Best Charity Auction Software 2026: 15 Platforms Compared
An honest, side-by-side comparison of the 15 most-used charity auction platforms in 2026 — features, pricing, fund-a-need support, and where each fits.
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The best charity auction software in 2026 is OneCause if you run a mid-to-large gala with a five-figure budget and need a vendor with two decades of nonprofit DNA, Handbid if mobile bidding UX is the single most important thing on your evening, GalaBid if you operate in the UK or Australia, Givebutter if you are a small grassroots nonprofit and don't want to pay anything until donors do, Greater Giving if you want a single tool that handles registration, payments, and silent and live auctions on the same night, and Auctria if you mostly need a low-cost catalogue tool to manage the lots themselves. There is no single winner. The right choice is a function of your budget, your audience's bidding behaviour, the size of your fund-a-need, and whether you are running one auction a year or eight.
This guide compares the fifteen most-used charity auction platforms operating in 2026, side-by-side. We evaluate them on the things that actually matter on the night — bid mechanics under load, mobile bidding quality, payment processing, fund-a-need / paddle-raise tooling, donor-data exports, item procurement integrations, pricing transparency, and the support quality you'll get when something breaks at 8:47 PM during your live auction. We end with an honest section on where Auction Rabbit fits, which is not "another OneCause" — it's a different kind of tool for a different kind of buyer.
Volumes are based on Q1 2026 vendor disclosures, public pricing pages, G2 / Capterra reviews, nonprofit-sector procurement reports, and direct testing where access was available. Prices and feature sets shift; verify the latest before signing.
How we evaluated
Charity auction platforms look superficially similar — they all do "mobile bidding for nonprofits." The differences emerge once you stress-test them. Our criteria, in roughly the order they matter for most operators:
Bid mechanics under load. Can the platform handle a 400-guest gala where 60% of bids land in the final 10 minutes of a silent auction? How does dynamic close (anti-sniping) work? What happens when two bids land in the same millisecond? Bad bid mechanics are why galas end with angry donors and a board chair calling on Monday.
Mobile bidding UX. Most modern silent auctions are mobile-first; donors text-to-bid or scan a QR code at their table. The quality of the bidding flow — single tap to bid, visible "you've been outbid" notifications, clear leaderboard — is the single biggest predictor of total bids per item.
Payment processing. What card processor is built in? Is there ACH for big donors? Apple Pay / Google Pay? Stored cards for fast checkout? Are international cards supported? What's the take rate?
Fund-a-need / paddle-raise tooling. Can the auctioneer trigger live paddle-raise levels from the stage? Do screens update in real time? Can donors raise their paddle from their phone if they're not in the room? See fund-a-need and paddle-raise.
Donor-data exports. Can you push winning bidders into your CRM (Bloomerang, Salesforce NPSP, Raiser's Edge, HubSpot) without a copy-paste nightmare? Does the platform respect GDPR / CCPA?
Item procurement integrations. Some platforms partner with consignment travel-package providers like Winspire or Charity Buzz. Useful if your committee can't source 60 items a year on its own.
Pricing transparency. Is pricing on the website, or do you have to "request a demo" to find out it's $8,000/year? Vendors who hide pricing usually do so because the price is uncomfortable for the buyer to discover.
Support quality. When the credit-card processor goes down at 9:14 PM during your live auction, is there a phone number you can call, or a chatbot? Look at G2 reviews for "support" and read the 1-star ones.
We did not weight "feature completeness" particularly heavily. Most platforms in this space are feature-equivalent at this point — they all do silent auctions, live auctions, paddle-raise, ticketing, and reporting. The differences are in execution.
Charity auction platforms — side-by-side
Pricing and key features as of Q1 2026.
Feature
Best for
Mobile bidding
Fund-a-need
Pricing model
Notes
OneCauseEstablished US charity auction platform; ~6,000 nonprofit customers.
WinspireConsignment travel-package provider with bundled auction support.
