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Mainly due to documentary lacuna, little research has been carried out on the economic background of the mendicant orders and their economy. In Central Europe, there were only a few hundred documents on the subject in the Kingdom of Hungary; yet these have never been examined from an economic perspective in any comprehensive way. This paper examines the collecting of alms, one of the most typical activities of the mendicant economy. The picture drawn from sources confirms that, in their physical operations, the Franciscans were the closest to the ideal of the Ordines Mendicantes. However, the importance of the quest for alms is also apparent in other orders. Nevertheless, the example of the Dominicans of Bistri?a, who took the decision to exchange almost all their rights for land property in the first half of the 15th century, puts doubt on the reality of their practice of the quest. Further research is required to determine what social, economic and demographic factors accounted for these choices, which distanced them from the mendicants and brought them closer to traditional monks.