Charity Navigator is a charity assessment organization. It is responsible for evaluating more than 200,000 charitable organizations based in the United States, operating as a 501(c)(3) organization. It intends to provide information about a nonprofit's financial stability and practices relating to accountability and transparency. It is the largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities in the United States. It does not accept any advertising or donations from the organizations it evaluates.

Charity Navigator was launched in the spring of 2001 by John P. (Pat) Dugan, a pharmaceutical executive and philanthropist. The group's mission was to help "donors make informed giving decisions and enabling well-run charities to demonstrate their commitment to proper stewardship" of donor dollars.

Over the years, the group grew from 1,100 to over 230,000 charities.

In 2011, Kiplinger's Personal Finance selected Charity Navigator as a Money Management Innovation for "helping millions of people become philanthropists", and it was on Time magazine's top 50 websites of 2006 list.

In a 2014 Chronicle of Philanthropy interview on the nonprofit sector, journalist Nicholas Kristof identified it with a trend he deplored: "There is too much emphasis on inputs and not enough on impact", Kristof said. "This has been worsened by an effort to create more accountability through sites like Charity Navigator. There is so much emphasis now on expense ratios that there is an underinvestment in administration and efficiency."

A 2014 survey of attitudes toward charity evaluation indicated positive results for Charity Navigator in six of seven categories.

Charity Navigator developed and added the Giving Basket to their website in 2015, making it easier for donors to give a one-time or monthly donation up to $100,000.

In October 2020, Charity Navigator acquired impact-based charity evaluator ImpactMatters.