Best Scholarship Search Engines - 2023

Published: February 7, 2023
By the Pachyy Editorial Team
The Pachyy Editorial Team comprises a diverse and experienced team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts whose aim is to provide you with useful insights, guidance and commentary on all matters related to your personal finances.

The beginning of your college career can be an exciting time. However, this can also be a time of stress for those that are unable to afford their college tuition. 

With the cost of tuition having outpaced inflation, increasing by over 250% since 1980, many students now rely on scholarships to help pay for their tuition and living costs. However, with over 5 million scholarships available in the US, finding a suitable scholarship can be challenging.

Luckily, there are several websites that do the heavy lifting for you. These scholarship search engines allow you to filter through millions of scholarships according to specific criteria. 

Below is a list of the top 9 online scholarship search engines available in the USA that can help you finance your education:

Top 9 Scholarship Search Engines - 2023

1. Fastweb

 Fastweb is one of the largest scholarship search engines in the USA, with over 1.5 million scholarships worth over $3.4 billion. Fastweb has been around since 1996 and offers a personalized scholarship matching service based on your profile information and allows you to search for scholarships by keyword, deadline, and category.

2. Scholarships.com

Scholarships.com has been helping students find scholarships since 1999 and has a database of over 3.7 million scholarships worth more than $19 billion. Scholarships.com offers a personalized scholarship matching service and allows you to search for scholarships by keyword, deadline, and category.

In order to use their search engine, you’ll need to create a free account. However, when opening an account with scholarhips.com, you are entered into a scholarship with a $500 prize.

3. Cappex

Cappex has a database of over $11 billion in scholarships and offers a personalized scholarship matching service. In addition to scholarship search, Cappex also offers college search and reviews.

4. Unigo

Unigo is a scholarship search engine that also provides college reviews and rankings. Unigo has a database of over 3.6 million scholarships worth more than $14 billion.

5. CollegeBoard

CollegeBoard is a non-profit organization that offers a scholarship search engine with over 6,000 scholarships worth more than $6 billion. CollegeBoard also provides information on colleges, financial aid, and test preparation.

6. Bold.org

Bold.org was established in 2019 with the mission to help students achieve their academic goals by providing them with scholarship opportunities.

A unique feature of the bold.org platform is that allows donors to create their own scholarship funds and choose the criteria for eligibility. This allows donors to support smaller / niche scholarships. Bold.org has more than 20,000 unique scholarships available on its website.

7. Peterson's

Peterson’s first came online in 1997. It is an online platform that provides college search, test preparation, and scholarship information to American students. Its scholarship search engine has over $10billion worth of scholarships.

Peterson’s scholarship search is one of the best college search engines for graduate students. It allows students to filter through scholarships based on various criteria such as academic major, location, and award amount.

8. Scholarship Owl

Scholarship Owl’s scholarship search tool allows students to filter for scholarships based on their interests, qualifications, and academic goals. Moreover, scholarship owl also uses machine learning to identify opportunities for students based on their profiles.

With over 1.5 million scholarships available, Scholarship Owl has helped students secure over $165 million in scholarships since its launch.

9. CollegeScholarships.org

With over 23,000 scholarships available, CollegeScholarships.org has a comprehensive collection of scholarships to meet any student’s requirements. Moreover, it is very user friendly and does not require students to sign up to an account.

In addition to scholarships, students can search for grants and loan opportunities on College Scholarships.

10. Other Scholarship Sources

Scholarship search engines are fantastic ways to find scholarships, however, they sometimes do not show all potential scholarships. 3 other areas to look for scholarships are:
  • College / university websites
  • High school counselor
  • School district websites

Pachyy also runs and annual scholarship program – the Pachyy Financial Scholarship – that is available to all American students.  We charge no application fees and successful applicants have the chance to win a share of $2,000.