GiveRadar vs CharityBase: an honest comparison
CharityBase and GiveRadar are both free and both built on official registry data, but they serve different users. CharityBase is a developer tool: a GraphQL API over roughly 168,000 England-and-Wales charities. GiveRadar is an analysis layer: a disclosure score, red flags, and monitoring across 100+ countries.
Primary sources
All CharityBase and Find that Charity figures are from those projects' own pages, last reviewed July 2026; volatile figures carry their date where stated. GiveRadar figures are live counts from this platform.
This page is written and maintained by GiveRadar. We make no claim to neutrality: we built GiveRadar and we believe in it, and we have tried to represent CharityBase fairly. CharityBase is a free, genuinely useful GraphQL data API for England-and-Wales charities, and we recommend it for that job. The two are both free and combine well. If you spot an inaccuracy, email info@giveradar.com and we will correct it.
Matt Timmermans
Founder of GiveRadar
GiveRadar
CharityBaseWhat are GiveRadar and CharityBase each for?
They both start from official registry data, but one hands you raw records and the other hands you a judgment. Name what you are trying to do and the choice is usually obvious.
Judge how a charity discloses
"How transparent is this charity, and how does it compare to its peers?"
This needs an interpretation: a 0-100 disclosure score, red flags, officer records, and peer context, across many countries. GiveRadar answers it for 7.9 million+ nonprofits, and CharityBase does not interpret its data.
Answered by GiveRadar
Query raw UK charity data
"How do I pull exactly the England-and-Wales register fields my app needs?"
This needs a data API: a GraphQL endpoint over the Charity Commission register, with precise field selection and server-side aggregation. CharityBase is built for exactly that, and GiveRadar does not offer GraphQL.
Answered by CharityBaseWho each one is
GiveRadar
GiveRadar is a free charity intelligence platform covering 7.9 million+ nonprofits across 100+ countries, built from 50+ official government registries and tax authorities, plus vetted directories where no registry data exists.
Every charity gets an integrity assessment: a 0-100 score of how much the organization discloses (registration, financial transparency, governance, contact availability, data recency), not how much impact it has, and it cannot be bought.
Red flags mark high executive pay, stale filings, and bare-minimum disclosure. GiveRadar Analysis adds peer context, watchlists send change alerts, and a REST API and MCP server both have free tiers. Every data point shows where it came from.
CharityBase
CharityBase is a free, open-source GraphQL API and search app for charities registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, initiated in 2016 by Dan Kwiatkowski and operated by his company Worthwhile Applications Ltd.
It draws on Charity Commission, Companies House, 360Giving, ONS, social media, and charity websites per its homepage (as of July 2026), covering roughly 168,000 registered England-and-Wales charities (its own docs show 168,438). Access is free with an API key, and a search frontend also exists at search.charitybase.uk.
It has no rating, seal, or review system: it exposes raw registry-derived data for search, filtering, aggregation, and counting. The hosted service is live and the operating company is active, but open-source development has been dormant since January 2023.
CharityBase serves data, GiveRadar interprets it
CharityBase and GiveRadar are both free, and both are built on official registry data, but they serve different users. CharityBase is a developer tool: a GraphQL API over roughly 168,000 England-and-Wales charities (as of July 2026) that lets you query, filter, and aggregate raw Charity Commission data yourself.
GiveRadar is an analysis layer: a 0-100 integrity assessment per charity, red flags, officer records, peer context, and monitoring, across 100+ countries, with its own REST API and MCP server. One caveat applies to CharityBase specifically: the service is online and its company is active, but open-source development has been dormant since early 2023, so weigh that if you are building something long-lived on it.
What does CharityBase cover?
CharityBase is a free, focused data API for one register: the Charity Commission for England and Wales. It is genuinely useful for that, with one honest caveat about how actively it is being developed.
Figures as of July 2026. The hosted service is live and its operating company, Worthwhile Applications Ltd, is active at Companies House (confirmation statement filed October 2025), but whether the hosted dataset is still refreshed from the Charity Commission could not be verified. By contrast, GiveRadar covers 7.9 million+ nonprofits across 100+ countries.
GiveRadar vs CharityBase: the full comparison table
Both are free and registry-based, but they answer different needs; the table lines them up across the dimensions where each is meaningful. CharityBase figures last reviewed July 2026.
| Dimension | GiveRadar | CharityBase |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | 7.9 million+ nonprofits | ~168,000 registered charities (its docs show 168,438 as of Jul 2026) |
| Geography | 100+ countries | England and Wales only (Charity Commission register); Scotland (OSCR) and Northern Ireland (CCNI) not covered |
| What the score means | Integrity assessment, 0-100: measures public disclosure (registration, financial transparency, governance, contact availability, data recency), never impact, cannot be bought | No score, rating, seal, or review system: raw registry-derived data for you to query and interpret |
| Price | Free for everyone; charities cannot pay for placement or scores | Free with an API key; no pricing or paid tier mentioned in its docs (as of Jul 2026) |
| Data source | 50+ official government registries and tax authorities, plus vetted directories where no registry data exists; provenance shown per data point | Charity Commission for England and Wales, Companies House, 360Giving, ONS, social media, and charity websites, per its homepage (as of Jul 2026); whether the hosted dataset is still refreshed could not be verified |
| API | REST API and MCP server, both with free tiers | GraphQL API at a single endpoint with an interactive playground; free API key required; docs advise against bulk downloads via pagination and ask you to contact them for exports |
| Monitoring | Watchlists with change alerts on filings, scores, and red flags | No monitoring or alerts; you would poll the API yourself |
Scroll the table sideways on a phone to see every column.
