Cash Fund Fees Compared - Which Costs Least in 2026

Cash fund fees compared - which costs least in 2026

Every cash fund charges something. The only real questions are how much, who pays it, and at which point in the process it comes out — and those three answers vary wildly between the big US platforms.

This is a straight cash fund fees comparison for 2026. We put the published rates for Zola, The Knot, Joy, Honeyfund and PocketWell side by side, work out the exact dollar cost on a $100 gift, and show you the fees that only appear later — at cash-out, at transfer, or when you decide you want plain money instead of a gift card.

We should say up front where we sit: PocketWell runs a digital cash fund for US weddings and other events, so we are one of the options being compared. That is exactly why we have published our own numbers in full, including the parts where a competitor charges less than we do.

Last updated: August 2026. All third-party rates were checked against each provider's own published help or pricing pages in August 2026. Providers change pricing without much notice — always confirm on the provider's site before you commit.

Key takeaways

• Lowest headline card rate in 2026: The Knot and Zola, both at 2.5% on credit card contributions to a cash fund.
• Genuinely $0 routes exist, but only on specific payment rails — Venmo balance, linked bank or debit on The Knot and Zola; Venmo, Cash App or PayPal.Me on Joy; gift cards or the prepaid Mastercard on Honeyfund.
• "Zero fee" almost never means zero cost. Joy charges 3.5% on card gifts, and Honeyfund charges 3.5% + $0.59 the moment you want the money in your bank account rather than as gift cards.
• PocketWell is not the cheapest per card gift. Guests pay a 3.9% platform fee plus card processing. In exchange, hosts pay nothing at any stage — no setup cost, no subscription, no cash-out fee.
• On PocketWell's own US data, the median gift was $50 and the guest paid about $3.76 on top of it. Small gifts cost proportionally more, because every card payment carries a flat 30 cent charge.

What this guide covers

1. Cash fund fees comparison table for 2026
2. Which cash gift registry costs least
3. Why zero-fee cash funds are rarely free
4. What a $100 gift actually costs on PocketWell
5. What our US gift data shows about fees
6. Registry fee breakdown - five costs to check
7. How to set up a low-cost cash fund
8. Frequently asked questions

Cash fund fees comparison table for 2026

Here is the wedding cash fund cost for each major US platform, expressed as the dollar amount that disappears from a single $100 gift.

Methodology: figures come from each provider's own published fee documentation, read in August 2026 — The Knot's Cash Fund help center, Zola's cash gift handling fee FAQ, Joy's credit card contributions article and Honeyfund's fee schedule. The PocketWell column is calculated from our live fee structure, described in full below.

If you want honeymoon fund fees compared rather than general cash fund fees, the same table applies without adjustment. A honeymoon fund is a cash fund with a travel label on it — every platform above charges identically whether the money is earmarked for flights, a house deposit or nothing in particular.

Two pieces of vocabulary worth knowing before you read further. A cash fund (or cash gift registry) is a registry line item that accepts money rather than a product — the money lands with the couple, not a retailer. A platform fee is the cut the service itself keeps, which is a separate thing from the processing fee the card networks charge to move money at all. Several platforms in the table above charge one and not the other, which is why the marketing language gets slippery.

Which cash gift registry costs least

On headline card rate, The Knot and Zola are the cheapest cash gift registry options in 2026, both at 2.5%. If your guests pay by credit card and you want a straight percentage comparison, nothing else in the mainstream US wedding registry market currently beats that number.

But "cheapest" depends on which cost you are trying to minimize:

• Cheapest for guests paying by card: The Knot or Zola, at 2.5%. Our full breakdowns of both are in The Knot cash fund fees explained and Zola cash fund fees explained.
• Cheapest overall if your guests will use Venmo: The Knot, Zola or Joy, all of which drop to $0 on peer-to-peer rails. This is genuinely free, and it is the single biggest saving available to a US couple.
• Cheapest if you are happy not to receive cash: Honeyfund, where gift cards and the prepaid Mastercard carry no fee. The catch is in the name — see Honeyfund fees explained.
• Cheapest for the host, at every stage: PocketWell, where hosts pay nothing to create a page, nothing monthly, and nothing to receive their money.

That last line is the honest version of our own pitch. PocketWell does not win the per-gift rate comparison and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we do is put the entire cost on one line, visible to the guest before they confirm, with nothing deducted afterward from what the host receives.

Comparing options for a specific occasion? Our roundup of the best cash gift registry apps for 2026 covers features as well as price.

Why zero-fee cash funds are rarely free

A "zero fee" cash fund usually means the platform takes no cut, not that the transaction is free. Card networks charge to move money regardless of who is running the registry, and that charge has to land on somebody.