Galas needing big-ticket signature items
Via partners
No-risk consignment; nonprofit pays only for items sold
Procurement first, software second
AuctriaLightweight catalogue and bidding tool; favoured by DIY committees.
Small auctions, school PTAs, low-budget galas
Basic
From $0–$300/event tiered
Simple; not enterprise-ready
Auction RabbitWhite-label auction platform built for for-profit auction houses; supports charity events.
For-profit houses running charity sales; auction-house operators with charity arms
Excellent
SaaS subscription; no take rate on hammer
Different category; see below
Per-platform breakdowns
OneCause
OneCause is the incumbent. Founded as BidPal in 2008 and rebranded in 2017, it serves around 6,000 US nonprofits and processes well into the nine figures of charitable GMV per year. The product is feature-complete: silent auction, live auction, fund-a-need, ticketing, peer-to-peer, text-to-give, and a respectable mobile bidder app. Its sales motion is the strongest in the category, and its content marketing (the "Raise More" blog) is genuinely useful for first-time auction chairs. The platform itself is reliable but feels its age — the admin UI carries a decade of legacy decisions, and the bidder app has a dated visual identity compared to Handbid or Givebutter. Pricing is opaque; expect mid-four to low-five figures annually plus per-transaction processing fees. Best for mid-to-large nonprofits with a dedicated development team and budget; oversized for a 100-guest school auction.
Handbid
Handbid's pitch has always been "the best mobile-bidding experience in the industry." That's defensible. The bidder app is the cleanest in the category — a single tap to bid, immediate "you've been outbid" notifications, real-time leaderboard. It's also the platform of choice for auctioneers who care about silent-auction bid velocity. Where Handbid is weaker: integration depth (CRM exports require manual lift), multi-event management (built for one gala at a time, not a portfolio), and live-auction screens that look less polished than OneCause's. Pricing is more transparent than OneCause — published per-event packages from around $995 with a transaction fee, plus annual plans for repeat customers. Best fit for the gala chair who wants the highest possible bid velocity in the room and is willing to invest committee time in stitching the data into the CRM after the event.
GalaBid
GalaBid is the incumbent outside the US. Headquartered in the UK with strong APAC presence (Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong), it has the deepest catalogue of UK-pound and AUD pricing examples, GBP / AUD card processing, and GDPR-native data handling of any platform on this list. Its free tier is genuine — small charities can run a £20k auction at zero subscription cost, paying only a 5–7% transaction fee on bids accepted. Pricing tiers up cleanly from there. The platform feels lighter than OneCause but covers all the essentials: silent, live, fund-a-need, livestream integration, and mobile bidding. Best for any UK / AU / NZ / EU nonprofit and for US committees who specifically want a non-US-centric vendor.
Greater Giving
Greater Giving has been part of Blackbaud since 2007 and has the deepest event-night-of-show feature set in the category — registration, badge printing, table assignments, silent and live auctions, and credit-card check-in all in one tool. It's the platform schools and established nonprofit committees default to when they want a single vendor for everything. The downside is exactly that breadth — the silent-auction module is competent but not exceptional, the mobile app is workmanlike, and the cost reflects the bundle (low-five-figures annually for mid-sized customers). Best fit for schools and traditional nonprofit committees that already use Blackbaud's CRM and want one vendor for the entire night.
BiddingOwl
BiddingOwl is the cheapest serious tool on the list. Its free tier is real, and its paid event packages start around $249. The cost shows in the UI — the admin panel feels like a 2014 web app — but the bid mechanics work, the mobile site is responsive, and small nonprofits running $5k–$30k auctions consistently report success with it. Live-auction and fund-a-need tooling is light. Best for very small auctions where the alternative is a paper bid sheet.
