Is AwardKit a cheaper Award Force alternative?

Yes. On price, AwardKit is cheaper for every program, not just most. AwardKit is a flat $1,995 a year for unlimited programs with no onboarding fee. Award Force starts at $3,250 a year for Growth, rises to $6,500 for Pro, and Premier is higher still, plus a one-time onboarding fee of about $2,300 in year one. Even the entry-level Award Force plan costs more than AwardKit before onboarding. The only reason to pay more for Award Force is if you specifically need something AwardKit does not offer yet, such as 40+ interface languages, data residency options, or formal security certifications. That is a fit decision, not a price one.

Does AwardKit take a commission on entry fees?

No. AwardKit charges zero commission on entry fees. Every entry fee goes straight to your own Stripe account, and only Stripe’s standard processing fees apply. AwardKit never takes a cut, holds your funds, or sits between you and your entrants. Entry fee revenue is yours from day one.

Can I try AwardKit before paying, like a free trial?

You can do better than a trial. With AwardKit you build your entire program for free, with no time limit, and pay only when you open submissions to entrants. Award Force does not advertise a free trial, and its buying process starts with a demo or consultation, so you typically commit before seeing your own program running.

Do I have to sit through a sales demo to use AwardKit?

No. AwardKit is fully self-serve. You sign up, build your program, and launch without ever talking to sales. Award Force is demo-led: the pricing page directs you to watch a demo or speak to a consultant, followed by a guided onboarding program of roughly four to six sessions before you launch.

Do I get any onboarding help with AwardKit?

Yes, and it is free. AwardKit is self-serve by design, but if you would like a hand you can book a free 30-minute call with the founder and the team that builds AwardKit. Award Force runs a structured onboarding program with a one-time fee of about $2,300, so the comparison is free, founder-led help versus a paid onboarding program.

Is AwardKit powerful enough to replace Award Force?

For the large majority of award programs, yes. AwardKit handles custom entry forms, entry fee collection, multi-round judging, weighted rubric scoring, ranked Top Picks, audience and hybrid voting, parallel judging rooms, results pages, and certificates. Award Force goes deeper in a few areas: 40+ interface languages, single transferable vote, data residency options, and enterprise security certifications. If you specifically need those, Award Force may be the better fit.

We run our awards every year. How easy is it to repeat?

AwardKit is designed for annual cycles. Clone last year’s program, update the dates and categories, and reopen. This is worth highlighting because repeating a program year over year is the most frequently mentioned pain point in Award Force reviews, where users describe setting up the next season as confusing and needing support to copy and align from prior years.

What are AwardKit’s limitations compared to Award Force?

We will be straight about it. There are a few areas where Award Force is ahead today: it has been in market since 2012, holds ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II and PCI-DSS certifications, offers data residency in multiple regions, and ships 40+ interface languages. For large international or enterprise programs with formal procurement requirements, those are real advantages. AwardKit competes on price, speed to launch, self-serve simplicity, and modern UX.

How do I move from Award Force to AwardKit?

Build your program in AwardKit for free first, so there is no overlap cost. Recreate your categories and judging setup, import your entry and judge lists, and switch over when your next cycle opens. Email hello@awardkit.io if you want help mapping your fields from an Award Force export.

Compare

Award Force Alternative

AwardKit vs Award Force. Same Job, Without the Sales Cycle.

Award Force is a capable, mature awards platform, but it is sales-led, and its $3,250 Growth plan is described on their own pricing page as being for free to enter programs. Charge an entry fee and the comparison becomes Pro at $6,500 a year, plus a one-time onboarding fee. AwardKit is a flat $1,995 a year for unlimited programs, entry fees included, no onboarding fee, no demo required, and you build your whole program for free before you ever pay. Here is an honest, line by line comparison.

Start Free See Pricing

The Short Version

AwardKit vs Award Force in Four Bullets

AwardKit is a flat $1,995 a year for unlimited programs, with entry fee collection included. Award Force lists Growth at $3,250 a year for free to enter programs and Pro at $6,500 for programs that charge fees, plus a one-time onboarding fee of about $2,300.

AwardKit is fully self-serve: sign up, build, and launch without a demo. Award Force is demo-led with a guided onboarding program of several sessions before you go live.

AwardKit lets you build your entire program for free and pay only when you open submissions. Award Force does not advertise a free trial or build-for-free path.

Both platforms charge zero commission on entry fees and pay you directly through your own Stripe or payment gateway. On the payment model, they are even.

