UK Giving Apps Compared
A donor's side-by-side guide to four UK giving apps. Comparing fees, Gift Aid handling, charity reach, and who's actually running each platform.
Choosing a UK giving app shouldn’t mean wading through four different pricing pages. We pulled the public details on the most prominent options, Legacy, Stewardship, Pocket Giving and Toucan, and lined them up like-for-like on fees, Gift Aid, charity reach, and who actually owns the platform.
Sourced from each provider’s own website and public records, current as of May 2026.
The Headline Comparison
- Legacy
- Non-profit
- Stewardship
- Registered charity
- Pocket Giving
- For-profit
- Toucan
- For-profit
- Legacy
- General
- Stewardship
- Christian
- Pocket Giving
- Islamic
- Toucan
- General
- Legacy
- 3.75%
- Stewardship
- 3.5% w/ Gift Aid
- Pocket Giving
- 2.9% + 20p
- Toucan
- 6.5% + 30p
- Legacy
- 11,000+
- Stewardship
- ~12,000
- Pocket Giving
- ~30
- Toucan
- 33,000+
- Legacy
- Unlimited
- Stewardship
- Unlimited
- Pocket Giving
- Multiple campaigns
- Toucan
- Max 3 (£200/charity cap)
- Legacy
- Yes ✨
- Stewardship
- Anonymous giving option
- Pocket Giving
- Unknown
- Toucan
- Unknown
- Legacy
- Yes ✨
- Stewardship
- Journey tab (devotional content)
- Pocket Giving
- No
- Toucan
- No
- Legacy
- Yes ✨
- Stewardship
- No
- Pocket Giving
- No
- Toucan
- No
- Legacy
- Yes ✨
- Stewardship
- No
- Pocket Giving
- No
- Toucan
- No
- Legacy
- HMRC-friendly PDF
- Stewardship
- Transaction report
- Pocket Giving
- In-app totals
- Toucan
- Transaction report
- Legacy
- iOS + Android
- Stewardship
- iOS + Android
- Pocket Giving
- iOS + Android
- Toucan
- iOS + Android
Where Your £20 Actually Lands
At a £20 monthly donation (before Gift Aid, before tips), here’s what reaches the charity:
Stewardship
3.5%. On money paid in with Gift Aid, 3% otherwise.
Pocket Giving
Why fixed fees bite at small donations. Pocket Giving’s 20p and Toucan’s 30p take a proportionally larger slice of a £20 gift than a £100 one, worth knowing if you’re starting small.
Legacy
Built by Stewards of Tomorrow Ltd, a UK non-profit. Social Enterprise UK accredited.
3.75%. Optional donor tip funds operations.
Claimed on the end charities behalf via Charities Trust who charge 4% on the gift aid amount.
Unlimited charities, one monthly Direct Debit. £10/month minimum.
Legacy positions itself as the UK’s first non-profit giving app. There are no shareholders taking a cut, and any year-end surplus from the optional tips that fund the platform is donated back to the causes the community supports.
The fee model is “what you see is what you pay.” Set a £100 monthly budget and Legacy charges you exactly £100. The 3.75% covers the payment processing and donation distribution costs, and Legacy itself takes nothing.
Headline product features include a curated Positive News Feed of impact stories from the charities a donor backs ( rather than fundraising appeals), an Impact tracker with charts and milestones, and a privacy shield that keeps donor email and postal addresses off charity marketing lists by default.
As a non-profit, the platform is supported by its donors in the form of tips, capped at 5%, with any remaining revenue after operational costs directed back to the charities you choose.
Good for: transparent fees, unlimited portfolios, donors who want a private, consolidated way to give across many causes.
Worth noting: Legacy is live on iOS and Android. App store reviews and long-term track record are still building.
Stewardship
Registered charity no. 234714, est. 1906. Operating as Stewardship Services (UKET) Limited.
3.5% with Gift Aid, 3% without. +1% on international grants.
~12,000 partners, including churches, charities and individual Christian workers.