When should you use CharityBase vs GiveRadar?
Pull data with one, judge charities with the other; for a UK-facing project you often want both.
Use GiveRadar when
- You want an interpretation, not just data: a 0-100 integrity assessment you can check, with red flags and peer context.
- The charity is outside England and Wales: GiveRadar covers 100+ countries, including Scottish and Northern Irish charities.
- You need officer records with compensation where disclosed, with provenance per data point.
- You want monitoring without building it, or you prefer REST or MCP over GraphQL.
Use CharityBase when
- You are a developer who wants raw England-and-Wales charity data in exactly the shape your application needs, via GraphQL.
- You need aggregation and counting over the Charity Commission register, done server-side.
- You want registry data joined with Companies House and 360Giving grant data in one query surface.
- You value open source, and your project is short-lived or exploratory, where the dormant-development caveat matters less.
Use both when
You are building a UK-facing application and vetting the charities inside it. Pull the raw England-and-Wales register data you need through CharityBase's GraphQL API, and use GiveRadar for the judgment layer: integrity assessments, red flags, and officer records for the organizations your users are about to trust. If your dataset spans the UK and beyond, use CharityBase for deep England-and-Wales fields and GiveRadar's API for the other 100+ countries and for disclosure scoring everywhere.
Is GiveRadar a good CharityBase alternative?
First, the honest status report, because it matters for this question. As of July 2026 the CharityBase service is live: the site, docs, and GraphQL playground all work, and the company behind it, Worthwhile Applications Ltd, is active at Companies House with a confirmation statement filed in October 2025. But the open-source repositories have had no activity since January 2023, the last API release dates to February 2019, and we could not verify whether the hosted dataset is still being refreshed from the Charity Commission. None of that means CharityBase is gone; it does mean you should check data freshness yourself before building on it.
If what you need is UK-wide open charity data, the strongest alternative today is not GiveRadar: it is Find that Charity (findthatcharity.uk), an independent Kane Data Ltd project that aggregates 16 data sources covering 660,000+ UK non-profit and related organisations (its own figures, as of July 2026), including Scotland and Northern Ireland. Naming it here is the honest thing to do. Notably, NGO Explorer, which ran on CharityBase from 2019 to 2024, now sources its data from Find that Charity.
GiveRadar is the right CharityBase alternative when your question is about judgment rather than raw records, or when it extends beyond the UK. GiveRadar covers 7.9 million+ nonprofits in 100+ countries with a 0-100 integrity assessment, red flags, officer records where disclosed, watchlists with change alerts, and a REST API and MCP server with free tiers, all free and with no pay-to-play. GiveRadar is not the right alternative if what you specifically want is GraphQL access to raw Charity Commission register fields: that is CharityBase's job, and it still does it.
GiveRadar and CharityBase: common questions
Is GiveRadar a CharityBase alternative?
Partly. GiveRadar answers a different question: instead of exposing raw England-and-Wales registry data over GraphQL, it scores how much each charity discloses, across 7.9 million+ nonprofits in 100+ countries, with red flags, officer records, and change alerts, plus a REST API and MCP server with free tiers. If you want raw Charity Commission data via GraphQL, CharityBase still does that and GiveRadar does not replicate it. If you want UK-wide raw open data including Scotland and Northern Ireland, Find that Charity (findthatcharity.uk) is the more direct alternative.
Is CharityBase or GiveRadar better?
They are different tools for different questions, so neither is simply better. CharityBase is better when you are a developer who needs raw, queryable Charity Commission data for England and Wales: GraphQL, precise field selection, server-side aggregation, free with an API key. GiveRadar is better when you need an interpretation of a charity's disclosure: a 0-100 integrity assessment, red flags, peer context, and monitoring, across 100+ countries. The honest steer: pull data with CharityBase, judge charities with GiveRadar.
Is CharityBase still maintained?
The hosted service is live as of July 2026: the site, docs, and GraphQL playground all work, and its operating company, Worthwhile Applications Ltd, is active at Companies House with a confirmation statement filed in October 2025. Open-source development, however, is dormant: the last push to any charity-base GitHub repository was January 2023, and the API's last release (v4.2.1) dates to February 2019. The repositories are not archived and carry no deprecation notice. Whether the hosted dataset is still refreshed from the Charity Commission could not be verified, so check data freshness before relying on it.
Is the CharityBase API free?
Yes. As of July 2026, CharityBase's GraphQL API is free to use with an API key, sent as an Apikey authorization header, and its docs mention no pricing or paid tier. The docs advise against bulk downloads via pagination and ask you to contact the project for exports. For comparison, GiveRadar's REST API and MCP server also have free tiers, cover 100+ countries, and include integrity assessments, financials, officer records where disclosed, and red flags.
Other charity data tools compared
GiveRadar vs NGO Explorer
The UK-NGO research tool that once ran on CharityBase, compared with a global platform.
GiveRadar vs ProPublica
The other free raw-data API comparison, on the US side with 990 filings.
GiveRadar vs Candid
The big nonprofit-profile database comparison for US records and profiles.
Check any charity's disclosure record, free
Search 7.9M+ nonprofits in 100+ countries. Pull the raw records with a data API, and judge disclosure here.