Pricing
Pay nothing, pay per update, or pay a flat monthly bill
Every plan on this page charges no per-donation fee, so a year where your giving doubles costs you nothing more. What Aurora is paid for is the writing: an update goes in, and a full set of posts for every channel you are on comes out. Free and Pay per update both cover 2 updates a month and neither has a monthly bill; past that, Pay per update charges $0.99 an update and the monthly plans, from $29/month, stop counting altogether. Your payment processor's own fee still comes out of every gift on all four — that part is real, and nothing on this page pretends otherwise.
No setup fee · No contract · Change or cancel from your dashboard
The whole price list
The first row is the one to read twice. Aurora's share of each donation is the same in all four columns, so there is no plan on which raising more costs you more, and no arrangement here where a good year turns into a bigger invoice. Most of the other rows repeat too, and that repetition is the rest of the argument: the fundraising product does not change with what you pay, there is no seat count, and there is no cap on how much you raise. Four things genuinely differ, and they are in the table rather than in the small print — how many updates a month we write and where those posts may link, how much of the assistant we cover, the two things it only does on a subscription, and the customization only Enterprise buys.
| Detail | Free | Pay per update | Starter | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora's share of each donation | no per-donation fee | no per-donation fee | no per-donation fee | no per-donation fee |
| Monthly bill | No monthly fee | No monthly fee | $29/month | $99/month |
| Are your donors asked for anything? | Yes — an optional amount for Aurora at checkout, which they can decline | No | No | No |
| Your payment processor's own fee | Comes out of every gift | Comes out of every gift | Comes out of every gift | Comes out of every gift |
| Card donations through Stripe, and PayPal donations | Both | Both | Both | Both |
| Needs, widgets, donors, receipts, reporting | All of it | All of it | All of it | All of it |
| Aurora's assistant, on our key | 2,000 credits a month | 2,000 credits a month | 5,000 credits a month | 25,000 credits a month |
| Your story, written for every channel you're on | 2 updates a month | 2 updates a month free, then $0.99 each, billed once at the end of the month | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Regenerating, re-running and editing what you already wrote | Always free | Always free | Always free | Always free |
| Where those posts send people | Your Aurora donation page | Your Aurora donation page | Anywhere you like | Anywhere you like |
| Partner directory, and Aurora reading what comes back | Not included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Support | Email support, answered within one business day. | Email support, answered within one business day. | Email support, answered within one business day. | Priority email support, answered the same business day. |
| Your own CSS, and Aurora's name off the widget | Enterprise only | Enterprise only | Enterprise only | Enterprise only |
| Setup fee, contract, minimum term | None | None | None | None |
Enterprise is the fifth plan and is not in this table: it is agreed with a person rather than bought from a page, and its terms are set for the organization. For large organizations that need the widget to be theirs, and someone to call. What Enterprise includes
A $100 gift, worked all the way through
One deduction leaves the donation, and none of it is ours. Aurora is the platform on the charge, so Stripe bills its fee to us and we recover it inside the same application fee — which means the figure at the bottom is what actually lands in your account, and it is the same figure on every plan you can choose.
Every plan on this page
The same arithmetic on all four
- Donation
- $100
- Stripe's own fee, passed through at cost
- minus $3.20
- Reaches your organization
- $96.80
There is no Aurora line in this ledger because there is nothing to put in it, on any of the four plans. What each plan is paid instead is under the next heading — and none of it comes out of a gift.
So what is Aurora paid?
Free
Whatever your donors choose to add for us at checkout, and nothing else. They can decline every time, and the gift itself reaches you exactly as the ledger shows.Pay per update
2 updates a month are free, and each update past them is $0.99. Those are added up and charged once, at the end of any month you go over — never one card charge per update, because a $0.99 transaction loses roughly a third of itself to the processor, and inventing that cost would serve nobody.Starter and Growth
The bill and nothing else — $29/month and $99/month — charged to a card of yours rather than to a donation. Nothing is metered underneath it: unlimited updates, and your posts may point wherever you like.Enterprise
Terms agreed with a person, which is why no figure for it appears anywhere on this page. Bespoke per-donation and monthly terms, set for your organization.
Worked at Stripe's standard US card rate, 2.9% + $0.30. A gift taken through PayPal nets something different — Aurora's share of it is nothing on every plan, but PayPal's own rates apply and we will not quote a figure we do not set.
What a monthly plan actually buys
PayPal giving is included on every plan, including the free one. Aurora takes no share of a PayPal donation at all — it settles straight into the nonprofit's own PayPal account.
