The Knot vs Zola vs Joy: actual fees compared

The Knot, Zola, and Joy all charge 2.5% on cash gifts paid by card. That's the fee that matters; everything else they advertise as "free" is. Donum charges 0% as a platform fee on cash gifts, ever.

This post does the side-by-side. Same gift totals, three platforms, what reaches the couple.

What each platform actually charges

All three are free to set up. None charge a monthly subscription. The fee shows up in one specific place: cash funds paid by credit or debit card.

• The Knot: 2.5% on credit/debit cash contributions. Free on bank transfer (ACH), where most guests don't choose to pay.
• Zola: 2.5% on credit/debit cash contributions. Same ACH carve-out.
• Joy: 2.5% on credit/debit cash contributions. Same pattern.

This is not card processing being passed through at cost. Standard online card processing is 2.9% + 30¢. The 2.5% is a margin the platform keeps while it negotiates lower processor rates separately. Call it what it is: a platform fee on cash gifts, sold as a "processing fee."

The three platforms also share a quieter monetization layer: affiliate revenue from physical-gift purchases routed through their links. Nothing wrong with that on its own; Donum runs on the same model. The difference is whether they also charge the couple a cut of cash. They do. We don't.

What the fee costs at $4k, $8k, $20k

Assume all-card payment (worst case but not unrealistic; guests overwhelmingly choose cards over ACH). Same number on every platform because they all charge the same rate:

• $4,000 in cash gifts: $100 to the platform. Couple receives $3,900.
• $8,000 in cash gifts: $200 to the platform. Couple receives $7,800.
• $20,000 in cash gifts: $500 to the platform. Couple receives $19,500.

If half of guests pay by ACH and half by card, halve those numbers. In practice cards dominate by an enormous margin on consumer-to-consumer payments, so the all-card row is closer to reality than the half-and-half row.

On Donum, those same gifts arrive at $4,000, $8,000, and $20,000 respectively. The underlying Stripe processing cost (2.9% + 30¢) is offered to the guest to cover at checkout, default-on, with industry-typical adoption around 80%. When a guest declines, the couple absorbs Stripe's cost on that one contribution. There is no Donum margin on top.

Where else the platforms differ

Fees aside, the three diverge on the surrounding product.

The Knot is the largest by traffic and the most aggressive on guest-data monetization. Vendor marketing emails after signup are a long-running complaint. If you don't want your guests' inboxes spammed by photographers and DJs, that matters.

Zola has the cleanest UI of the three and the most polished wedding-website builder. Their cash-fund product is the most prominent of any large registry, which is also why the 2.5% is a more visible cost on Zola than on a platform where most gifts are physical.

Joy sits between the two: modern UI, decent website builder, smaller user base. Joy charges the same 2.5% but markets less aggressively against guests' inboxes.

None of these differences move the fee math. A 2.5% cut on a $20,000 cash haul is $500 whether the UI is good or not.

Is the fee really paid by the couple?

Yes. The wording on each platform's checkout suggests the guest pays it ("the fee is added at checkout"). The money flows to the platform, not the couple. From the guest's perspective they sent $500. From the couple's perspective they received $487.50. That $12.50 went to Zola/Knot/Joy, not into the couple's bank account.

If a registry wants to be transparent about it, they show the fee on the couple's dashboard, not just the guest's checkout. Most don't.

What about the registry-completion discount?

Zola, The Knot, and Joy all offer some version of "buy what's left after the wedding at a discount." It's a real benefit if you actually use it, but two caveats:

1. The discount is tied to specific store partnerships, not the whole registry. Items added from outside their catalog often don't qualify.
2. The discount averages 10–20%, less than what good price-matching or waiting for a sale will get you on most items.

It's not nothing. But it's also not a reason to accept 2.5% on cash if cash is more than a small slice of your gifts.

The bottom line

If your registry is mostly physical gifts and you don't care about cash funds, fee differences across The Knot, Zola, Joy, and Donum are small. If you have a cash fund of any meaningful size, the 2.5% is the line item that matters, and it's identical on the three big platforms.

Related reading: Zola's 2.5% cash fund fee, explained and the best zero-fee wedding registries in 2026.

The takeaway: The Knot, Zola, and Joy charge the same 2.5% on cash gifts. The choice between them is UI and brand; the choice between them and Donum is whether you want to lose $200 on $8,000 to a platform fee.