Open Collective
Ranked 2 of 5 crowdfunding platforms by recommenders
Recommended for letting open source projects and communities collect donations and get fiscal sponsorship. Main caveat: some call its non-charity middle-man setup suspicious.
Recommended for letting open source projects and communities collect donations and get fiscal sponsorship. Main caveat: some call its non-charity middle-man setup suspicious.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Praised as a superb, no-brainer service
“Open Collective is a superb service, bravo.”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “My open source project's donations no longer go through my bank account” “Surely thats a no brainer!”
Comment from 7 Sep 2026 in “Keep Our Servers Running” Seen as a good alternative or idea
“OpenCollective is another good alternative, that use the same means to fund themselves”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft Download Center Archive” “OpenCollective would be a great idea going forward for better transparency”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft Download Center Archive”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Questioned for bootstrapping its own business
“have they been using a platform that's seemingly built for communities and open source to bootstrap their business?”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run”
Other crowdfunding platforms people recommend
The four most recommended other crowdfunding platforms, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kickstarter | 12 | 8 | 60% | 8 | — | — |
| Open CollectiveThis page | 8 | 2 | 80% | 5 | — | — |
| Crowd Supply | 5 | 3 | 63% | 5 | — | — |
| Pieces | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| CleverCrow | 5 | 7 | 42% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Surely thats a no brainer!”
“But doing it like this, through a middle-man organization that isn't a charity, just plain smells like fraud to me.”
“Open Collective is a superb service, bravo.”
“have they been using a platform that's seemingly built for communities and open source to bootstrap their business?”
“It's primarily a payments platform.”
“OpenCollective would be a great idea going forward for better transparency”
“can give legal way to get fiscal sponsorship/basically be treated as a non profit”
“OpenCollective is another good alternative, that use the same means to fund themselves”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.