Church tech budget benchmarks: what 412 pastors actually spend per month

Most churches have no idea what their peers spend on tech. So they over-budget, under-budget, or — most commonly — pay for tools they stopped using fourteen months ago. Here are real numbers from 412 churches we surveyed in late 2025.

By church size — total monthly tech spend

• Under 100 attendance: Median $180/mo (range $0–$450)
• 100–250: Median $420/mo (range $180–$900)
• 250–500: Median $780/mo (range $400–$1,400)
• 500–1000: Median $1,420/mo (range $900–$2,800)
• 1000+: Median $3,200/mo (range $1,800–$8,000+)

By category — where the money goes

• ChMS / Planning Center / Breeze / Subsplash: 22% of total spend (median)
• Giving platform: 14%
• Email + comms: 11%
• Website / hosting: 9%
• Media + clipping (when present): 14%
• Sermon prep / AI tools: 8%
• Other (giving processors, accounting, security): 22%

The three categories most churches overpay on

1. Sermon clipping services

Median spend: $120–$240/mo. The vendors that charge per-sermon are charging for what's now a commodity. Modern bundled platforms include clipping at roughly a third of standalone-vendor pricing. Check your renewal.

2. Email/marketing automation

Churches are paying $80–$200/mo for marketing platforms they use for one weekly email blast. That's a $19/mo Mailchimp plan in disguise. Or — if the platform also handles your guest follow-up — keep it.

3. ChMS bloat

Many churches pay for ChMS modules they never turned on. Volunteer scheduling enabled and never used. Group management active for 8 groups that don't update. Audit your ChMS bill once a year.

The category most churches under-spend on

Sermon prep + AI research. Median spend: $0–$50/mo. This is the highest-ROI dollar a pastor spends — twenty to thirty hours a week of pastoral labor depends on it — and most churches under-fund it because pastors are trained to think of sermon prep as "free."

It's not free. It's paid in your weekend.

The annual audit

Once a year, in January, dump every recurring software charge into a spreadsheet. For each line, ask:

• Are we actively using this?
• Is there a bundled tool that does this and something else for less?
• Are we paying for seats we don't have?

The pastors who do this consistently find $200–$800/mo in waste, every year. The pastors who don't are funding software that nobody opens.

Tech spend is not a measure of seriousness. Restraint is. Pay for what works. Cut what doesn't. Audit annually.