ClickBid
ClickBid was an early text-to-bid pioneer (back when texting was the killer feature) and has evolved into a competent mobile + hybrid platform. Reporting is one of the strongest in the category — operators consistently call out the post-event analytics as superior to OneCause and Handbid. Bid mechanics and mobile UX are solid but not exceptional. Pricing is per-event from around $595 to $2,495 plus transaction fees, with annual plans for repeat users. Best for hybrid events (in-person + online streamed) and for committees that care about post-event data more than the bidder UX.
GiveSmart
GiveSmart is part of the Community Brands portfolio (alongside Personify and ToucanTech) and pitches itself as a full event-management suite — auctions, ticketing, peer-to-peer, online giving forms, and donor management. The auction module is competent but not differentiated. The reason to buy GiveSmart is platform consolidation: if you're tired of running ticketing in Eventbrite, peer-to-peer in Classy, and the auction in Handbid, GiveSmart pulls it under one roof. Pricing is undisclosed and reportedly mid-four to mid-five figures annually depending on volume. Best for nonprofits running multiple campaign types per year that want to consolidate vendors.
Bloomerang Auctions
Bloomerang built or acquired auction tooling primarily so its donor-CRM customers wouldn't have to leave for OneCause or Handbid. As a standalone auction tool it's adequate; as part of a Bloomerang CRM stack it's compelling because winning bidders flow into donor profiles automatically with no integration lift. Best fit: existing Bloomerang customers, full stop. If you're not on Bloomerang, the auction module alone isn't a reason to switch.
RallyUp
RallyUp is the all-in-one fundraising platform — sweepstakes, raffles, peer-to-peer, virtual runs, and yes, auctions. The auction module is competent rather than exceptional, but the platform's pricing model is the differentiator: free + 5.9% transaction fee on the free tier, dropping to 0.9–2.9% on paid plans. For a small nonprofit running its first $10k auction, the math works out cleaner than OneCause's annual subscription. Best for small-to-mid nonprofits running diverse campaigns who want a single tool and pay-as-you-go pricing.
DoJiggy
DoJiggy has been around since the early 2000s and remains active primarily in the school-auction and golf-tournament niches. The product is dated but reliable; its strength is school-specific templates (class baskets, signature events) and a long-running customer base of PTAs and athletic boosters. Tiered annual plus transaction fees. Best for schools and golf tournaments where the committee wants templates designed for their specific event type.
Givebutter
Givebutter is the new entrant that has eaten meaningful share since 2022. Its model: free to use, monetised via optional donor "tips" (Givebutter asks the donor to optionally cover the platform fee at checkout) plus the standard 2.9% + $0.30 card processing. For small nonprofits the effective cost is close to zero. The product itself is the most modern-feeling on the list — fast UI, clean mobile bidder experience, real-time updates. The tradeoff is depth: Givebutter is great for a $30k auction, less proven for a $300k gala with multi-tiered fund-a-need and complex VIP table management. Best for grassroots nonprofits and viral / community campaigns.
Qgiv
Qgiv was acquired by Bloomerang in 2024 and is now part of the Bloomerang nonprofit stack. As a standalone tool it's particularly strong for peer-to-peer + auction hybrid events — runners raising for a cause who also bid on items at the after-party. Pricing is tiered annual subscription. Best for peer-to-peer-heavy nonprofits, increasingly those already in the Bloomerang ecosystem.
Winspire
Winspire is not an auction software vendor in the same sense as the others. It's a consignment travel-package provider — Hawaiian honeymoons, Italian villa weeks, Super Bowl tickets — that nonprofits put into their auctions on a no-risk consignment basis. The nonprofit pays Winspire a fixed wholesale price only when the package sells; if it doesn't sell, no charge. Winspire bundles a lightweight bidding tool but most nonprofits use Winspire for procurement and a different platform (OneCause, Handbid, GalaBid) for the actual bidding. Best for committees that struggle to source big-ticket signature items locally.
Auctria
Auctria is the lightweight catalogue and bidding tool. Free tier for very small auctions, paid tiers up to a few hundred dollars per event. The product is simple — catalogue management, bid sheets, mobile bidding, basic reporting. It's the "spreadsheet replacement" of charity auction software. Best for school PTAs, very small galas, and committees who want something better than paper but aren't ready for OneCause's price tag.
