Pushpay vs Realm by ACS: a head-to-head comparison for 2026
By Sankalp Jonna · Last reviewed April 2026
If you're shopping for church management software in 2026, you'll narrow it to two tools fast — and odds are this is one of those moments. Pushpay and Realm both target mid-to-large churches with quote-based enterprise pricing, but they optimize for completely different stakeholders.
The meaningful difference: Pushpay is built around giving — the donor app, the CSM relationship, and the giving reporting are all best-in-category. Realm is built around the back office — fund accounting, multi-site permissions, and denominational reporting are the differentiators.
The choice almost always reveals itself in one question: who has more political weight at your church, the executive pastor managing the donor base or the finance director managing the books? Pushpay is the answer in the first case. Realm is the answer in the second.
TL;DR
- Your top priority is donor experience and giving conversion at scale — text-to-give, branded app, retention reporting.
- You're processing seven figures of giving annually and want a CSM who knows your donor base.
- You need deep cohort analysis on giving — lapsed-giver flagging, pledge tracking, capital campaign reporting.
- You're running a non-denominational megachurch where finance is handled in QuickBooks and the database is paired with CCB.
- Branded donor app presence on the iOS and Android stores actually matters to your brand strategy.
- Your finance team needs real fund accounting — AP, AR, payroll, GL — in the same system as ChMS.
- You're a denominational church (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic) with reporting needs ACS understands.
- You're managing a complex multi-site operation with cross-campus financial reporting requirements.
- Vendor durability matters more than donor app polish — ACS has been doing this for 40+ years.
- You'd rather pay for one integrated stack than run Pushpay plus QuickBooks separately.
Side-by-side
| Feature | Pushpay (with Church Community Builder) | Realm by ACS Technologies |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 8.2 / 10 | 7.8 / 10 |
| Starting price | Custom pricing | Custom pricing |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Transaction fees | Tiered, generally ~2.5-3.0% + $0.30; lower for high-volume churches | Around 2.55-2.95% on Vanco-powered giving |
| Best for size | mid, large, multi-site | mid, large, multi-site |
| Built-in fund accounting | None; pair with QuickBooks separately | Real general-ledger fund accounting — AP, AR, payroll |
| Donor app | Best-in-category branded app; your church name on the stores | Functional mobile app; not branded, polish lags Pushpay |
| Giving reporting | Deep cohort analysis, lapsed-giver alerts, pledge tracking | Solid; donor history and statements; weaker on cohort analysis |
| Multi-site permissions | Strong via CCB; handles multi-campus rollups | Mature, battle-tested; particularly strong for denominational structures |
| Background-check integration | Via CCB; available but configuration-heavy | Built-in via Protect My Ministry |
| Contract terms | Annual or multi-year, often with auto-renewal | Multi-year contracts standard |
| Denominational fit | All; particularly strong with non-denominational megachurches | Strong with Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic structures |
| Transaction fees | Tiered ~2.5-3.0% + $0.30 | ~2.55-2.95% on Vanco-powered giving |
| UI modernness | Pushpay UI is modern; CCB feels a generation behind | Functional but dated; feels designed in 2018 |
Setup & onboarding
Both are sales-led with structured implementation. Pushpay's onboarding centers on giving — donor migration, recurring gift conversion, branded app submission to the app stores. Plan on 4-8 weeks for full deployment.
Realm's onboarding centers on the database and the books. Implementation includes chart-of-accounts mapping, historical donation migration, and configuration of fund accounting if you're adopting that module. Plan on 6-10 weeks, longer if accounting is in scope.
The trade-off is real. Pushpay's onboarding emphasizes giving operations from day one — your donor app is live, recurring gifts are migrated, your CSM is your partner. Realm's onboarding emphasizes back-office hygiene — your books are clean, your funds are mapped, your multi-campus permissions are correct. Each emphasis tells you what the vendor will optimize for going forward.