At a Glance

AwardKit vs Award Force at a Glance

Dimension	AwardKit	Award Force
Annual price	Flat $1,995 for unlimited programs	$3,250 to $6,500+ a year
Charge entry fees	Included in the flat price	Listed under Pro, $6,500 a year
One-time onboarding fee	None	About $2,300
Sign up and pay yourself	Yes, no demo needed	Demo or consultation first
Build before you pay	Free until you go live	No free trial advertised
Annual entry limit	Unlimited entries and programs	Capped at ~10,000 entries (Growth/Pro)
Commission on entry fees	Zero, paid to your account	Zero, paid to your account

Feature by Feature

The Full Comparison Table

Every meaningful feature, side by side. Hover any cell with extra detail for the source or context.

Pricing & Plans

Feature	AwardKit	Award Force
Annual price	$1,995 for unlimited programs	$3,250+ a yearAward Force Growth is $3,250/yr, Pro is $6,500/yr, Premier is a custom quote. Growth is described as being for free to enter programs, and the Monetisation features including charging entry fees are listed under Pro. Pricing is scoped by annual entry volume, with Growth and Pro capped at 10,000 entries a year. Source: awardforce.com/pricing, accessed 2026-07-29.
Included onboarding	Yes	About $2,300Award Force onboarding is a paid program with a one-time fee of about $2,300 in year one.
Public pricing on website	Yes	Yes. Award Force does publish list prices, but the buying funnel is demo and consultation first.
Self-serve checkout	Yes	Sales-led
Unlimited programs and entries	Yes	Capped at ~10k entries/yrAward Force is priced per account and scoped by annual entry volume; Growth and Pro cap total entries at 10,000 a year, and larger volumes need the custom Premier tier. AwardKit has no entry cap.
Money-back guarantee	14 days	Not advertised

Setup & Onboarding

Feature	AwardKit	Award Force
Time to first live program	Under 30 minutes	Days, after onboardingAward Force runs a guided onboarding of roughly four to six sessions before your program goes live.
No demo call required	Yes	No
Free trial or build-for-free	Build free, pay to go live	Not advertised
Guided onboarding program	Yes	Paid add-onAward Force runs a structured six-step onboarding, but it is a paid add-on of about $2,300, not included.
Clone a program year over year	Yes	Copy seasonsAward Force supports copying past seasons, but setting up year two is the single most common complaint in public reviews ("a bit confusing", "tricky to copy and align").
Self-serve docs and guides	Yes. Full product documentation plus a complete award-program planning guide, all public and self-serve.	Yes. Award Force has a detailed help centre and blog.
Customer support	Email, 1-on-1 calls, help centerPriority email, 1-on-1 video calls with the team (included on the plan), and a full help center. Just ask.	Email, Zoom, help centreAward Force offers ticket and email support, a help centre, Zoom consultations, and voicemail phone lines, 24/5.

Entry Fees & Payments

Both platforms take zero commission. This is parity.

Feature	AwardKit	Award Force
Zero commission on entry fees	Yes	Yes
Funds paid directly to you	Yes	Yes
Multiple payment gateways	StripeAwardKit is Stripe-only, but Stripe covers all major cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, Klarna, and local methods like iDEAL, Bancontact, and BLIK, in 135+ currencies. No PayPal or other gateways today.	15+ gatewaysAward Force supports around 20 gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net, eWay, Alipay and more). Broader gateway choice than AwardKit.
Early-bird and deadline pricing	Yes	Yes
Member vs non-member pricing	Yes. Native member pricing: set a member and a non-member price for every pricing period, plus per-category member prices. Entrants self-declare with a required member question, the answer locks at payment, and it appears in your dashboard and CSV for roster reconciliation. Included in the flat $1,995 plan.	Yes. Award Force price levels unlock a member rate with a member number the entrant types in; the number is not validated against a member database, so it is the same honor-based approach. Verified 2026-07.
Submit several entries, pay once (no cart)	Yes. No shopping cart: entrants submit each work with "Pay later" and settle one itemized balance in a single checkout, with the multi-entry discount counted across every entry in it. The balance is derived, so it cannot expire or be abandoned; unpaid entries stay visible to the organizer with the amount owed, and reminder emails go out automatically before entries close.	Shopping cartAward Force uses a shopping-cart model: entries travel to a cart and check out together, but the cart expires after 24 hours of inactivity and recovering an abandoned entry requires a manager to revert it. Verified 2026-07.
Automatic multi-entry discounts	Yes. Automatic quantity rules with no code: 10% off 2 or more entries, or a tiered ladder like 5% off 3+ and 10% off 6+, where the highest reached threshold applies. Advertised on the public fee card and on the category step, where the running total nudges entrants toward the next threshold.	Yes. Award Force pricing rules support volume-based entry pricing, by total entries or per category. Verified 2026-07.
Abandoned checkout recovery	Yes. An unfinished payment keeps the entry saved and owed: an abandoned checkout returns the entries to the entrant’s balance, still one click from paid, and reminder emails go out automatically before entries close. No organizer intervention needed.	Manual, via a managerAward Force carts expire after 24 hours of inactivity, and recovering an abandoned or mispaid entry requires a manager to revert it to in-progress so the entrant can submit again.