Auction Rabbit
Auction Rabbit is a different category of tool. It's a white-label auction platform built for for-profit auction houses — the boutique watch dealer, the regional fine-art house, the property auctioneer — running their own branded online sales. It has charity-event support (silent auctions, fund-a-need / paddle-raise, live simulcast), but its primary buyer is an auction-house operator with their own consignors and their own brand, not a nonprofit's annual gala chair. We'll come back to where it fits below.
Pricing — the part nobody puts on their website
Charity auction software pricing falls into four rough buckets in 2026:
1. Annual subscription + transaction fees. OneCause, Greater Giving, GiveSmart, Bloomerang, Qgiv, DoJiggy. The vendor charges a per-year platform fee (usually disclosed only after a discovery call — expect $2,500 to $15,000 depending on size) plus a per-transaction processing fee (usually 2.9% + $0.30 to 3.5% + $0.30, with a small additional platform margin). The math favours large nonprofits running multiple events per year because the annual fee amortises across more bid volume.
2. Per-event flat fee + transaction fees. Handbid, ClickBid, BiddingOwl, Auctria. The vendor charges a one-time event fee (a few hundred to a few thousand dollars) plus the standard transaction processing. This favours small nonprofits running one event a year.
3. Free + transaction fee (or donor tips). Givebutter, RallyUp's free tier, GalaBid's free tier, BiddingOwl's free tier. The vendor takes nothing from the nonprofit and recovers cost via a higher transaction fee (5–7%) or by asking the donor to optionally cover platform costs at checkout. Cheapest for small nonprofits; most expensive (in effective take) for very large ones.
4. SaaS subscription, no take rate on hammer. Auction Rabbit. The platform charges a flat subscription and does not skim a percentage of the hammer price or fund-a-need raise. This is the standard pricing model for for-profit auction-house tooling and is unusual in the charity space — most charity vendors price as a percentage of GMV because that's the model nonprofits are used to. For a charity event with a $500k auction, a 1% platform skim is $5,000; for a $5M auction (rare but real), it's $50,000. SaaS-flat pricing favours operators with consistently high GMV; percentage-take favours small infrequent events.
When to consider Auction Rabbit
Auction Rabbit is honestly not the right tool for most readers of this guide. If you are a nonprofit running one or two galas a year, you should look at OneCause, Handbid, GalaBid (UK/AU), or Givebutter (small grassroots) before you look at us. Charity-first vendors have purpose-built workflows — gala check-in, donor data syncing into nonprofit CRMs, fund-a-need scripts that auctioneers know — that we don't replicate as cleanly because that's not our primary buyer.
Auction Rabbit makes sense in two specific scenarios. First, if you are a for-profit auction house that runs charity events as part of your business — a regional fine-art auctioneer who handles a charity sale for the local hospital foundation twice a year, or a watch specialist who runs the annual industry fundraising auction. In that case you want one platform that handles your normal commercial sales and your charity events, with consignor accounting, full lot-management, and a white-label bidder experience that carries your brand, not the platform's. Second, if you are a large operator running so much GMV that the percentage-take vendors become structurally expensive — at $1M+ in annual auction GMV, a 1% platform skim costs more than a SaaS subscription. The crossover point varies, but it's usually somewhere between $500k and $1.5M annual auction GMV.
If neither of those describes you, pick from the charity-first vendors above. We're happy to help auction houses; we don't pretend to be the right answer for every kind of nonprofit.
FAQ
By customer count, OneCause is the largest pure-play charity auction platform in the US (around 6,000 nonprofit customers). Greater Giving is the largest if you count integrated event-management suites. Outside the US, GalaBid leads the UK / AU / NZ market. Givebutter is the fastest-growing new entrant globally.
