Donorbox vs Liberapay Comparison 2026
Donorbox is built for registered nonprofits: recurring donations, embeddable forms, receipts and donor records, free with fees between 2.95 and 3.95 percent, or $150 a month on Pro to bring that down to 1.75 to 2 percent. Liberapay takes nothing itself, a non-profit funded by donations to its own page, so the only cost is the payment processor's, averaging around 3 percent through Stripe or 5.1 percent through PayPal. Donorbox sells the features a cause-driven campaign needs. Liberapay sells the absence of a platform cut, and nothing else.
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Donorbox | Liberapay | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $150 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing (they differ) | Monthly or annual | Usage-based |
| 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
Liberapay
Recurring donations with no platform cut
Liberapay is a non-profit that collects recurring donations and keeps none of them, funding itself from donations to its own page. Money moves weekly rather than monthly, and a donor pays several weeks ahead so the processing fee is charged once. There are no tiers, no rewards and no shop, which is the point for people who wanted a way to be paid rather than a platform to run.
Why people weigh these two
- Liberapay instead of Donorbox
- Liberapay takes recurring donations with no platform cut at all, free, where Donorbox charges for the pages and the processing around them.
- Donorbox instead of Liberapay
- Donorbox is free to start, with paid tiers from $150, and builds dedicated donation pages rather than running as a shared non-profit platform the way Liberapay does.
Which one should you pick
Pick Donorbox for a registered nonprofit or cause that needs receipts, recurring gifts and donor records as actual infrastructure. The free Standard plan runs at 2.95 to 3.95 percent in combined fees, and Pro at $150 a month lowers that to 1.75 to 2 percent, paying for itself only around $10,000 a month in giving. Below that volume the free plan is cheaper regardless of the percentage on the page.
Pick Liberapay for recurring support with no platform, no tiers, no rewards and no shop, the shape an open source maintainer or a writer actually wants. It takes nothing itself; the only cost is the processor's, roughly 3 percent through Stripe, charged once because donors pay several weeks ahead. There is no discovery, no donor CRM and no receipts infrastructure here, so choose it because the model is agreeable, not to save a percentage point over Donorbox.
Common questions
- Is Liberapay cheaper than Donorbox?
- Close on the free tier: Liberapay's only cost is the processor's, about 3 percent through Stripe, against Donorbox Standard's 2.95 to 3.95 percent combined. Liberapay keeps none of it itself, while Donorbox's free-tier percentage includes its own platform cut alongside processing.
- Does Liberapay offer donor records and receipts like Donorbox?
- No. Liberapay has no tiers, rewards or shop, and its feature set is limited to the recurring donation itself. Donorbox is built with donor records, receipts, embeddable forms and crowdfunding campaign types as its actual substance.
- When does Donorbox Pro's $150 a month actually pay off?
- Around $10,000 a month in donations, where the roughly 1.5 percentage point fee reduction saves more than the subscription costs. Below that, the free Standard plan is cheaper regardless of what the fee percentage looks like on the page.
- Why would Liberapay cap a single donor at $100 a week?
- Deliberately, so that income does not rest on one person, which is part of its non-profit design. Donorbox has no equivalent per-donor cap described; its structure is built around nonprofits collecting from a broader donor base with receipts and records attached.
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.