Updates stop being something you count
Neither Starter nor Growth has a meter under it — unlimited updates, on both. The organizations Aurora is built for do not post too much — they post nothing for five weeks and then apologize for being quiet — so anything that makes somebody hesitate before saying something is working against the product. This is the plan for an organization that has finished deciding.Above a computable number of updates it is simply the cheaper plan
From about 32 updates in a month, the $29/month bill costs less than paying $0.99 for each of them, so Starter is the cheaper arrangement before anything it adds. Below that, Pay per update costs less — and costs nothing at all in a month you say nothing. Growth is not bought on this arithmetic and we will not pretend otherwise: it is bought for same-day support and the full assistant allowance.Your donors are never asked, and your posts point where you like
On Free, Aurora's income from your account is whatever your donors choose to add for us at checkout, and every piece we write links back to your Aurora donation page. A subscription ends both: your donation form asks your supporters for nothing but their gift, and the posts can send people to your own site, a campaign page, a partner, anywhere. 5,000 credits a month on Starter and 25,000 credits a month on Growth come with it — a ceiling sized so ordinary use never meets it rather than a budget that shapes your week.Cancelling is not only a billing change, and we will tell you so
A subscription that genuinely ends returns you to Free. Aurora still takes nothing from your gifts — that part does not move, on any plan — but two things a person can see do: your widget starts asking your donors for an optional contribution, and your allowance goes back to 2 updates a month with the posts linking to your Aurora donation page. It is said here, in the email we send, and in the record of the change. A card of yours that simply fails does not do this — only an ended subscription does.
The fundraising product is the same on every plan
Nothing in this list is held back for an upgrade. It is identical on the free plan and on Enterprise, and it does not change with how much you raise or how many people log in.
- Unlimited needs, initiatives and giving widgets
- One-time gifts and monthly sponsorships
- Per-widget colour, light or dark, corner style and font
- Donor and donation records, exported to CSV whenever you want
- Automatic donation receipts and thank-you emails
- A weekly summary of what came in
- In-kind pledges, so a supporter can bring the item instead of paying
- Collection drives with their own shareable page
- Public need requests with a review queue
- Printable QR posters for the links you share
- Matching-gift lookup through Double the Donation
- The newsletter block generator
And the four things that are not
A pricing page that claims total parity while the software gates four capabilities is not being generous, it is being wrong. Here is each one, what it is worth, and which plans have it.
How many updates a month, and where the posts may point
Free and Pay per update both cover 2 updates a month; Pay per update carries on past that at $0.99 an update and Free waits for the 1st. Starter and Growth carry unlimited updates. On both plans with no monthly bill, the posts we write link to your Aurora donation page and nowhere else. On Free that is how the writing gets paid for at all — the donors who arrive at that checkout are where the money comes from. On Pay per update the same rule applies, because the lock is tied to holding a subscription rather than to what you happen to have spent this month. Either monthly plan lifts it, and the posts point wherever you send them.How much of the assistant we pay for
Every plan can open the assistant, including the free one — a product whose front door is a chat window cannot lock the front door. What differs is the monthly allowance we cover: 2,000 credits a month on the two plans with no monthly bill, 5,000 credits a month on Starter, 25,000 credits a month on Growth. A credit is a tenth of a cent of what the model costs us. An organization that connects its own model key, or drives Aurora from its own assistant, is not metered at all on any plan — there is nothing of ours to meter.Two things the assistant only does from Starter up
Aurora's directory of businesses and nonprofits, so the assistant names who to ask rather than only what to ask for. And: Aurora reads what comes back — comments, replies, what a task actually produced — and turns it into what to try next. Below a subscription the assistant still tells you what KIND of help a task wants — that is advice, and withholding it would be withholding the plan. What a subscription buys is the list of who, and the reading of what came back.Customization, which is Enterprise only
Your own CSS on every donation widget, so it matches your site exactly. Aurora's name removed from the widget and your hosted donation page. Nothing below that tier can change the widget beyond the colour, theme, corner style and font every plan already sets, and no other plan takes Aurora's name off a donation page.
The questions a board asks
If yours has one that isn't here, write to us and we will answer it properly rather than pointing you at this page.
Start with how often you have something to say, because that is the only thing any of these plans charges for. If it is 2 a month or fewer, Free and Pay per update both cover it and neither costs your organization anything — the difference between them is who Aurora asks instead. Aurora takes nothing from your donations and bills you nothing. Instead, we ask your donors to add an optional contribution for us at checkout — they can always decline, and you keep 100% of every gift either way, plus your payment processor's own fee, charged separately on every plan. Pay per update asks your donors for nothing and charges you $0.99 for each update past the free ones. If you write more than that, Pay per update simply keeps going at that price, while Starter at $29/month covers unlimited updates and becomes the cheaper of the two from about 32 updates a month. Growth is Starter with same-day support and the full assistant allowance. No plan takes a share of a donation, so none of this is a decision about how much you raise. You can move in any direction from your dashboard.
