Charity Engine® is based on Berkeley University's BOINC software, as used by dozens of famous 'citizen science' projects such as SETI@home and the BBC's climateprediction.net. It has been safely downloaded over six million times and nearly half a million PCs are running it right now.

Charity Engine’s version of BOINC is strictly limited: the research applications cannot access personal data in any way. It is also very energy-efficient and typically consumes less power than charging a phone.