Read the three claims carefully and you can see where each one moves the cost:

• The Knot and Zola both state that they keep no percentage of cash fund gifts — the 2.5% is card processing. That is a true zero-platform-fee claim, and the honest one in this market.
• Joy advertises a zero-fee cash fund registry, which holds for peer-to-peer contributions. Card gifts carry 3.5% charged by Stripe, and moving the balance out attracts a flat $1.70. Our Joy wedding registry fees explained piece walks through it.
• Honeyfund is free to set up and free to use if you accept gift cards. Converting gifts to actual money in your bank account costs 3.5% + $0.59. The fee has not been removed, it has been moved to the exit.

The pattern is consistent: the fee moves to whichever step the marketing is not talking about. When you are comparing, ask what happens at cash-out, not just at checkout.

What a $100 gift actually costs on PocketWell

On PocketWell, a US guest sending a $100 gift pays $107.21 — a $3.90 platform fee plus $3.31 in card processing — and the host receives the full $100. The fee is added on top of the gift amount and shown before the guest confirms, so nobody is surprised after the fact.

Our structure is a 3.9% platform fee (this is the international rate on pocketwellapp.com), plus standard card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 charged on the gift and platform fee together. Those processing figures match Stripe's published US online card pricing, which is our payment provider.

Notice the direction of travel. The percentage falls as the gift grows, because the flat 30 cent processing charge is a much bigger slice of $25 than of $500. That is true of every card-based cash fund, not just ours — it is simply arithmetic that most fee tables hide by quoting a single percentage.

What hosts pay: nothing. There is no setup cost, no subscription, no premium tier, and no deduction when funds are paid out to your bank through Stripe Connect. If your guests contribute $4,000, $4,000 is what reaches you.

What our US gift data shows about fees

Across 227 completed US gifts on PocketWell, the median gift was $50 and the median guest paid about $3.76 in combined fees on top of it. The middle half of gifts fell between $40 and $100, and 30% of gifts were $100 or more.

Methodology: these figures are aggregated from PocketWell's own production database, covering all successfully completed contributions from US-based guests across 45 event pages, queried on 23 August 2026. They describe activity on our platform only — they are not a national survey of US gifting, and they are not drawn from our separate Australian product. No individual gift, host or guest is identifiable in any figure quoted here.

Three things in that data are worth a host's attention:

Small gifts carry the highest percentage cost. On US gifts under $25, fees averaged 10.4% of the gift value. On gifts of $100 or more, that dropped to 7.1%. If your event will attract lots of small contributions — an office collection, a class gift, a money pool for a group present — the flat per-transaction charge matters more than the headline percentage on any platform you are comparing.

Occasion changes the typical amount, and therefore the cost. Among US events with enough volume to report, the median gift was $50 for graduations, $40 for birthdays and $25 for retirements. A graduation cash fund and a wedding fund have quite different fee profiles for exactly this reason.

Weddings sit at the top end. We do not yet have enough completed US wedding gifts to publish a median we would stand behind, so we are not going to invent one. For amount guidance, our US wedding gift amount guide for 2026 and the US gift amount calculator are built for that question.

Something we see constantly on the operating side: hosts obsess over the fee percentage and then lose far more to a page that never gets shared properly. The difference between a 2.5% and a 3.9% platform is about $14 on a $1,000 total. The difference between a link that goes out with the invitation and one that goes out the week after the wedding is a great deal larger than that.

Registry fee breakdown - five costs to check

Comparing cash funds on the advertised percentage alone will mislead you, because the advertised percentage is only one of five possible charges. Before you commit to any platform, get a straight answer on each of these.

1. The platform fee. Does the service keep a percentage of gifts? The Knot and Zola say they keep none. PocketWell keeps 3.9% and says so.
2. The processing fee. What do card payments cost, and is that number bundled into the headline rate or added on top?
3. The cash-out or transfer fee. This is where the surprises live. Honeyfund charges 3.5% + $0.59 to convert gifts to bank cash; Joy adds a flat $1.70 to move a balance out. PocketWell charges nothing at this step.
4. Who is on the hook. Guest-pays keeps the host's total intact but slightly increases what a guest sees at checkout. Couple-absorbs looks kinder to guests and quietly reduces your total. Zola and The Knot let you choose; on PocketWell the guest pays and sees the amount before confirming.
5. The free-route conditions. A $0 option is only worth something if your guests will actually use it. If half your guest list has never opened Venmo, a Venmo-only zero-fee route saves you nothing.

Run those five questions across any shortlist and the genuinely cheapest option for your guest list usually becomes obvious within a couple of minutes.

How to set up a low-cost cash fund

Setting up a cash fund on PocketWell takes a few minutes and costs the host nothing at any point. Here is the sequence, with the fee-relevant decision flagged at each step.

1. Pick your occasion and create the page. Choose the event type that matches — wedding, honeymoon fund, graduation, birthday or a custom collection. Creating the page is free and there is no card required to start.

2. Set suggested amounts deliberately. This is the single biggest lever you have over total fee cost. Suggesting $50 and $100 rather than $20 and $30 lifts the average gift and lowers the percentage lost to the flat per-transaction charge.

