Auctria pricing: the revenue band that decides what you pay

I built the Generosity Works platform myself, so I read other people’s pricing pages more closely than is good for me. Everything below is from Auctria’s own pages in October 2026.

What is Auctria, and who built it?

Auctria is a Canadian auction and event fundraising platform, running since 2011. Its about page tells a good origin story: a school fundraiser outgrew pen, paper and spreadsheets, and the founder, who is also the chief software engineer, wrote the first version to fix it.

It is built for the person doing the admin. The home page says organisations using it have raised over $1.75 billion, and the feature list covers silent, live and online bidding, tickets, raffles, sponsorship, a paddle raise, an event website and over a hundred reports.

What do Auctria’s pricing tiers cost?

Three tiers, each a twelve-month licence, priced by the revenue you record. From the pricing page in October 2026:

Items are unlimited on every plan. Setup help is sold separately as Auctria Launch, $499 or $749 per event for the two published packages. Extra texts cost $25 per 1,000.

The licence does not auto-renew, which I like more than I expected to. Let it lapse and the account drops to Explorer limits, with no data deleted.

What happens when you cross the revenue band?

On the free Explorer plan, Auctria stops accepting bids, donations and purchases, and bidders see an error until you remove bids or upgrade. On Emerald and Diamond you are notified and can upgrade instead, though upgrading moves neither the expiry date nor card fees already charged.

Now look at what counts towards the limit: any income recorded from bidders, so winning bids, purchases and donations together. Auctria is right that it takes no performance fee, and the licence really is a fixed figure. But a band drawn around your total is still a price that moves with how well the evening goes, in steps rather than percentages. Modest, honest steps, which is more than much of this market manages. Steps all the same.

A criticism of the model, not the company. A charity on Explorer hoping for £9,000 and finding £11,000 in the room has a wonderful problem and a stopped checkout in the same minute.

Which currency does Auctria price in?

US dollars, for everyone outside Canada, where the same number is charged in Canadian dollars plus HST.

The platform supports several currencies, listed as USD, CAD, EUR, AUD and JPY. Pounds are not among them, and the dollar limit is translated into the local equivalent. Two questions worth an email, then: can the auction settle in sterling, and at what rate is my band measured on the night I cross it?

Conversion is not free: Stripe’s published UK pricing is 1.5% plus 20p on standard UK cards, with a further 2% where currency conversion is required.

Does Auctria serve UK charities?

Yes, and it says so directly rather than leaving you to guess. The credit card page answers “if I am based in the UK, can I accept payments” with a plain yes, because Stripe and Authorize.Net both operate here.

Better still, your organisation opens its own processor account and the processor pays the proceeds into your bank. Auctria does not touch the funds or need your bank details. That architecture is the right way round.

Two gaps to plan around. Texting, including outbid notices and text to register, is listed for the US and Canada only, and there is no PayPal support.

Worth knowing too: Auctria’s terms put any dispute under Ontario law and into arbitration in Ottawa.

One setting to check, too. Auctria lets guests cover card fees at checkout, optionally or as a requirement. Make it a requirement and the UK Fundraising Regulator’s code expects a donor to see how the fee is calculated, and how to remove it, before handing over card details.

Can a UK charity claim Gift Aid through Auctria?

Not on anything I could find. Gift Aid appears on none of the pricing, feature, credit card or texting pages, which is no surprise in software written for North American tax rules.

On the auction it matters less than people fear. HMRC treats a winning bid as a purchase, and permits a split payment only where the item is commercially available and the bidder knew its separate price when they won.

On gifts it matters enormously. Gift Aid adds 25p per £1 from a UK taxpayer, and each claim needs a declaration carrying the donor’s name, address and intent. If the pledge is the biggest number of your night, and in my experience it usually is, capturing those declarations as the gifts arrive is worth more than any licence saving. More on the pledges page.

What Auctria gets right

Quite a lot, and the price is the least of it. No commission, no lock-in, deep reporting, and unlimited items even on the free plan, so a first-timer with sixty lots and no budget can run a proper silent auction. Of the four platforms I compared for American galas, Auctria was the only one publishing a complete price.

What no auction admin tool can design for you

Auctria administers an auction: items in, bidders registered, bids recorded, statements out. What it cannot decide is which lots earn their place, where the emotional peak sits, or whether the pledge comes before or after the bidding. Tracking consignment items is a paid-plan feature: the model assumes a bought-in catalogue. Ten lots in a room of two hundred means ten winners, and software will cheerfully help you build that.

I learned the other half the hard way. At one event running late, with nothing to tee up the live auction, I called lots into a talking room without stopping to get it quiet. Only part of the room heard what was being sold, and one man bid on an item he could not properly hear. No platform would have flagged that: it was a decision about the room, not a record in a database.

That layer is where Generosity Works lives. The platform is a component of the evening, not the offer. It is free when a charity books me as auctioneer and host, and my fee is the only money Generosity Works takes. The platform is not sold on its own; our pricing page explains why. There is one fee agreed up front, it does not move with the total, and the auctioneering side of it lives at thecharityauctioneer.uk.

Ask for the band in pounds

If Auctria is on your shortlist, that is a reasonable place to be. Send one email first. Can we settle in sterling, what rate converts the dollar band, and who answers at 9pm on a Saturday in London if the checkout stops.

Then the question no vendor can answer. If the room gave everything it arrived willing to give, what would the total be, and is the evening built to let it?

If you have a number to hit this year, let’s talk about it.