Givebutter (free + donor tips), GalaBid's free tier, BiddingOwl's free tier, and RallyUp's free tier all let small nonprofits run an auction at effectively zero subscription cost. Effective cost on the free tiers is typically a 5–7% transaction fee on accepted bids.
No. All major charity auction platforms (OneCause, Handbid, GalaBid, Greater Giving, ClickBid, GiveSmart) support silent auction, live auction, and fund-a-need / paddle-raise on the same platform and the same event. Some smaller tools (Auctria, BiddingOwl) lean heavier on silent and have lighter live-auction support.
Donors text a code or scan a QR at their table to authenticate. They land on the auction's mobile bidding page (no app download required for most platforms — it's a mobile web app), browse the catalogue, and bid with one tap. The platform sends 'you've been outbid' SMS or push notifications. Final settlement happens by stored credit card at the end of the night.
A silent auction is competitive bidding on individual items where donors win a specific lot. Fund-a-need (also called paddle-raise or raise-the-paddle) is a live auctioneer-led ask for direct donations at fixed levels — $10,000 from anyone in the room? $5,000? $1,000? — against a stated cause. Most galas run both, with fund-a-need usually generating more total revenue than the silent auction.
Most major platforms (OneCause, Handbid, GiveSmart, Bloomerang Auctions, Qgiv, Greater Giving) integrate with donor CRMs including Blackbaud Raiser's Edge / NXT, Salesforce NPSP, Bloomerang, DonorPerfect, Virtuous, and Neon. Integration depth varies — some sync donor records automatically, others require CSV export / import.
Pricing falls into four buckets: annual subscription + transaction fees ($2.5k–$15k+ subscription plus 2.9–3.5% transactions; OneCause, Greater Giving, GiveSmart), per-event flat fee + transaction fees ($249–$2,495 per event plus 2.9–3.5% transactions; Handbid, ClickBid, BiddingOwl), free + higher transaction fee or donor tips (5–7% transactions or tips; Givebutter, RallyUp free tier, GalaBid free tier), and SaaS subscription with no take rate (Auction Rabbit). The right model depends on annual GMV.
OneCause is more established and has a deeper feature set across the full event lifecycle. Handbid has a better mobile bidder app and is generally cheaper. For mid-large galas with complex registration and payment workflows, OneCause is usually the safer pick. For mobile-bidding-first events where bid velocity in the room matters most, Handbid usually wins.
BiddingOwl, Auctria, and DoJiggy are all designed for the small-school-auction price point and template style. Givebutter is increasingly popular with schools that want a more modern UI. OneCause and Handbid are usually overkill for a sub-$50k school auction.
GalaBid is the strongest in this regard — native GBP, AUD, NZD, SGD, HKD, EUR support. Givebutter and RallyUp support multiple currencies. OneCause, Handbid, and Greater Giving are primarily USD-first; some support CAD and limited multi-currency on enterprise plans. If your event is non-US, default to GalaBid unless you have a specific reason to pick a US-first vendor.
Dynamic close (also called anti-sniping or popcorn bidding) extends a silent auction lot's close time by a fixed interval (usually 1–3 minutes) every time a bid lands in the final window. It prevents last-second snipes from cutting off legitimate bidding wars. Every major charity platform supports it; it's worth confirming the default window and that your platform exposes it as a configurable setting.
Bottom line
There is no single best charity auction platform for 2026. The right choice is the one that matches your budget, your geography, your event size, and your committee's tolerance for vendor management. Work through the comparison table above, eliminate the obvious mismatches (e.g., enterprise-priced tools for a $20k school auction), and shortlist three. Get pricing in writing from all three. Run a paid pilot at one event before signing a multi-year contract. Charity auction software is sticky — switching costs are real — so the upfront diligence is worth the time.
If you're an auction-house operator reading this who runs charity events as part of your commercial calendar, get in touch with Auction Rabbit and we'll be straight with you about whether we're the right fit. If you're a nonprofit running your annual gala, the platforms above are the field — pick from them.