Core features
On giving, Pushpay wins decisively. The donor app, text-to-give flows, digital wallet integration, and reporting on retention cohorts are all category-leading. For a church running real giving campaigns, the depth and polish are genuinely differentiated.
On accounting, Realm wins decisively. It's the only mainstream ChMS with real general-ledger fund accounting, and for denominational and mid-to-large institutional churches, that integration is a meaningful capability gap that Pushpay doesn't try to close. Pushpay assumes you'll run QuickBooks separately and accept the reconciliation overhead.
On ChMS — membership, attendance, groups — both are competent but neither is best-in-category. CCB (paired with Pushpay) feels older. Realm Connect is mature but UI-dated. Many churches running either platform also pay Planning Center for People and Services, which adds real cost to both stacks.
On multi-site, both are solid. Realm's denominational permissioning is more mature; Pushpay-CCB's multi-campus rollups handle non-denominational megachurches well.
Pricing breakdown
Both are quote-based and start in the hundreds of dollars per month. Real-world pricing for a mid-large customer:
Pushpay's giving platform alone typically lands $300-1,500/month, plus the branded app, plus CCB if bundled — call it $1,000-2,500/month for a typical mid-large customer with multi-year contracts standard. Transaction fees are tiered.
Realm Connect (full ChMS without accounting) typically runs $90-150/month. Realm Accounting adds $200+. So a comparable mid-large customer running Connect plus Accounting is typically $300-500/month. Transaction fees on Vanco-powered giving run 2.55-2.95%.
The honest read: Realm is meaningfully cheaper than Pushpay for a similar feature footprint, and the integrated accounting closes the gap further versus Pushpay-plus-QuickBooks. Pushpay's premium is the donor app, the CSM relationship, and the giving polish. For churches whose giving operation drives revenue, Pushpay's premium is often defensible. For churches whose finance team drives operations, Realm's price advantage is real.
Support & community
Pushpay's CSM model is its product. Every customer gets a dedicated account manager who knows the church operation deeply, and that relationship is the most enduring touchpoint for a typical Pushpay customer. The peer community is large — particularly among non-denominational megachurches.
Realm's support is high-touch and structured but more traditional. Phone support is available, account management is real, and ACS's denominational expertise is genuinely useful for Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Catholic churches. The downside is that customizing reports beyond built-in templates often requires going through ACS support, which adds friction that Pushpay's customers don't usually feel on the giving side.
The peer communities are also different. Pushpay's user base skews non-denominational and contemporary. Realm's skews denominational and traditional. For peer learning and consultant access, you'll find more relevant resources in your own world.
Migration
Switching to either tool from another platform is a real project, but switching off either is harder. Pushpay's recurring-gift migration to a new platform requires manual donor outreach to re-authorize gifts on the new processor — typically a 10-20% bleed during the transition. Realm's data exports cleanly, but the accounting module's chart of accounts and historical fund balances are painful to migrate elsewhere if you've been running it for years.
Both use multi-year contracts as a structural part of pricing, which compounds the lock-in. The honest read: choose either knowing that staying is the path of least resistance and that switching is a quarter-long project. This isn't necessarily a reason not to choose them — large churches don't switch ChMS casually anyway — but it should inform the contract negotiation.
Verdict
Choose Pushpay if giving drives your operations. The donor app, retention reporting, and CSM relationship genuinely move the needle on giving at scale, and the polish is worth the premium for non-denominational megachurches whose primary revenue engine is recurring digital giving. Pair with QuickBooks for finance and accept the reconciliation overhead.
Choose Realm if accounting drives your operations. The integrated fund accounting is genuinely unique, the multi-site permissioning handles denominational complexity well, and the price advantage versus Pushpay-plus-QuickBooks is real once you control for total cost of ownership. The UI is dated and the donor app lags Pushpay's, but for a finance-led church, those trade-offs are reasonable. The honest secondary recommendation: if both giving polish and accounting matter equally, you're often better off running Planning Center plus Pushpay Giving plus QuickBooks rather than choosing either of these as a single all-in-one.