3. Write the ask clearly. Guests give more, and more often, when the page says what the money is for. "Toward our honeymoon in Portugal" outperforms a blank contribution box by a distance.

4. Connect your payout account. Payouts run through Stripe Connect to your bank. Verification takes a little time on first setup, so do it well before the event rather than the week of — our payout timeline calculator will show you what to expect.

5. Share the link early, and more than once. With the invitation, on the wedding website, on a QR code at the event. This is the step that determines your total, not the fee table.

Not sure which type of fund fits your event? Our two-minute registry type quiz points you at the right setup, and every suggested amount shows the exact guest-side fee before you publish anything.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Which cash fund has the lowest fees in 2026?

A: On credit card contributions, The Knot and Zola are joint lowest at 2.5%, and both state that they keep none of it — the charge is card processing. Joy sits at 3.5% on card gifts, PocketWell at 3.9% plus processing, and Honeyfund at 3.5% + $0.59 when you convert gifts to bank cash. There are also genuinely free routes: The Knot, Zola and Joy all charge $0 on peer-to-peer payments such as Venmo, and Honeyfund charges nothing if you take gift cards instead of cash. The cheapest option for you depends less on the table and more on how your guests actually pay.

Q: Do wedding cash funds take a percentage of the gift?

A: Some do and some do not, and the distinction matters. The Knot and Zola both state they take no percentage of cash fund gifts — the 2.5% you see is credit card processing passed through. PocketWell does keep a percentage: a 3.9% platform fee, charged to the guest on top of the gift, which is how the product stays free for hosts. Joy's 3.5% goes to Stripe rather than to Joy. Ask the question specifically as "does the platform keep a cut, and what does processing cost?" — the two answers are frequently different.

Q: Who pays the fee, the guest or the couple?

A: It varies by platform and is sometimes your choice. Zola lets couples decide whether to absorb the 2.5% or pass it to guests. The Knot charges guests by default but lets couples cover it. On Joy and PocketWell, the guest pays and sees the amount before confirming. On Honeyfund, the cost lands on the couple at cash-out rather than on the guest at checkout. If you want your guests to see a clean number, choose a couple-absorbs option — just remember it comes out of your total.

Q: Why do small gifts cost proportionally more?

A: Because card processing includes a flat per-transaction charge on top of the percentage — typically 30 cents in the US. That flat amount is 1.2% of a $25 gift but only 0.06% of a $500 gift. In our own US data, fees averaged 10.4% of gift value on contributions under $25 against 7.1% on gifts of $100 or more. If you are running a group collection with many small contributions, this is worth more attention than a 1% difference in headline rate.

Q: Is there a cash gift registry that is completely free?

A: Only under conditions. Free peer-to-peer routes on The Knot, Zola and Joy are genuinely free, but they require your guests to use Venmo, Cash App or PayPal. Honeyfund is free if you accept gift cards or a prepaid Mastercard rather than money in your account. No mainstream US platform moves card money to a bank account for nothing, because the card networks charge for it. Anyone claiming otherwise has moved the cost somewhere you have not looked yet — check the FAQ page of any service you are considering, not just its pricing page.

Q: Does PocketWell charge hosts anything at all?

A: No. Creating a page is free, there is no subscription or premium tier, and nothing is deducted from your balance when funds are paid out to your bank through Stripe Connect. The 3.9% platform fee plus processing is paid by the guest, on top of their gift, and displayed before they confirm. If guests send $2,000 in gifts, $2,000 reaches you.

Q: How long does it take to receive the money?

A: Funds are paid out to your bank account via Stripe Connect once your account is verified. Timing depends on your bank and on how quickly verification completes, so set up your payout account well before your event rather than in the final week. No cash fund can promise money in your account the same day, and we would be wary of any service that implies it can.

Q: Can I use a cash fund for something other than a wedding?

A: Yes, and it is more common than you might expect. On PocketWell's US pages, graduations, birthdays and retirements all see steady volume alongside weddings. The fee structure is identical across occasions, but the typical gift size is not — which is why a group money pool for a colleague's leaving gift carries a higher effective percentage than a wedding fund does.

The short version

The cheapest cash fund in 2026 is the one your guests will actually use on the rail that costs least. On card, that is The Knot or Zola at 2.5%. On peer-to-peer, it is any of The Knot, Zola or Joy at $0. If you would rather have money than gift cards, discount Honeyfund's free tier and compare its 3.5% + $0.59 cash-out honestly against the alternatives.

PocketWell costs more per card gift than the cheapest option on this page. What it gives you instead is a structure with no host cost at any stage, one visible fee shown to the guest before they confirm, and pages for weddings, graduations, birthdays, group gifts and honeymoon funds across five countries rather than weddings alone.

Whichever way you go, check the five costs in the breakdown above before you publish a page, and make your suggested amounts count — that decision will move your total further than any percentage on this page.

Ready to collect cash gifts the easy way? Create your free page — it is free for hosts, and guests can give from any device, no app required.