# Charity Excellence Funding Finder vs OpenGrant: what each one is for

Charity Excellence's Funding Finder is free and worth keeping. OpenGrant adds source links, open-call ingest, 360Giving evidence, exports and an API. How the two differ, checked 26 October 2026.

- Author: OpenGrant
- Topic: [Grant databases compared](https://opengrant.co.uk/blog/category/grant-databases-compared)
- Published: 2026-10-26
- Updated: 2026-10-26
- Source sites checked: 2026-10-26
- Canonical URL: https://opengrant.co.uk/blog/charity-excellence-vs-opengrant

## Key facts

- Charity Excellence Framework is a registered charity (1195568) describing itself as "a completely free one-stop-shop to find grant funding" with 60,000 members (26 October 2026).
- Its Funding Finder is a free directory for registered users that "connects you to 100s of others and online funding lists"; the site gives no count of funders or grants.
- Alongside the finder it offers a Help Finder, Company Donations Finder, policy templates, health checks, a bid writer and an AI assistant.
- OpenGrant listed 1,021 open, rolling and forthcoming schemes on 26 October 2026, each with a source link and last-verified date, plus 49,000+ grant-making trusts and 360Giving profiles.
- Both have a free tier. OpenGrant charges £29 a month per email for funder research, exports and the peers lookup; Charity Excellence charges nothing.

Charity Excellence's Funding Finder is a free, registration-based grants directory inside a wider free toolkit for small charities, and it is worth keeping. OpenGrant is a database of open calls and funder evidence with a source link and last-verified date on every record. They answer different questions: Charity Excellence tells you which funders exist for your cause, OpenGrant tells you what is open now, on what terms, and what each funder has given before. Both were checked on 26 October 2026.

## What Charity Excellence offers

Charity Excellence Framework is a charitable incorporated organisation (charity number 1195568) that describes itself as "a completely free one-stop-shop to find grant funding", with 60,000 members as of its July 2026 infographic. Its Funding Finder page says the system "works for any non profit" and is "optimised to support small charities and marginalised groups". The directory can be filtered by grant amount and by category, with sections for small charities and for unregistered community groups such as clubs and PTAs, and it "connects you to 100s of others and online funding lists". The site gives no count of funders or grants and does not describe how the directory is compiled or kept current.

The finder sits inside a toolkit that is the real reason many small charities use the site: a Help Finder, a Company Donations Finder, a Data Finder, 65 or more policy templates, eight health check questionnaires, a bid writer, a start-up toolbox and an AI assistant that acts as "a personal fundraising advisor" once you are logged in. Its FAQ answers are sensible and general: check eligibility, engage with the funder, write a concise evidence-based application, and look at smaller grants for faster decisions.

## What OpenGrant offers

OpenGrant is built from open data and funder pages rather than editorial research. On 26 October 2026 it listed 1,021 open, rolling and forthcoming schemes, every one with its status, amounts, deadline, where it applies and a link to the funder's original guidance with a last-verified date. The [charities browse page](https://opengrant.co.uk/grants/for/charities) showed 396 of them from 137 funders. Open calls are ingested from publishers' own feeds: GOV.UK Find a grant, UKRI and Innovate UK, lottery distributors, major foundations, devolved bodies and councils, with cross-source duplicates hidden. The [sources page](https://opengrant.co.uk/sources) lists exactly what is covered.

The funder side is where the two products differ most. OpenGrant holds 49,000 or more grant-making trusts from the Charity Commission and OSCR registers, with 360Giving past-giving totals, medians and recent grants where the funder publishes them, and a [peers lookup](https://opengrant.co.uk/peers) that takes a charity number and shows which funders have published grants to organisations like it. A funder facts page such as [Garfield Weston Foundation](https://opengrant.co.uk/funders/garfield-weston-foundation) shows register income, published grants and a typical award on one page.

Every grant with full criteria and a weekly alert is free with an account. The research tools, exports and peers lookup cost £29 a month per email, cancelled at any time, which is the one clear disadvantage against a service that charges nothing.

## Side by side

- **Cost**: Charity Excellence is free throughout. OpenGrant is free for every grant and alert; £29 a month for research.
- **What is listed**: Charity Excellence lists funders and links to funding lists. OpenGrant lists schemes with live status and the funders behind them.
- **Provenance**: Charity Excellence does not describe its sourcing. OpenGrant shows the source URL and last-verified date on each record.
- **Open calls**: Charity Excellence relies on the user to check the funder. OpenGrant ingests open calls and tracks deadlines, with monthly pages such as [November 2026](https://opengrant.co.uk/grants/deadlines/2026-11).
- **Funder evidence**: Charity Excellence offers directory entries. OpenGrant offers register data, 360Giving grants and the peers lookup.
- **Exports and API**: Charity Excellence has none described. OpenGrant has CSV export, calendar deadlines, a public read-only API and an MCP server.
- **Beyond grants**: Charity Excellence has templates, health checks, a bid writer and an AI assistant. OpenGrant has guides and a glossary but no templates or bid-writing tools.
- **Audience**: Charity Excellence is for any non-profit, with a small-charity focus. OpenGrant covers charities, community groups, businesses, schools, councils and researchers.

