Scholarly

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Scholarly vs Bold.org: exclusive awards or applying everywhere?

Last updated October 2026 · By the Scholarly team

Short answer

Use Bold.org if you want free scholarships that exist only on Bold.org, funded by individual donors and paid out by its nonprofit foundation. Use Scholarly if you want the scholarships everywhere else applied to for you from one profile, which costs $59.99 a year on the web. They barely overlap, so a lot of students run both.

We make Scholarly, so weigh our take accordingly. Every fact about another company on this page links to its source at the bottom, checked in October 2026. Prices and features change; confirm on their site before you pay.

Side by side

Scholarly compared with Bold.org
Feature	Scholarly	Bold.org
Price	Free to set up. Swiping and auto-apply need a subscription: $59.99 a year or $19.99 a month on the web. On iPhone it's billed through the App Store.	Free for students and donors. No fees on scholarship payouts.
How you find scholarships	Swipe through scholarships matched to your profile. Anything you don't qualify for is hidden. Roughly 700 are open at a time.	Browse and get matched to scholarships hosted on Bold.org. Bold.org says all of them are exclusive to the site: 8,486 scholarship funds as of May 2026.
Applies for you?	Yes Fills in and submits each application after you review and approve it.	No You apply on Bold.org. Your profile carries across its applications.
Essay help	Stores one personal statement and reuses it. You edit it when you want; it isn't rewritten behind your back.	Many awards ask for a short essay written on the site. Some, like the $25,000 "Be Bold" award, ask for none.
Platforms	iPhone app (4.7 stars, 4,100+ ratings) and a web app that runs in any browser, Android included.	Website and iPhone app (4.7 stars, 3,100+ ratings).
Business model	Subscriptions. No ads, no sponsored listings in the swipe feed.	Free. Awards are disbursed by the Bold Foundation, a 501(c)(3). It also runs Bold Rewards, a points program with a browser extension. How the platform itself is funded is not published in detail.
Data sharing	Never sold. Your details go only to the providers you swipe right on.	Covered by its privacy policy. The site footer includes a "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" opt-out.

The real difference

Bold.org is a marketplace. A family, a company, or a celebrity sets up a fund, writes a prompt, and Bold.org hosts the application. Dwyane Wade and Imagine Dragons are among the donors on its homepage. Because the scholarships are created there, you can't find them anywhere else, and nobody else can apply to them for you.

Scholarly works the other way around. It doesn't host scholarships. It matches you to awards run by foundations, companies, and nonprofits on their own sites, then fills in those forms with your saved answers once you approve each one.

One honest point against us: Bold.org lists far more opportunities than Scholarly does. We keep roughly 700 open scholarships in the feed at a time and leave out ones we can't submit properly. If you want sheer quantity of things to apply to, Bold.org wins on count.

Pick Bold.org if…

You don't want to pay anything
You're fine writing a short essay for each award
You like smaller donor awards (recent winners got $500 and $1,000) where the applicant pool is one site
You want a shot at the no-essay $25,000 "Be Bold" award

Pick Scholarly if…

Your bottleneck is filling out forms, not finding scholarships
You want one profile and one essay reused across many providers' sites
You want to read every application before it goes out
You'd rather pay $59.99 a year than spend weekends retyping your GPA

Can you use both?

Yes, and it's the setup we'd suggest for most seniors. Fill out your Bold.org profile once and check its new exclusives every few weeks; that part is free. Use Scholarly for the scholarships hosted elsewhere. Since Bold.org's awards only exist on Bold.org, you won't be applying to the same thing twice.

Questions people ask

Is Bold.org legit?

Yes. Bold.org's scholarships are paid out by the Bold Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 84-2719715), and it publishes a running ledger of payments. Its impact page showed more than $18 million disbursed to 9,113 students in October 2026.

Is Bold.org free?

Yes, for students and for donors. Bold.org says it charges no platform fees on scholarship disbursements.

Can Scholarly apply to Bold.org scholarships for me?

No. Bold.org scholarships are applied to on Bold.org, with your Bold.org profile and any essay the donor asks for. Scholarly applies to scholarships run by outside providers. That's why the two don't overlap much.

Is the $25,000 Be Bold scholarship a random drawing?

No. Bold.org says it goes to the applicant with the "boldest profile" and that students who apply earlier have a better chance. It has rolling monthly deadlines; the current winner announcement is listed for December 1, 2026.

Which one gets you more money?

Nobody publishes win rates per student, us included, so be suspicious of anyone who claims to know. What you control is how many applications you finish. Recent winners on Bold.org's impact page got $500 and $1,000 awards, most with an essay; Scholarly saves time on the applications outside Bold.org.

Try Scholarly free

Scholarly is free to set up. You'll see which scholarships you qualify for before you decide whether auto-apply is worth paying for.

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More comparisons

Sources

Checked October 19, 2026.

Bold.org llms.txt (nonprofit status, fund count, May 2026 figures): bold.org/llms.txt
Bold.org impact page ($18M+ disbursed, 9,113 recipients): bold.org/impact
Bold.org homepage (100% free, 20k+ donors, Bold Rewards): bold.org
Bold.org $25,000 "Be Bold" No-Essay Scholarship: bold.org/scholarships/the-be-bold-no-essay-scholarship
Bold.org on the App Store: apps.apple.com/us/app/id6477827030
Scholarly on the App Store (rating, in-app purchase prices): apps.apple.com/us/app/id6761978211