Transparent pricing
Volunteer background check pricing: $5 per check.
No monthly fees. No contracts. No per-seat charges. You pay $5 only when you run a check — and everything else you need to run your volunteer program is included free.
$5 sounds too cheap? Every source behind it is published, by name.
See what we checkBuy credits as you go — or in bundles
One credit = one background check. Buy a single check or save with a bundle. Either way, credits never expire.
Pay As You Go
$5
1 check · $5.00/check
- One background check
- Credits never expire
- All management tools free
Starter Pack
$45
10 checks · $4.50/check
10% off
- 10 background checks
- Credits never expire
- All management tools free
Enterprise Volume
$200
50 checks · $4.00/check
20% off
- 50 background checks
- Credits never expire
- All management tools free
Best Bulk Value
$375
100 checks · $3.75/check
25% off
- 100 background checks
- Credits never expire
- All management tools free
Prefer to have volunteers pay their own $5? Flip on volunteer-pays in Settings and your organization spends no credits. Read the Credits Never Expire guarantee.
The only thing you pay for is the $5 check
Competitors nickel-and-dime nonprofits with monthly platform fees and per-seat charges for the tools you actually run your program with. We include them free.
- Free biometric identity verification (photo ID + selfie)
- Free address history on every report
- Free FCRA adverse-action workflow, guided step by step
- Free API + webhooks — no enterprise tier
- Free automated character references
- Free immunization records (SMART Health Cards)
- Free volunteer hours, compliance roster & reports
- Free AI Reply Assistant + Broadcast to all volunteers
- Free VolunteerBadge Academy — 120+ training courses
- Unlimited admin users — no per-seat charges
Why so much cheaper?
The vast majority of volunteer background checks come back completely clean, so paying $25–$80 per report — plus monthly platform fees — usually means paying a premium for a result that would have been clean anyway. We priced VolunteerBadge around what a national criminal check actually costs to run ($5), not what the market will tolerate, and we hand the savings to nonprofits.
Safety first, savings second: if your state, licensor, or insurer requires a fingerprint/FBI (Live Scan) check, meet that requirement — our $5 database check can be your primary screen but is not a substitute for a legally mandated fingerprint check. See our volunteer background check hub and Trust Center for exactly what the check covers.
What $5 actually buys
The whole search at a glance — sources, refresh cadence, identity resolution and review.
Breadth · the 3,241 source breakdown
Spanning 58U.S. jurisdictions — all 50 states, D.C. and the territories. Over half are court sources, where the substance of a criminal record lives.
- Total3,241
Frequency · the refresh cycle
Most sources refresh every 30 days, which is what FCRA § 1681k currency expectations are built around.
sex-offender registries refresh weekly. Added on a Tuesday, a monthly cycle can leave someone invisible for weeks — and for anyone placing adults with children, those weeks are the entire risk.
Identity & review · ensuring accuracy
- 1
Multi-factor identity resolution
Matches anchored to an SSN trace, address history and date of birth, with government ID and a live selfie.
- 2
Mandatory human review
Possible records go to a trained reviewer, typically within three business days, to exclude anything not reportable or not this person.
- 3
FCRA-regulated throughout
Disclosure, authorisation, dispute rights and the adverse-action workflow — as the consumer reporting agency, not a reseller.
The nonprofit logic · population coverage
Roughly 94% of background checks come back empty. The dominant cost is not investigating records — it is confirming, over and over, that there is nothing to investigate.
Same 200 volunteers. At $30 a head the predictable response is to screen fewer people, and every exclusion is a gap. Population coverage beats per-report depth when almost every report is empty.
Pricing questions
How much does a volunteer background check cost?
A VolunteerBadge volunteer background check is $5 per check with no monthly fee. You pay only when you run a check — there are no setup fees and no contracts. Buying credits in a bundle lowers the per-check price to as little as $3.75.
Are there any monthly fees or contracts?
No. Screening is always pay-as-you-go — $5 per check, no monthly fee, no subscription, no minimums, and no contract. The management features (hours tracking, compliance rosters, reports, AI grant writing, and more) are included free with every account, for unlimited admin users.
Do credits expire?
Never. Credits you buy stay on your account until you use them — there is no expiration date and nothing is lost if a season is slow.
Who pays for the check — the organization or the volunteer?
Your choice. Your organization can buy credits and cover the $5, or you can turn on “volunteers pay their own $5 fee” so the volunteer pays at apply time and the org spends no credit. You can override it per invite.
What does the $5 check include?
A national criminal search across county, state, and federal sources, all-50-state and national sex-offender registry matches, federal watchlists, biometric identity verification, and a free address-history check — every high-confidence record reviewed by a trained human before release. Nothing about that is an upsell; it’s the $5.
Is there a free option?
Creating an account is free, and every management tool is free for unlimited users — you only ever pay the $5 when you actually run a background check. Free identity verification and address-history cross-referencing are included at no charge.
Screen your first volunteer for $5
Create a free account, look around, and only pay when you run a check. No card required to start.
Create your free account