devices. Either way, the giver’s phone handles the wallet authentication and the donation completes in about 8 seconds.

Are donor statements automatic with Stripe?

No. Stripe sends transaction receipts, but it does not generate the year-end giving statements churches need to issue for tax purposes. A church running on raw Stripe has to build statement generation, fund tracking, and donor records separately or bolt on a third-party tool. Tithely generates contribution statements automatically as part of the Plus and Pro plans.