On Pay per update, every update past the free 2 costs $0.99. They are added up and charged once, at the end of any month you actually go over — never one card payment per update, because a $0.99 transaction loses about a third of itself to the processor and there is no reason to invent that cost. Re-running an update, regenerating a piece and editing anything you have already made are free, always: the only thing that ever costs money is having something new to say. On Free nothing is charged because there is no overage — the free updates come back on the 1st, and everything already written stays yours to edit and post. On Starter and above there is nothing to go past.
Four things, and they are in the table above rather than in this answer alone. The story engine writes 2 updates a month without a subscription and unlimited updates with one, and without one those posts link to your Aurora donation page rather than anywhere you choose. The assistant's monthly allowance is smaller. Two of the assistant's capabilities — naming specific businesses and nonprofits to approach, and reading what comes back from what you sent — need Starter or above. Your own stylesheet on the widget, and Aurora's name removed from your donation page, are Enterprise. Everything else on this page is on every plan, including the free one: the same needs, widgets, donors, receipts, reporting and processors, with no seat count and no cap on how much you raise.
Whichever processor takes the gift charges its own fee, on every plan, and that part never goes away. On a card donation it is collected inside the same deduction you see against each gift rather than arriving as a second charge. On PayPal your organization is the merchant and PayPal bills you directly. Stripe's standard US card rate is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction; PayPal's own rates apply. Beyond that and the per-update charge on Pay per update, there is no setup fee, no contract, no minimum term and no charge for extra widgets, needs or donors.
Because Stripe does not bill you for it — it bills us. Aurora is the platform on the charge, so Stripe debits its 2.9% + $0.30 from Aurora's balance, and Aurora recovers that cost inside the one application fee you do see against each donation. It is the same money leaving the same gift, deducted once instead of twice. It is also the only thing in that deduction: none of it is Aurora's share, because Aurora has no share of a donation on any plan we offer.
Stripe's standard US card rate, 2.9% + $0.30, on every card gift — a fixed figure, not your account's actual cost. On an Amex, an international card or a currency conversion Stripe charges more than that and Aurora absorbs the difference. If Stripe has granted your organization a discounted nonprofit rate, Stripe charges less and the difference stays with Aurora. We would rather write that down here than have you work it out from a statement.
No. On every plan on this page a monthly renewal is treated exactly like a one-time gift: no per-donation fee, on either processor. Your payment processor's own fee applies to every renewal on every plan, because every renewal is a fresh transaction. Nothing about a supporter giving monthly changes what Aurora is paid, which is the whole point of charging for updates instead: a sponsor who renews for three years costs you no more in year three than in year one.
Aurora takes 0% of PayPal donations — PayPal's own rates apply. What PayPal itself charges depends on whether they have granted your organization charity status, which you apply for with them directly — so we will not quote you a number we do not control. PayPal giving is on every plan, including the free one; it is not something a subscription unlocks.
Yes, in any direction, at any time, from your dashboard, and no move puts a charge back on a donation — there is no plan here that takes one. What a move does change is the story engine and your donation form. Leaving a monthly plan for Free takes you back to 2 updates a month, links those posts to your Aurora donation page, and starts asking your donors for an optional contribution. Leaving it for Pay per update does the first two and leaves your donors alone. Everything you have already written stays yours either way, and recurring gifts your supporters have set up keep running — we will not cancel someone's standing gift over your billing.
No. Pay as you go is closed to new organizations and is not on this page any more, but the terms are unchanged for everyone already on it: 3% + $0.30 of each gift, no monthly fee, and the story allowance you already had. Nothing about your billing moves because we tidied a list. If you would rather be on one of the plans above, you can switch from your dashboard whenever you like — but switching away is one-way, because the plan is no longer offered.
Stripe pays out to the bank account you connected, on Stripe's normal payout schedule. PayPal credits your PayPal balance, which you withdraw yourself. Donations settle into your own accounts rather than into ours — Aurora never holds your money, on any plan.
No. You connect a standard Stripe account through Aurora's onboarding, and Stripe bills its processing against each transaction. There is no Stripe subscription to buy and nothing to configure on their side beyond their own identity checks.
Write one before you pay anything
Create an account, publish a widget, and turn your first 2 updates into a full set of posts each — on either of the two plans that cost your organization nothing. Move to Starter at $29/month when you would rather stop counting.