Submissions & Entry Forms

Feature	AwardKit	Award Force
No-code entry form builder	Yes	Yes
Autosave and save-and-resume	Yes. Entries autosave as entrants type and resume on any device, with in-progress drafts surfaced on the program page.	Yes. Award Force also continuously auto-saves entries in the background. This is parity.
Field types Covers the types most award entries need	12 question typesShort answer, paragraph, URL, dropdown, single choice, multiple choice, number, date, file upload, entry summary, team members, and a membership question, with no cap on questions per form. One File Upload question accepts images, documents, audio, and HD video with built-in video hosting.	20+ field typesAward Force offers 20+ field types, including niche ones like formula, table, and AI fields. The count includes layout-only content fields and separate types per upload format, but the set is genuinely broader than AwardKit’s.
Conditional logic	Yes. Show or hide questions based on the chosen category or an earlier answer, with all-of / any-of rules.	Yes. Award Force supports answer-based show/hide on entry forms, though not on the registration or judging forms.
Categories with their own forms and fees	Yes	Yes
Public entry gallery	Yes	Yes
CSV export of entry data	Yes	Yes

Judging & Scoring

Feature	AwardKit	Award Force
Multi-round judging	Yes	Yes. Award Force supports an unlimited number of rounds.
Weighted rubric scoring per category	Yes	Yes
Ranked Top Picks voting	Yes. Judges pick and rank their top entries; rankings are summed for the final result.	Yes. Award Force offers Top Pick single transferable vote (STV).
Audience and hybrid voting	Yes	Yes
Parallel judging rooms	Yes. Split judges and entries into separate rooms that score in parallel, per round.	Yes. Award Force runs parallel groups via Chapters and Panels, part of its program-management feature set.
Judge assignment by category and expertise	Yes	Yes
Conflict of interest (recuse / abstain)	Yes	Yes

Results, Awards & Certificates

Feature	AwardKit	Award Force
Live leaderboard during judging	Yes	Yes
Ranked and named awards per category	Yes	Yes
Auto-generated certificates	Yes	Yes
Shareable certificate verification links	Yes. Every winner gets a public verification page (/verify) they can share, including straight to LinkedIn.	Downloadable filesAward Force generates downloadable certificates and badges. We did not find a public verification page that anyone can visit to confirm a win.
Public winners gallery	Yes	Yes
CSV export with scores and comments	Yes	Yes

Branding & White-Label

Award Force gates branding to its Pro tier. AwardKit includes it.

Feature	AwardKit	Award Force
Program branding (logo, brand color, hero banner)	Yes. Included on the flat plan: your logo leads the navigation, one brand color themes every public page (entry form, judging, voting, gallery), and a wide hero banner tops the program page. Readable contrast is computed automatically.	Logo only below ProAward Force Growth includes logo branding only; extensive brand theming (colors and imagery) is listed under the Pro tier ($6,500/yr). Source: awardforce.com/pricing, accessed 2026-07-05.
White-label custom domain	No. AwardKit does not offer custom domains yet.	Pro plan and upCustom domain is gated to the Pro tier ($6,500/yr) and above.

Scale & Global

Where Award Force’s maturity shows. We call it honestly.

Feature	AwardKit	Award Force
REST API and webhooks	On the roadmap	Pro plan and upAward Force API access is gated to Pro and above.
Multi-language interface	English	Yes. Award Force ships 40+ translated languages, a genuine strength for international programs.
Data residency choice (EU / US / others)	No	Yes. Award Force lets you host in the EU, USA, Hong Kong, Canada or Australia.

