Change.org vs Petitions.com: Which Should You Use?

1. Who Owns the Data? (The Biggest Difference)

This is the most significant difference and it impacts everything about your campaign. It's the difference between building your own movement and building someone else's.

Change.org: Your Supporters Are Not Your Own

When someone signs a petition on Change.org, their email address is captured by the platform and hidden from you, the petition creator. You can send 'updates' through their system, but you can never contact your supporters directly. The signers you bring in are added to Change.org's own list, which it uses to promote other petitions and sponsored campaigns. In practice you cannot mobilize your own supporters for a follow-up action, thank them personally, or take your list with you.

Petitions.com: Your Petition. Your Data. Your Rules.

We believe that you, the organizer, should be in control. If you choose to collect email addresses or phone numbers, you get full, direct access to that information. This allows you to:

• Build an Independent Movement: Export your supporter list and contact them directly for future campaigns, without needing our platform.
• Collect Granular, Per-Purpose Consent: You define the specific purposes for collecting personal data, and signatories consent to each one separately. This transparent approach respects signers' privacy and gives you a clear, defensible consent basis for your campaign.
• Communicate Directly: Send personalized thank-you notes, organize local events, or conduct surveys with your supporters.

2. Features for Complex or Sensitive Campaigns

Different campaigns have different needs. Petitions.com includes tools for campaigns that require privacy, collaboration, or offline signature collection:

• Private Petitions: Need to organize within a specific community, like a workplace or a school, without the campaign going public? We allow you to create private petitions that are hidden from search engines and our public listings. This is ideal for internal union drives, student body campaigns, or any situation where discretion is key.
• Team Collaboration: You can grant different levels of access to your team members: a translator can add a new language version, a moderator can manage comments, and a co-organizer can have full administrative rights.
• Offline & Online Integration: Campaigns often happen both online and on the street. You can collect signatures on paper (for example at a local event) and add them to your online total, giving you a single, unified count.
• Multilingual Petitions: Both platforms offer an AI writing assistant, but unlike Change.org, Petitions.com lets you publish one petition in several languages sharing a single signature list, and its assistant can translate the petition for you.

3. Data Protection and Defensibility

Consent the way the GDPR intends. Under the GDPR, consent to use personal data should be specific and granular: a separate, clearly-presented choice for each purpose, not one bundled tick-box and not purposes buried in a privacy policy few people read. On Petitions.com you define each purpose and signatories consent to each one individually. Change.org instead bundles its own marketing consent into the signing flow. Clear per-purpose consent also gives you a simpler legal basis than relying on 'legitimate interest', which would otherwise require a documented balancing test.

Where your signers' data lives. Petitions.com is operated from the EU by Petitions.com Group Oy and uses EU hosting. That keeps the petition data you control within the EU.

Retention you control. On Petitions.com you also decide how long signer data is stored: each petition gets its own privacy policy and you set the data retention period. On Change.org the signer data never sits with you, so there is nothing for you to set.

Advertising-related data disclosures. Change.org's current privacy policy states: “Over the past 12 months, we have sold or shared” identifiers, device/IP data and web analytics data with advertising partners. It explains that “sell” means disclosure for valuable consideration under certain U.S. state laws, not necessarily a monetary sale. Petitions.com does not sell signatory personal data or share signatory contact details with advertising partners.

Standing behind your signatures. If anyone questions whether your signatures are genuine, you need a way to check. Because Change.org hides signer email addresses and its signing form is fixed, with no way to add a phone-number field, you have little to verify against. On Petitions.com you can choose to collect a phone number and you see the emails you collect, so you can investigate and defend your list if it is ever challenged.

This section describes how each platform works. It is not legal advice.

4. Does Change.org's Bigger Audience Actually Help You?

The argument you'll hear most often for Change.org is its size. But even a large platform's audience does not automatically see your petition. Your petition reaches more of those users mainly in two ways: if Change.org chooses to feature it in their recommendation emails, or if your supporters 'chip in', that is, pay to promote it. Featuring is editorial and not guaranteed, and promotion is a paid, pay-per-impression ad spend. Without one of those, a new petition's reach is limited to the people you bring to it yourself.