Recurring donations, one-off gifts, or a top-up giving account you load and give from.
The most established player here, with a 120-year history. Stewardship is explicitly Christian-focused, with its content, partner network and language all reflecting that, and it’s the only platform in this comparison that enables Gift Aid claims on donations to individual Christian workers and Bible college students.
The platform extends beyond a consumer app, with a Donor Advised Fund, Philanthropy Fund, payroll bureau, charity formation services, accounts examination and loans for churches. The in-app Journey tab is content-heavy but devotional in tone.
Good for: depth of services, established trust, supporting individual Christian workers.
Worth noting: explicitly faith-based, likely the wrong home for donors whose causes sit outside that frame.
Pocket Giving
Pocket Giving Ltd. For-profit limited company. iOS + Android live.
No fundraiser fee. Up to 2.9% + 20p processing.
One-off gifts, fundraising campaigns, shareable pages, leaderboards.
Pocket Giving sits closer to the fundraising platform end of the spectrum than the personal giving-account end. The homepage leads with “Successful fundraisers start here” and the headline features are campaign creation, influencer leaderboards and shareable fundraiser pages.
Niche tools stand out: GivingFunds distribute donations across themed groups of causes, and a built-in Zakat Calculator supports donors making Islamic alms calculations. App store ratings are strong (4.8 across both stores per the site).
The charity catalogue is substantially smaller than the alternatives, with around 30 partners rather than 11,000+.
Good for: running fundraising campaigns, social/shareable giving pages, Zakat calculations.
Worth noting: small charity catalogue, for-profit company, 5% Gift Aid deduction, product is built around fundraisers rather than long-term donor portfolios.
Toucan
A PAYA Group brand operated by LibertyPay Ltd. For-profit. As seen on Dragons’ Den.
6.5% + £0.30 per transaction. Donor or charity absorbs.
33,000+ UK charities, the largest catalogue here.
Via Charities Trust. Up to 8 weeks to reach the charity.
Max 3 charities, £200/charity cap (£600/month total).
Toucan is now part of PayaCharity, the UK’s largest provider of contactless donation devices. Unfortunately, the app hasn’t received any updates in the last year and some users report issues using it.
You can filter charities by cause, location (5–75 mile radius), or size band. Spotlight Funds group three charities around a cause area, and one-off donations can flow to any charity outside the portfolio.
The portfolio cap is the constraint that defines the product. Donors can hold a maximum of three charities at a time, with a £600 monthly ceiling, fine if you support a tight handful, restrictive if you want a broader basket.
Good for: the largest charity catalogue, geographic discovery, strong brand recognition.
Worth noting: highest headline fee in this comparison, hard 3-charity portfolio cap, Gift Aid delay of up to 8 weeks, app isn’t updated.
Two Things Worth A Closer Look
Fee math at small amounts
Fixed components (Pocket Giving’s 20p, Toucan’s 30p) take a proportionally larger bite at £20/month than at £100/month. If you’re starting small, percentage-only fee structures, like Legacy’s 3.75% and Stewardship’s 3.5%, preserve more of every pound.
Who owns the platform
Legacy and Stewardship are non-profits with charitable missions baked into their structure. Pocket Giving is a private for-profit. Toucan is a for-profit owned by a payments group. None of these is inherently wrong, but it’s worth knowing where the long-term product decisions ultimately answer to.
A simpler way to support multiple charities?
Legacy is built specifically for donors who want one place for everything, with unlimited charities, automated Gift Aid, a tax-ready annual summary, and a fee structure where nothing is taken by the platform itself.
Get Legacy on the App Store or Google Play.
Sources
- Legacy Home, About, FAQ
- Stewardship Giving Account, Fees
- Pocket Giving, Trustpilot
- Toucan, FAQs, Toucan Giving (corporate)
- Charities Trust
Spotted something out of date?
We want this comparison to be as accurate as possible. If you’ve found a correction, a fee that’s changed, or a feature we’ve missed, please email support@givewithlegacy.com and we’ll update the page.