A creator picking between Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee and Memberful for a support link is usually looking at three different headline numbers and no easy way to compare them, because each platform structures its fee differently. One charges a flat percentage of earnings. One adds a per platform transaction fee to a payment processing fee. One charges a monthly subscription regardless of how many people pledge. Below is what each vendor states on its own pricing page, and what that works out to on a $10 monthly pledge.
The three fee structures, as each vendor states them
Patreon’s own pricing page states a 10% platform fee on the income a creator earns through Patreon, on top of payment processing, currency conversion, and payout fees. Patreon names those three categories in the same breath as the 10% figure but does not quote a percentage for any of them, so a creator reading the page cannot compute a full number from it alone.
Buy Me a Coffee’s help center article on calculating charges states a 5% platform fee per transaction. On top of that sits Stripe’s processing fee, which the same article gives as 2.9% plus $0.30 per successful transaction. The article adds two surcharges on top of the base Stripe rate: 1% for transactions from outside the United States, and 0.5% specifically for subscription, meaning recurring membership, payments.
Memberful’s pricing page lists its Standard plan at $49 per month plus a 4.9% transaction fee per successful charge. Memberful is the only one of the three with a required monthly platform subscription that applies whether or not anyone has pledged that month. The same page’s FAQ, under the question “How do transaction fees work?”, states that Stripe also charges a credit card processing fee that varies by country, but is typically 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, the same rate Buy Me a Coffee quotes for the same processor.
What each one nets on a $10 monthly pledge
The table below runs the same $10 recurring pledge through each platform’s disclosed rates. Patreon’s row stops where the vendor’s own disclosure stops: the 10% platform fee is a hard number, but the payment processing, currency conversion, and payout fees Patreon names are not quantified anywhere on its pricing page, so the true net cannot be computed from what Patreon itself publishes. That is a gap in the vendor’s disclosure, not an error in the arithmetic here.
| Platform | Platform fee | Processing fee | Total deducted | Net on $10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patreon | 10% ($1.00) | Not quantified by vendor | at least $1.00 | at most $9.00, true figure not computable from Patreon’s disclosure |
| Buy Me a Coffee (subscription) | 5% ($0.50) | 2.9% + 0.5% + $0.30 ($0.64) | $1.14 | $8.86 |
| Memberful (per transaction, before monthly fee) | 4.9% ($0.49) | 2.9% + $0.30, per Memberful’s own FAQ ($0.59) | $1.08 | $8.92 before the separate $49 monthly platform fee |
Where the $49 monthly fee changes the answer
Memberful’s per-transaction math above looks close to Buy Me a Coffee’s, but that comparison leaves out the flat $49 charged every month regardless of pledge volume. At low monthly pledge totals, that fixed cost is the dominant line item and can exceed what Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee would take in percentage fees on the same total. Neither vendor publishes a specific pledge volume at which that stops being true, and no such crossover figure appears on any of the three pricing pages, so none is stated here as fact. The direction of the effect, not a specific dollar threshold, is what the disclosed rates support: as monthly pledge revenue rises, the fixed $49 becomes a smaller share of the total, and Memberful’s percentage-only cost per transaction is lower than Buy Me a Coffee’s subscription rate once the monthly fee is amortized across enough pledges.
Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee both scale their fee with revenue and charge nothing on a month with zero pledges. Memberful’s Standard plan charges its $49 regardless, which is the tradeoff a creator with an inconsistent or just-starting audience is weighing against Memberful’s lower per-transaction rate.
The one-time tip is not the membership pledge
Buy Me a Coffee’s 0.5% subscription surcharge, per its own fee article, applies specifically to recurring membership payments. A one-time tip through the same platform does not carry that extra 0.5%.
Running the same $10 amount as a one-time payment instead of a recurring pledge on Buy Me a Coffee: the 5% platform fee is still $0.50, and Stripe’s processing fee without the subscription surcharge is 2.9% plus $0.30, or $0.59. Total fees come to $1.09, leaving a net of $8.91. That is closer to Memberful’s $8.92 per-transaction figure than the $8.86 subscription number was, because the gap between the two platforms on a single transaction is mostly the 0.5% subscription surcharge Buy Me a Coffee adds only to recurring payments.
What none of these platforms discloses
Patreon names currency conversion and payout fees on its own pricing page but does not quantify either one there. A creator paid in a currency other than what Patreon settles in, or paid out through a method with its own fee, cannot get that number from Patreon’s public page.
None of the three pricing pages checked for this piece, Patreon’s, Buy Me a Coffee’s, or Memberful’s, discloses a volume discount tier as of the dates each was verified below. If any of the three offers lower rates at higher pledge volumes, that is not stated on the page a creator would read to decide where to put a support link.
These are limits of what each vendor chooses to publish, not a claim about what the actual fee is beyond that published figure.
Picking one for a specific pledge pattern
None of this is a recommendation of one platform over another. The better economics depend on pledge size and pledge volume, and the sections above give the formula to run those numbers for a specific pledge amount rather than a verdict that holds for every creator. A high volume creator weighs Memberful’s flat monthly fee against its lower per-transaction rate differently than someone with a handful of supporters, and the vendor pages themselves are the only place to confirm whether a rate has changed since these were checked.
Try followed for tracking the tools around your creator stack
Comparing fee structures like these is the kind of research that piles up fast once a creator is running more than one platform. followed covers the tooling that sits adjacent to social media management, including pieces like this one, so the next comparison does not mean starting from zero again.
FAQ
What percentage fee does Patreon charge creators?
Patreon’s pricing page states a flat 10% platform fee on what a creator earns through the platform. The same page names payment processing, currency conversion, and payout fees as additional costs, without quoting a percentage for any of them, so the total cut a creator actually sees is larger than 10% but not something that can be computed in full from what Patreon itself publishes.
Is Memberful’s $49 a month on top of the transaction fee?
Yes. Memberful’s pricing page lists the Standard plan at a flat $49 per month plus a 4.9% transaction fee on every successful charge. Stripe’s own processing fee, which Memberful’s page states as typically 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, is separate again and comes out of the same charge.
Does Buy Me a Coffee charge more for a membership than a one-time tip?
Yes. Buy Me a Coffee’s own fee article lists a 0.5% surcharge that applies specifically to subscription, meaning recurring membership, payments and not to one-time tips. On a $10 payment, that works out to a net of $8.86 for a recurring pledge versus $8.91 for a one-time tip, all other fees held constant.
Which platform is cheapest for a creator just starting out with few supporters?
Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee both scale their fee with revenue and charge nothing in a month with zero pledges. Memberful’s Standard plan charges its flat $49 monthly fee regardless of how many people have pledged, which makes it the more expensive option at very low or inconsistent volume even though its per-transaction rate is lower. Neither vendor states an overall cheapest option, and this post does not declare one either.
Sources
Prices verified against each vendor’s own pricing or help page on the dates listed below. This is not Watchdog data and is not on the network’s re-verification schedule; it reflects a one-time check at the time of writing, and a reader comparing current rates should confirm against the vendor page directly.
- Patreon, Pricing, fetched 2026-09-09
- Buy Me a Coffee, How to calculate charges on your payment, fetched 2026-09-09
- Buy Me a Coffee, How to eliminate the credit card fee from your earnings, fetched 2026-09-09
- Memberful, Pricing, fetched 2026-09-09
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