## How to use them together

A small charity can get most of the value from both without paying anything. Use Charity Excellence to list the funders active in your cause and to pick up templates and health checks. Then use OpenGrant's free tier to check which of those funders has an open scheme, what the exact criteria and deadline are, and to set a weekly alert for your filters. Pay for OpenGrant's research tier for a month when you are building a trusts pipeline and want the 360Giving evidence and peers lookup, then cancel. The [complete guide to charity grants](https://opengrant.co.uk/blog/charity-grants-uk) shows that workflow end to end, and [free UK grant finders](https://opengrant.co.uk/blog/free-grant-finders-uk) covers the other free tools worth adding.

## Where to be careful with both

Neither service takes applications, and neither can know a funder's current position better than the funder's own page. Charity Excellence's directory does not show whether a programme is open on a given day; OpenGrant's status is only as fresh as its last verification, which is why each record shows the date. In both cases, read the funder's guidance before you write. Descriptions of Charity Excellence here are taken from its own site on 26 October 2026 and may change; Charity Excellence is a trademark of its owner, and OpenGrant is independent of it.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is the Charity Excellence Funding Finder free?

Yes. The site describes itself as a completely free one-stop-shop to find grant funding and lists the Funding Finder among its free tools. You register and log in to use it. Charity Excellence Framework is a charitable incorporated organisation, number 1195568, and reports 60,000 members.

### What is the difference between Charity Excellence and OpenGrant?

Charity Excellence is a free directory and signposting service that connects users to funders and to other funding lists, within a wider toolkit of templates, health checks and an AI assistant. OpenGrant is a database of open calls ingested from funders' own pages and open data, with a source link and last-verified date on every record, plus funder research built from the charity registers and 360Giving. One is breadth and signposting, the other is provenance and live status.

### Does OpenGrant have a free tier like Charity Excellence?

Yes. Every open scheme with full criteria and a weekly email alert is free with an OpenGrant account. The paid tier at £29 a month per email adds funder research pages with register and 360Giving data, the peers lookup, CSV export and calendar deadlines, with three days of full access before the first charge.

### Should a small charity use both?

Yes, if you have the time. Charity Excellence's directory and funding lists are a good way to discover funders you had not heard of, and its templates and health checks are useful on their own. OpenGrant is the place to check whether a scheme is open now, what the exact criteria and deadline are, and what a funder has actually given before.

### Which is better for finding grants open this month?

OpenGrant, because it tracks status and deadlines per scheme and has monthly deadline pages. On 26 October 2026 it listed 138 schemes with October deadlines and 121 with November deadlines. Charity Excellence's directory is organised by funder and category rather than by what closes when, so you would check each funder's site for dates.

## Find grants

- [Grants for charities and community groups](https://opengrant.co.uk/grants/for/charities) (Markdown: https://opengrant.co.uk/grants/for/charities.md)
- [Browse grants by place, organisation and cause](https://opengrant.co.uk/grants/browse) (Markdown: https://opengrant.co.uk/grants/browse.md)
- [See every open grant for charities](https://opengrant.co.uk/grants/for/charities)

## Related guides

- [Free UK grant finders for charities: what each one covers and what it leaves out](https://opengrant.co.uk/blog/free-grant-finders-uk): Eight free UK grant finders compared, plus Northern Ireland’s paid GrantTracker service: coverage, deadlines and registration. Checked 26 October 2026.
- [GrantFinder alternatives in 2026: paid, free and open-data options compared](https://opengrant.co.uk/blog/grantfinder-alternatives-uk): GrantFinder costs £1,020 a year for one user. The alternatives range from free government and open-data tools to £29 a month, each with a different trade-off. Prices checked 26 October 2026.
- [GrantNav vs OpenGrant: the same 360Giving data, two different jobs](https://opengrant.co.uk/blog/grantnav-vs-opengrant): GrantNav is the free, authoritative explorer of 1.5 million grants UK funders have already made. OpenGrant uses the same 360Giving data to answer a different question: what is open now, and who funds your peers.
- [How to find grants for a UK charity: the complete guide](https://opengrant.co.uk/blog/charity-grants-uk): Where UK charity grants come from, how to search the free sources, how to shortlist by fit, what funders check, and how to build a pipeline that survives rejections. Counts dated 26 October 2026.

## Sources and further reading

- [Charity Excellence Framework: home](https://www.charityexcellence.co.uk/)
- [Charity Excellence Framework: Funding Finder](https://www.charityexcellence.co.uk/free-grant-funding-finder-directory/)
- [OpenGrant: sources and coverage](https://opengrant.co.uk/sources)

All guides: https://opengrant.co.uk/blog.md · Glossary: https://opengrant.co.uk/glossary.md · Agent index: https://opengrant.co.uk/llms-guides.txt