Why a local site matters. On a single global platform every petition competes for the same front page. Research on the UK government petition site found that adding a 'trending' list did not increase the total number of signatures. It concentrated them: inequality between petitions rose from a Gini coefficient of 0.85 to 0.92, and the top slot alone was worth about 70 extra signatures over the second. Hale, John, Margetts and Yasseri, PLOS ONE, 2018. Petitions.com runs separate sites for each language, so a petition about a local issue is listed among petitions from the same country, not against the whole world.

On Petitions.com you also bring your own audience, but the terms are different. You keep the supporter list you build and can contact it directly, and you can turn off the extra visibility feature in your petition settings.

5. Why Do Half of Change.org Petitions Get 8 Signatures or Fewer Despite Its Huge Audience?

On Change.org, about 5% of users, who sign around 200 petitions each, contribute more than half of all signatures (University of Washington, 2015). A petition gains from that audience only if those users are shown it. A 2017 University of Washington study found that half of Change.org petitions got 8 signatures or fewer, and 24% reached 100. On our sites, half of the 1,446 publicly listed petitions created in July 2026 got 11 signatures or more, and 29.7% reached 100. Change.org also advertises more than 2,000 new petitions and more than 500,000 signatures a day, roughly 250 signatures per new petition; measured the same way, our sites averaged 317 in July–September 2026. The figures come from different periods and are not a controlled head-to-head test, and Change.org's numbers are rounded minimums, but they show that a petition on Petitions.com is not disadvantaged simply because Change.org is the larger platform.

See the full methodology, public-versus-unlisted results and language-level statistics

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I see who signed my petition on Change.org?

You can see signers' names and general location, but Change.org hides their email addresses from you. On Petitions.com, if you choose to collect email addresses or phone numbers, you get full, direct access to them.

Can I export petition signatures with email addresses?

On Change.org you can download names and location only, not email addresses. On Petitions.com you can export the full signature list, including any contact details you collected, in Excel, PDF or HTML.

Is Petitions.com free like Change.org?

Yes. Creating a petition is free on both platforms. Change.org additionally sells paid 'promoted petition' visibility and a recurring membership. Petitions.com is free to create and run.

What is the best Change.org alternative for data control?

Petitions.com is built for organizers who want to own their supporter data: direct access to signer contact details, full data export, custom consent purposes, private petitions, and EU-based GDPR-first hosting.

Is my signers' data better protected on Petitions.com than Change.org?

Petitions.com is operated from the EU by Petitions.com Group Oy with EU hosting, and it asks for separate, explicit consent for each purpose rather than bundling it. This is a description of how each platform works, not legal advice.

Does Change.org sell my signers' data?

Change.org's privacy policy says: “Over the past 12 months, we have sold or shared” identifiers, device/IP data and web analytics data with advertising partners. Change.org explains that “sell” here means disclosure for valuable consideration under certain U.S. state laws, not necessarily a monetary sale. Petitions.com does not sell signatory personal data or share signatory contact details with advertising partners. The petition author can access the data collected for their petition under the stated consent purposes.

How do I remove my signature from Change.org?

Change.org does not provide a removal button on the petition page. Its official instructions direct you to the removal link in a Change.org email, which remains active for 30 days. If the email is unavailable or the link has expired or failed, you must ask Change.org support to locate and remove the signature.

Doesn't Change.org's bigger audience get me more signatures?

Not automatically. Your petition reaches Change.org's wider user base mainly if the platform chooses to feature it in recommendation emails or if supporters pay to promote it. Without either, your reach on both platforms is the audience you bring yourself, but on Petitions.com you keep the supporter list you build and can contact it directly for the next push.

Can I move my petition from Change.org to Petitions.com?

You can start the same petition on Petitions.com at any time and point your future sharing there. Signatures already collected on Change.org cannot be transferred (Change.org does not give you your signers' contact details), so most organizers keep the old page up, start the new one, and direct all new traffic to the platform where they own the data.