Donorbox vs Ko-fi Comparison 2026
Donorbox is built for nonprofits and cause-driven campaigns: recurring donations, embeddable forms and donor records, free at 2.95 to 3.95 percent or $150 a month for Pro's 1.75 to 2 percent. Ko-fi is built for a creator collecting tips, memberships, commissions and shop sales from an audience, free with nothing taken from tips and 5 percent from everything else, or $12 a month to remove that cut. Donorbox says outright that a tip-collecting creator belongs on Ko-fi instead, and the fees back that up: no Donorbox tier ever reaches Ko-fi's 0 percent on a plain tip.
At a glance
- Ko-fi starts cheaper, at $12.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Donorbox | Ko-fi | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $150 | From $12 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | None | Not stated |
| API | Yes |
Donorbox
Donation pages and recurring giving
Donorbox is built for nonprofits and reads that way, which is exactly right for a creator running a fundraiser or a cause and wrong for one collecting tips. Recurring donations, an embeddable form and donor records are the substance. Its free plan charges a higher percentage on each gift than the paid one.
Our note
Pro costs $150 a month and saves roughly 1.5 percent per donation, so it pays for itself somewhere around $10,000 a month in giving. Below that the free plan is the cheaper one, whatever the fee percentage looks like.
Only on this side
- Covers crowdfunding
Ko-fi
Tips, memberships and a shop with no platform cut
Ko-fi takes nothing from tips on the free plan, which no other platform of its size does. Memberships, commissions and digital downloads all work from the same page. It is lighter than Patreon in every direction, which is often the point.
Why people weigh these two
- Ko-fi instead of Donorbox
- Ko-fi handles tips, memberships and a shop with no platform cut, the right swap for a creator taking tips rather than a nonprofit issuing receipts.
- Donorbox instead of Ko-fi
- Donorbox is built around recurring giving and nonprofit-style donation pages rather than creator tips, with a paid tier from $150 a month once a free page needs more.
Which one should you pick
Pick Donorbox for a registered nonprofit or a cause running a real fundraiser that needs receipts and donor records. Its free plan's 2.95 to 3.95 percent already covers recurring giving and an embeddable form, and Pro's $150 a month drops that to 1.75 to 2 percent plus the API. A creator collecting tips for their own work is not who this is built for, by Donorbox's own description.
Pick Ko-fi if the income is mostly one-off tips from an audience rather than cause donations, since nothing is taken from a tip on the free plan at all, a rate no Donorbox tier matches. Memberships, commissions and shop sales carry a 5 percent cut until Gold's $12 a month removes it. A large membership business will find Ko-fi thin next to dedicated membership software, since it stays lighter by design.
Common questions
- Which one should a creator collecting tips use?
- Ko-fi. Donorbox states plainly that a creator collecting tips belongs on Ko-fi or a similar tool instead of on its own nonprofit-built forms. Ko-fi also charges nothing on a tip at all, a rate no Donorbox plan reaches.
- Which one should a nonprofit running a fundraiser use?
- Donorbox. It is built for recurring donations, receipts and donor records, starting free at 2.95 to 3.95 percent. Ko-fi is built around an individual creator's page and does not describe the donor-record or receipting tools a registered charity needs.
- Does Ko-fi charge anything on memberships the way Donorbox charges on donations?
- Yes, 5 percent on memberships, shop sales and commissions, unless the $12 a month Gold plan is active, which removes that cut. That is a different transaction type from Donorbox's donation fee, so the two are not directly comparable dollar for dollar.
- Is there a cheaper way to raise recurring money than Donorbox's Pro plan?
- Not on Ko-fi, which is not built for recurring cause donations at all. Within Donorbox itself, Pro at $150 a month drops the fee from the free plan's 2.95 to 3.95 percent down to 1.75 to 2 percent, which is the only lever Donorbox offers.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.