StartEngine vs Wefunder (2026): What 2,614 SEC Form Cs Show

What the two platforms are, in their filings

Both platforms let a private company sell up to $5,000,000 of securities in 12 months to anyone under Regulation Crowdfunding, which is explained, with the investor limits, in our Regulation Crowdfunding census. The legal wrappers differ.

StartEngine is a group with a public-reporting parent. StartEngine Inc. (CIK 1661779, formerly StartEngine Crowdfunding, Inc.) files 10-Ks and 10-Qs; its 10-K for 2025 says that in 2024 it “decided to host future issuances of Regulation Crowdfunding raises within the broker-dealer entity for regulatory and compliance reasons,” while raises started earlier stay with the funding portal. That is why the Form C data show two names: StartEngine Capital LLC from January 3, 2022 to December 3, 2024, and StartEngine Primary LLC from August 12, 2024. Its Reg CF platform fees were $10,562,073 in 2025, 9.6% of $109,580,580 of total revenue (our arithmetic); most of the rest came from StartEngine Private, which sells interests in funds that buy late-stage private-company shares. For the entity-by-entity read see our StartEngine review.

Wefunder raises through Wefunder Portal LLC, a FINRA-registered funding portal, which is not a public company. What we can read about it is the Form C record, its published fees and the FINRA order. See our Wefunder review for the entity structure (portal, parent, adviser arm and SPVs).

Side by side: the Form C record

Source: SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets, FORM_C_SUBMISSION and FORM_C_ISSUER_INFORMATION, quarters 2022q1 to 2026q3; initial Form C only (amendments, updates, annual reports and withdrawals are separate); intermediary taken from its CIK on the Form C; shares are our arithmetic. The same quarterly files count 6,178 initial Form Cs for the period.

Both are falling in absolute terms, as is the whole market. The difference is who is losing share: Wefunder held about a quarter of every year's filings, and StartEngine, which hosted 339 offerings in 2022, hosted 47 in the first nine months of 2026.

Source: SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets (Form C, Form C-W); medians and the security reading are our arithmetic. The data sets have no minimum-investment field: each issuer sets its own, and the platforms' claims are below.

The same filings give the security types for all of 2022 to September 2026 (our reading of the type and description fields; common, preferred and debt are as filed):

For a retail investor this is the biggest practical difference in the filings. A StartEngine investor is mostly buying shares of the company, often a non-voting class; a Wefunder investor is mostly buying a SAFE, a contract that turns into shares only at a later priced round, a sale of the company or a dissolution. Neither promises a payout.

What each platform takes from the issuer

Every Form C states the intermediary's compensation. The text is “as filed,” so it is the company's own wording.

Source: COMPENSATIONAMOUNT field of each initial Form C (SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets); counts are ours. “Up to 9% percent” is the text as filed. Wefunder's wording: “7.9% of the offering amount upon a successful fundraise, and be entitled to reimbursement for out-of-pocket third party expenses.”

StartEngine's 10-K for 2025 gives a narrower range than its Form Cs: it says it “typically” charges 6% to 10% for Reg CF offerings. The Form C range of 7% to 13% is wide because the filings do not say which end applies to a given offering. On a $100,000 raise, 7.9% is $7,900 at Wefunder and 7% to 13% is $7,000 to $13,000 at StartEngine (our arithmetic, before any securities).

Equity as pay

The Form C also asks for “any other direct or indirect interest held by the intermediary,” and this is where the two diverge.

Source: FINANCIALINTEREST field of each initial Form C. StartEngine's wording: “Three percent (3%) of securities of the total amount of investments raised in the offering, along the same terms as investors.” The one Wefunder filing in 2022 that says otherwise reads “Securities equal to 2.0% of the securities sold will be issued to the intermediary upon a successful fundraise.”

So until 2024 StartEngine was paid in cash and in the same stock its investors bought, and the investor and the platform ended up holding the same security. Its Form CRS says it may receive “warrants or equity of up to 5%” from an offering. In 2026 the Form Cs show a different pattern, and the 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 says investment shares “are no longer a standard component of its compensation arrangements with clients.” The 10-K for 2025 is why it matters: StartEngine reported a material weakness, a “control deficiency in revenue recognition, relating to investments received as compensation,” and its disclosure controls were not effective at December 31, 2025. Wefunder's Form Cs show cash only.

Who shows what happened: Form C-U and annual reports

A Form C is an offering statement, not a raise. The amount sold appears only in the free text of the Form C-U that the issuer files after the deadline. Using the census method (the last Form C-U per offering that states a dollar amount, interim 50% notices skipped), the two platforms look very different:

Source: Form C and Form C-U text in the SEC data sets, matched by file number, with the method of our Regulation Crowdfunding census; our counts. A typical StartEngine entry reads “At the close of the offering, the issuer closed on $318,633.50 and 0 number of securities.”

Three cautions follow.

1. Do not rank them on these rows. Wefunder's 112 offerings with an amount are the ones that chose to file a Form C-U. A failure that nobody reports is invisible, so “none of Wefunder's reported offerings stated $0” says nothing about how many raised nothing.
2. StartEngine's own zeros are rising. Of its offerings with a stated amount, 7 of 245 (2022), 17 of 192 (2023), 69 of 211 (2024) and 37 of 131 (2025) stated $0 (our arithmetic). Our StartEngine review reads the same pattern from its own count.
3. The totals are a floor for both. Wefunder's $96.9 million is not what its issuers raised.

