Pushpay vs Tithe.ly: 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 Tithe.ly are the two most-mentioned giving platforms in church tech, and they sit at opposite ends of the market.
The meaningful difference: Pushpay is enterprise-grade — sales-led, contract-based, and built for 1,500+ attendance churches with a real CSM relationship and a polished branded donor app. Tithe.ly is the opposite — free Giving plan, no monthly fee, no contract, sign up online today.
This is rarely a close call. Most churches under 1,000 people will be better served by Tithe.ly's pricing model. Most churches over 2,000 will get value from Pushpay's polish and account management. The hard middle is 1,000-2,000, where the choice depends more on your appetite for contracts and the importance of a branded donor app than on raw features.
TL;DR
- You're a 1,500+ attendance church processing seven figures of giving annually and want a real account manager who knows your numbers.
- Your top priority is donor experience — text-to-give, branded app, digital wallet flows that convert new givers reliably.
- You need deep retention reporting — donor cohorts, lapsed-giver alerts, pledge campaigns — out of the box.
- You're comfortable signing a multi-year contract and don't need transparent month-to-month pricing.
- You'd rather one vendor handle giving, mobile app, and ChMS via the CCB integration.
- You want online giving live tomorrow with no contract, no monthly fee, and no sales call.
- You're a small or mid-size church under 1,000 attendance where Pushpay's price tier doesn't pencil out.
- You want a website, app, and ChMS bundled cheaply via the All-Access plan rather than buying enterprise-grade tools.
- You value pricing transparency — knowing what you'll pay before you talk to a sales rep.
- You're willing to live with shallower reporting and a less coherent multi-product UX in exchange for dramatically lower cost.
Side-by-side
| Feature | Pushpay (with Church Community Builder) | Tithe.ly |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 8.2 / 10 | 8.4 / 10 |
| Starting price | Custom pricing | Free tier available |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Transaction fees | Tiered, generally ~2.5-3.0% + $0.30; lower for high-volume churches | 2.9% + $0.30 (credit) / 1% + $0.30 (ACH); slightly cheaper on Pro plan |
| Best for size | mid, large, multi-site | small, mid |
| Monthly platform fee | Quote-based; typically $300-1,500+/month for the giving platform alone | Free Giving plan with $0 monthly fee; All-Access bundle $159/month |
| Transaction fees | Tiered ~2.5-3.0% + $0.30; lower at high volume | 2.9% + $0.30 standard; slightly lower on Pro plan |
| Donor app | Best-in-class branded app — your church's name on the stores | Generic Tithe.ly app or branded app via All-Access bundle |
| Contract terms | Annual or multi-year, often with auto-renewal | No contract; cancel any time |
| Pricing transparency | Sales-gated; you must book a demo to see pricing | Published pricing; sign up online without talking to anyone |
| Account management | Dedicated CSM who knows your campus and giving patterns | Standard support tickets; mixed reviews on response time |
| Reporting depth | Deep cohort analysis, lapsed-giver alerts, pledge tracking | Functional but shallow on cohort and retention analysis |
| ChMS pairing | Tight integration with CCB; bundled deal | Tithe.ly ChMS or Breeze under the same parent |
| Best-fit church size | 1,500+ attendance, multi-site, seven-figure giving | 50-1,000 attendance; small church plants especially |
Setup & onboarding
Tithe.ly is the fastest setup in the entire ChMS-and-giving category. Sign up online, paste your bank info, and you can take a gift in roughly 20 minutes. There's no sales call, no contract, no implementation timeline.
Pushpay is the opposite: there is no self-serve. Every customer goes through a sales process, a kickoff call, a CSM assignment, and typically 2-6 weeks of structured implementation. For a megachurch coordinating data migration and donor communications across multiple campuses, that process is genuinely useful. For a 300-person church, it's overkill — you'd be live on Tithe.ly before Pushpay's contract was even signed.
Core features
On donor experience, Pushpay wins. The branded app is the best in the category — your church's name on the app stores, polished sermon and giving flows, and conversion rates that meaningfully outperform generic giving apps. Text-to-give and digital wallet flows are the smoothest available.
On breadth of features, Tithe.ly wins. The All-Access bundle includes Giving, ChMS, Sites (website), App, and Messaging. Pushpay covers Giving and a branded app, with CCB layered on for ChMS — that's it. If you want website plus giving plus ChMS in one bill, Tithe.ly is the only vendor between these two who offers it. Pushpay assumes you'll have a separate website vendor.
Reporting is where the gap matters. Pushpay's giving reports — donor retention cohorts, lapsed-giver flagging, pledge tracking — are first-class. Tithe.ly's reporting is functional but a tier below; if you run real giving campaigns and need to see who lapsed two months ago, Pushpay is the tool.
Pricing breakdown
This isn't close. Tithe.ly's Giving plan is free monthly with 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fees. The All-Access bundle is $159/month. There are no setup fees and no contracts.
Pushpay is quote-based and starts in the hundreds of dollars per month for the giving platform alone. Real-world pricing for a typical mid-large customer is $800-2,500/month all-in once you add the branded app and CCB, with multi-year contracts standard. Transaction fees start higher than Tithe.ly's standard rate and only drop below it at significant volume — typically only at $2M+ annual giving.
A 500-person church on Tithe.ly might pay $159/month plus $580/month in transaction fees on $20K/month giving — call it $740/month. The same church on Pushpay typically pays $1,000-1,500/month all-in. The polish is real, but at sub-1,000-attendance scale, you're paying enterprise prices for a service tier you won't fully use.
Support & community
Pushpay's CSM model is genuinely valuable at scale. Your account manager knows your campus structure, your campaign cadence, and your giving patterns, and they pick up the phone when something breaks. For a church running a $5M annual giving operation, this is a real differentiator.
Tithe.ly's support has slipped in 2024-2025 reviews. Ticket times have stretched, and the multi-product surface (Giving, ChMS, Sites, App, Breeze) means reps don't always know every product deeply. For a smaller church with simpler needs, this is usually fine. For a complex operation, the lack of a dedicated CSM will be felt during peak seasons.
Migration
Tithe.ly is easy to leave. There's no contract, donor data exports cleanly, and recurring gifts use Stripe-style processing that's reasonably portable.
Pushpay is meaningfully harder to leave. Donor data exports work, but recurring gifts on Pushpay's processor require manual donor outreach to re-authorize on a new platform. Combined with multi-year contracts that often auto-renew, switching is a quarter-long project that typically loses 10-20% of recurring donors during the transition. This isn't necessarily a reason not to choose Pushpay — large churches don't switch giving processors casually anyway — but it's a real factor that should inform the contract negotiation.
Verdict
For 90% of churches, Tithe.ly is the better choice. The free Giving plan, no contract, and bundled All-Access pricing are dramatically better economics than Pushpay's enterprise model unless you're operating at megachurch scale. The reporting and donor experience trade-offs are real but manageable.
Pushpay earns its price above ~1,500 weekend attendance, where the donor app conversion and CSM relationship genuinely move the needle on giving. Below that scale, you're paying for service tiers you won't use. Above 5,000 attendance with active capital campaigns, Pushpay is often the right answer — but be honest with yourself about whether your size justifies the contract terms.