Pricing

How Pricing Compares

AwardKit

One flat price, everything included

Build your entire program for free, with no time limit
Flat $1,995 a year when you open submissions
Unlimited programs, entries, judges, and categories
Zero commission on entry fees, paid to your own Stripe account
No onboarding fee, no demo, no per-seat charges
14-day money-back guarantee

See Full Pricing

Award Force

Tiered, sales-led, plus onboarding

Growth: $3,250 a year, up to 10,000 entries
Pro: $6,500 a year, adds brand theming, custom domain, API, multi-language
Premier: custom quote with enterprise security and a dedicated manager
One-time onboarding fee of about $2,300 in year one
Demo or consultation before you can buy; no free trial advertised
Zero commission on entry fees, paid via your own gateway

Source: awardforce.com

Where AwardKit Fits

Built for the Programs You Actually Run

Awards run on annual cycles with entry fees and real judging. AwardKit handles all of it without a sales process or a setup project.

Trade and professional associations

Run your annual excellence awards, member of the year, or "40 Under 40" with custom entry forms, entry fees collected to your own account, and a judging panel of board members or industry peers.

Industry publications and media

Power reader awards, best-in-category programs, and editorial competitions. Collect paid submissions, run multi-round judging, and publish a polished winners page under your own brand.

Creative and design competitions

Accept media-rich entries, score them against weighted criteria, let judges rank their Top Picks, and hand winners a verifiable certificate they can share. No enterprise software to learn first.

When Award Force is the right choice

You run a large, international program and need 40+ interface languages and multi-region data residency out of the box.
Your procurement requires formal security attestations. Award Force holds ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II and PCI-DSS, which a newer tool cannot match yet.
You need to choose where your data is hosted (EU, USA, Hong Kong, Canada or Australia) for residency or compliance reasons.
You want the deepest possible judging toolkit, including single transferable vote, unlimited rounds, and a long track record at very large scale.
You value a mature, bootstrapped vendor in market since 2012, and the budget is not the deciding factor.

Why organizers choose AwardKit over Award Force

A flat price you can budget in one line

AwardKit is $1,995 a year for unlimited programs. Award Force starts at $3,250 for Growth and runs to $6,500 for Pro, before the roughly $2,300 onboarding fee. For most programs, AwardKit is less than half the year-one cost.

No onboarding fee, no year-one surprise

There is no setup fee with AwardKit. Award Force adds a one-time onboarding charge of about $2,300 on top of the subscription, so year one is materially more expensive than the sticker price suggests.

Free, founder-led onboarding

Want a hand setting up? Get a free 30-minute call with the founder and the team that build AwardKit. Award Force charges about $2,300 for its onboarding program. Getting the people who actually build the product, for free, is something a competitor staffed by account managers cannot match.

Truly self-serve, no demo gate

Sign up, build, and launch the same afternoon. Award Force routes you through a demo or consultation and a guided onboarding program of several sessions before you go live.

Build the whole thing for free first

Set up categories, forms, judging, and your entry page, then pay only when you open submissions. Award Force does not advertise a free trial or a build-for-free path, so you commit before you have seen your own program running.

Unlimited programs and entries in one organization

Run your main awards, a regional spin-off, and next year’s cycle from the same flat plan, with no limit on entries. Award Force is scoped by annual entry volume, so its Growth and Pro plans cap you at 10,000 entries a year, and a high-volume program can push you onto the custom Premier tier.

Painless year-over-year cloning

Awards are annual, so cloning matters. Setting up year two is the single most common complaint in Award Force reviews ("a bit confusing", "tricky to copy and align"). AwardKit is built to clone a program in a couple of clicks.

Every feature at one price

Ranked Top Picks, parallel judging rooms, audience voting, and verifiable certificates are all in the one price. Award Force gates branding, custom domain, the API, and simultaneous multi-language to the Pro tier ($6,500/yr) and above.

Your brand included, not a $6,500 upsell

Upload your logo, set your brand color, and add a wide hero banner; every public page follows, from the entry form to judging and voting. Award Force gives its Growth tier a logo slot and reserves real brand theming (colors, imagery) for Pro at $6,500 a year. With AwardKit it is simply part of the flat plan.

A judging engine proven in production

Multi-round judging with weighted rubrics, category-scoped criteria, ranked Top Picks, audience and hybrid voting, and parallel Judging Rooms, all on the same engine that powers HackHQ events, including at Y Combinator. Configurable without a consultant.

A clean, opinionated interface

AwardKit is modern and fast, with smart defaults so there is little to learn. Award Force is powerful but reviewers consistently note a learning curve at first ("tabs that I don’t know about"). Less to configure means less to get wrong.

Secure payments, powered by Stripe

Connect your existing Stripe account in one click through Stripe’s official onboarding. You never share an API key or password, AwardKit never touches your funds, and entry fees land in your account the moment an entrant pays by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, or a local method like iDEAL or Bancontact. Zero commission, ever.

Common Questions