There is one measure that exists for both: whether the issuer files an annual report afterwards. A company that sold securities under Reg CF must file a Form C-AR each year until it qualifies to stop (17 CFR 227.202), and a Form C-TR when it does. We matched issuers by CIK across the 19 quarterly files:

Source: SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets, Form C, C-AR, C-AR/A and C-TR filings through 2026q3, matched by issuer CIK, filed after the issuer's first Form C of that year; withdrawn offerings excluded; percentages are our arithmetic. An issuer can file both a C-AR and a C-TR, so the columns overlap.

Read it carefully. Across all issuers, StartEngine's are more likely to have filed an annual report and Wefunder's more likely to have filed nothing. But a company that never closed its raise owes no report, and Wefunder's list contains far more issuers whose result we cannot see. Among the issuers we know raised money (a final Form C-U above $0), the follow-through is similar: 71.8% to 77.8% of StartEngine's and 65.0% to 82.9% of Wefunder's filed a later annual report, and the Wefunder samples are only 20 to 35 issuers a year, too small to rank (our reading). The firmer fact is for the reader: whichever platform you used, between 17% and 35% of the issuers known to have raised money had filed neither an annual report nor a termination notice by September 30, 2026 (StartEngine 21.3%, 28.2% and 21.6% for the 2022, 2023 and 2024 cohorts; Wefunder 17.1%, 26.5% and 35.0%).

What the investor pays, as each platform says it

These are the companies' own statements, dated; the Form Cs do not carry investor fees.

On a $1,000 investment (our arithmetic): Wefunder's bank fee is $20 and its card fee $57; StartEngine's, where charged, is up to $35. The fees are one-time. The larger cost is the one the investor never sees, the 7% to 13% the issuer paid out of the money raised.

Regulatory records

Both portals have one FINRA matter, accepted on the same day. Both were settled “without admitting or denying” the findings.

The AWC for Wefunder and the bulletin for StartEngine are the documents we read; the StartEngine order itself was not available to us, so the findings above are FINRA's own summary. We found no SEC order against either portal in what we read. StartEngine Inc.'s 10-K for 2025 and its 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 describe no regulatory proceeding; the 10-K describes an issuer arbitration settled in January 2024 for $2.1 million, of which the company paid $200,000 and its insurer $1,900,000. Our Wefunder review goes through the AWC and the portal's SEC registration in more detail.

Getting out: what each platform documents

Reg CF securities cannot be resold for one year except to the issuer, an accredited investor, in a registered offering or to family (17 CFR 227.501), and neither platform changes that.

• Wefunder says: “Investments made on Wefunder are illiquid: there's no public market for them, and Wefunder doesn't run a marketplace or buy investments back.” The one way to sell is a Secondary Transfer to a buyer the investor finds, through a form on its site, with no transfer fee. Investments can go to a family member or an accredited investor during the first year and to anyone after.
• StartEngine runs StartEngine Secondary, an alternative trading system operated by StartEngine Primary. Its 10-K says that holders of Reg CF shares “will need to wait one year,” and that “the Company itself as well as twenty-four additional companies have been quoted on this platform” through December 31, 2025. The 10-Q says the same through September 30, 2026: still twenty-four. Selling costs up to 5% of the transaction under the Form CRS, and the 10-Q says the company intends to charge 2.5% to buyer and seller. Quoted does not mean traded: the filings give no trading volume for other issuers.

A secondary market therefore exists at StartEngine for a few dozen issuers, against thousands of offerings. That is a real difference from Wefunder's position, but it covers only the companies that signed up, and our StartEngine review reads the trades in StartEngine's own stock, the one case where prices are reported.

What a reader can do with this

1. Open the Form C, not the campaign page. Check the intermediary's compensation line and its “other interest” line. If the platform holds the same security you are buying, it is paid when the company succeeds; if it is paid in cash only, it is paid when the money closes.
2. Compare on the same basis. A 7.9% issuer fee and a “7 - 13 percent” one are not directly comparable until you know the offering: ask or look for the percentage that applies, and for the investor fee on top.
3. Ask for the previous offerings. For any company, look up the Form C-U and Form C-AR history under the issuer's own CIK on EDGAR. A first-time issuer has none. A company that raised money and has filed nothing since is common: the "filed neither" column above runs from 17% to 64%, depending on platform and group.
4. Size the ticket as money you may not see again. One-year lock-up, then usually no buyer. StartEngine Secondary has twenty-four other companies quoted; Wefunder has no market.
5. Check your own limit. If you are not accredited, your Reg CF total across all portals is capped (see the census for the formula); the platforms that accept non-accredited investors are mostly different from these two.
6. If you hold shares from either platform, the issuer's Form C-AR is the place to look for a current financial statement. The platform's own help pages, quoted above, say how to transfer or sell.

For platforms that finance property, our real estate crowdfunding fees comparison covers the fees on those deals, and what happened to MainVest shows what a portal's Form C record looks like after it stops filing.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

FAQ

Sources: SEC Crowdfunding Offerings Data Sets, quarterly files 2022q1 to 2026q3 (FORM_C_SUBMISSION, FORM_C_ISSUER_INFORMATION, FORM_C_DISCLOSURE) and their readme, as filed and counted November 12, 2026; StartEngine Inc. (formerly StartEngine Crowdfunding, Inc.), CIK 1661779, Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (accession 0001104659-26-037922, filed March 31, 2026), Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 (0001104659-26-120097, filed October 29, 2026) and Form 8-K filed November 5, 2026 (0001104659-26-123268); StartEngine Primary LLC Form CRS, effective August 7, 2025; startengine.com homepage, November 12, 2026; Wefunder help-center articles on investor fees, Reg CF fees, terms and selling or transferring investments, November 12, 2026; FINRA Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent No. 2021071940801 (Wefunder Portal, LLC), accepted May 4, 2022; FINRA Disciplinary and Other FINRA Actions, July 2022; 17 CFR 227.202 and 227.501 as cited in our Regulation Crowdfunding census.