Charitable vs PayPal Donation
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| Feature | Charitable v1.8.13.2 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.9/5 Visit Details | PayPal Donation v1.5.7 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 3.8/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 10,000+ | 10,000+ |
| Last updated | October 19, 2026 | October 7, 2026 |
| Editions | Charitable · Charitable Pro ($) · Charitable Recurring Donations ($) | Accept Donations with PayPal & Stripe · PayPal Donation Pro ($) |
| Pros | Stripe, PayPal and Square gateways plus offline donations in the free edition; Campaign builder with templates, goals and progress bars; Donor database, reports and CSV export; Built-in reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Turnstile spam protection; Usage tracking is opt-in | Donation buttons by shortcode, widget or media button; PayPal and Stripe payment options; Donation orders listed in the admin |
| Cons | Lite card payments carry a 3 percent fee on top of gateway fees; Recurring donations and many integrations need Pro or extensions; Heavy admin with many upsell screens and menus; Large codebase of almost 5,000 files | Needs a PayPal or Stripe account to take payments; Pro version with more features is sold separately |
| Mentioned in our posts | 1 | 1 |
| More features | ||
| Other features | Campaign and donation post types, Drag-and-drop campaign builder, Donation form, donate button and donor list shortcodes, Donor and donation records in custom tables, Donation receipts and admin notification emails, CSV export of donations and campaigns, Reports screen and reports REST endpoint, reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Turnstile on forms, Campaign, donor and donation blocks and widgets, Recurring donations ($), No 3 percent platform fee on card donations ($) | Donation buttons admin, Donation button shortcode, Donation button widget, PayPal IPN handler for payment notifications, Stripe payments, PayPal Commerce Platform onboarding, Pro version upsell in admin ($) |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | Stripe, PayPal, Square | PayPal, Stripe |
| Plugins | Elementor | — |
| Other | Google reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile | — |
| Requires WordPress | 5.9 | 3.1.0 |
| Requires PHP | 7.4 | 5.4 |
| Tested up to | 7.1.3 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | Only if you agree | No |
| External services | wpcharitable.com, nonprofitscore.org, squareupsandbox.com, squareup.com, connect.wpcharitable.com, paypal-sandbox.wpcharitable.com, api-m.sandbox.paypal.com, api-m.paypal.com, www.sandbox.paypal.com, www.paypal.com, plugin.wpcharitable.com, usage.wpcharitable.com, tracking.wpcharitable.com, challenges.cloudflare.com, www.google.com, hcaptcha.com, connect.squareup.com, api.stripe.com | wpplugin.org, js.stripe.com, www.paypal.com |
| Blocks | 8 | — |
| Shortcodes | 13 | 1 |
| Custom tables | 7 | — |