10,000 or 3.7 million: what scholarship database sizes do and do not tell you

The numbers, as each site states them

These are the database figures on each site's own pages. We did not count anything.

• Scholarships.com: "over 3.7 million scholarships and grants totaling about $19 billion".
• Unigo: "Over 3.6M Scholarships & Grants" and "$24 Billion worth of awards".
• Fastweb: "1.5 million college scholarships worth over $3.4 billion".
• BigFuture: "over 24,000 scholarships, with more than $1.5 billion scholarship dollars yearly".
• ScholarshipOwl: "10,000+ scholarships".
• Bold.org: "Thousands of Scholarships Exclusively Awarded on Bold.org", no exact count.
• Niche: "thousands of scholarships", no exact count.
• Scholly: "thousands of scholarships", no exact count.
• Appily: "The nation's largest, multi-billion dollar scholarship database", with no count stated.

Why the figures are hard to compare

They are not counting the same thing. Some include grants as well as scholarships. Some count every award a funder offers, including ones with a single winner in a single town. Others count only scholarships awarded on their own platform. Bold.org, for example, describes its scholarships as exclusively awarded on Bold.org, which makes a smaller number that means something different from a search database total.

The dollar totals are even harder to compare, because they add up award amounts across listings that may never be open at the same time.

Appily calls its database the nation's largest without stating a count, so the claim cannot be checked against the figures others publish. Treat "largest" as a marketing word unless a number and a method stand behind it.

What the number does not tell you

• How many listings you qualify for. Most scholarships have rules on location, grade, major or background.
• How current the listings are. A large database needs constant upkeep; Fastweb and Scholarships.com both say theirs is updated continuously or daily.
• How competitive the awards are. Applicant counts were not shown on the public pages we read.
• How much work each application takes.

Where size does help

For a student with unusual eligibility, such as a rare major, a small town or a specific heritage, a larger database is more likely to hold the few awards that fit. Scholarships.com's App Store listing says nearly half of its database is location-based, which matters if you are looking for local awards.

How we use database size in our scores

Database size is one of our eight criteria, weighted 5%. We score the figure each site states, so Scholarships.com scores highest in the set and Bold.org lowest, with ScholarshipOwl, at 10,000+, near the bottom. We give it a low weight on purpose: a bigger list is not the same as more awards you can win. The scoring rules explain the reasoning.

A practical test

Instead of comparing totals, fill in the same profile on two sites and count how many of the first twenty matches you actually qualify for after reading the rules. That number tells you more than any headline figure.

Questions to ask about any database claim

• Does the figure include grants, contests and sweepstakes, or only scholarships?
• Is it the number open now, or every award ever listed?
• Does it count awards offered by the site itself, or gathered from other funders?
• How often are expired listings removed?
• Can you filter by location, grade and major to see how many fit you?

None of the sites we read answers all five on the pages we checked. That is not a reason to avoid them, only a reason to judge them by the matches you see rather than the total they quote.

What to do with this

Pick one large database for breadth and judge it by the matches it shows you, not by its headline figure. Keep the awards you qualify for in your own tracker with a link to the funder's page, so the list stays useful even if a site changes how it counts. If two sites show you mostly the same awards, keep the one that is easier to use and drop the other.