Crowdfunding fees: what a $10,000 goal leaves after the cuts

A creator who needs $10,000 to make a project happen cannot simply set a $10,000 goal. The platform and the card processor both take a cut of what is collected, so a goal equal to the budget leaves the creator short before a single reward is shipped. This post works one assumed budget through the fee terms that Kickstarter and GoFundMe state on their own pages, and marks the inputs those pages leave open.

The assumption this post runs on

Every figure below hangs on one assumption: a creator needs $10,000 in hand after fees. That number was chosen for easy arithmetic. It is not a typical, average or observed campaign size, and nothing here says what real campaigns raise. The $10,000 is also taken before any income tax, and shipping and reward costs are assumed to sit inside it. Swap in your own budget and the method still holds.

Prices verified: the Kickstarter and GoFundMe pages cited here were fetched on 2026-10-07. This is not Watchdog data and it is not on the re-verification schedule, so check the live pages before you launch. This is a post about arithmetic, not tax or legal advice. Taxes vary, and Kickstarter itself points creators to an accountant or tax advisor.

Kickstarter: two deductions, and why the headline says five percent

Kickstarter’s fees help article states it this way: “If a project is successfully funded, Kickstarter collects a 5% fee from the funds collected for creators. Stripe, our payments processor, will also collect a payment processing fee (roughly 3-5%).” The same page adds that if a project does not reach its funding goal, no fees are collected (Kickstarter Help Center, fetched 2026-10-07).

The headline 5% is therefore only half the story. Add the two quoted figures and the stated deduction runs from roughly 8% to roughly 10% of the money collected. That range is arithmetic on Kickstarter’s two numbers, not a figure Kickstarter prints itself.

The page also covers Kickstarter’s Pledge Manager. The fees are stated as the same as on successful projects, with one wrinkle in what they apply to: Stripe collects its variable card processing fee on the full payment, including any taxes, while Kickstarter collects its 5% platform fee on all funds except taxes. Pledges are one-off card payments, which is a different shape from the recurring deductions covered in what payment processors take from a payout.

Working the goal backward from the budget

The platform takes its fee from the amount collected, not from the amount you wanted. So the goal is the net budget divided by one minus the combined fee rate: goal = net needed / (1 – fee rate). Here it is at both ends of the stated range, rounded up to the next dollar.

Combined feeWorkingGoalLeft after fees
8% (5% plus 3%)$10,000 / 0.92$10,870about $10,000
10% (5% plus 5%)$10,000 / 0.90$11,112about $10,000
10%, goal set by adding 10% to the budget$10,000 + $1,000$11,000$9,900

The third row is the common mistake. Adding 10% to $10,000 gives $11,000, but 10% of $11,000 is $1,100, so the creator receives $9,900 and is $100 short. The gross-up formula exists because the fee is a share of the larger number.

Kickstarter’s goal-setting article says the goal should be the amount needed to complete the project, “and the fees associated with running a project on Kickstarter, not what you hope to raise.” It describes a Funding Calculator in the project editor that takes an estimated budget and a tax percentage, then calculates Kickstarter’s fee (5%) and the processor’s fee (~5%) and suggests a new goal. It notes that processing fees vary by country and by the number of backers. Separately, Kickstarter’s Project Budget article suggests setting a margin of error at 10% in the budget sheet, which is Kickstarter’s own advice and sits on top of the fee arithmetic above.

The pledges that never arrive

A goal is not always collected in full. Kickstarter’s help article on funding that falls below the goal after a campaign ends says some pledges can fail to collect. A backer who has not fixed a payment problem within 7 days of the deadline has the pledge dropped, and there is no way to extend that window. The creator still receives the balance of collected funds, less fees, even if dropped pledges leave the total under the goal. Fees are only collected on funds Kickstarter successfully collects.

The same article states that under the Terms of Use, creators remain liable for completing the project and fulfilling rewards. A goal reached by a thin margin therefore carries real risk, because a few dropped pledges can leave less money than the budget while the obligations stay the same. No dropped-pledge rate is given on the page, and none is invented here. The article also says the project page is not updated to reflect dropped pledges, so the amount raised shown publicly can differ from the amount received.

GoFundMe: a different fee shape

GoFundMe’s pricing page, for fundraising by an individual or business, lists three lines. There is no fee to create a fundraiser. Donor contributions to GoFundMe are optional. And there is one transaction fee per donation, shown on the page I fetched as 2.9% plus $0.30, automatically deducted from each donation. The page adds that international transaction and conversion fees may apply based on payment method. The text I extracted does not name the country for that figure, and the page can show different terms by country, so confirm the figure for your own country.

Here is the same assumed $10,000 worked per donation. Picture 100 donations of $100 each. The donation count is an assumption chosen for arithmetic, not data.

  • Percentage component: 2.9% of $10,000 is $290.
  • Fixed component: $0.30 x 100 donations is $30.
  • Total transaction fees: $320, so $9,680 remains.

The fixed part is what moves with donation size. Keep the total at $10,000 but split it into 400 donations of $25 and the fixed component becomes $120, so fees rise to $410. Smaller donations mean more of the fee is the flat $0.30. Because the fee depends on donation count, the gross-up is not a single percentage. At 100 donations, a $10,000 net needs about $10,330 raised: ($10,000 + $30) / 0.971 is $10,329.55, rounded up.

GoFundMe’s how-it-works page, in its step on setting up bank transfers, says you do not need to hit your fundraising goal to receive your money, and it notes that one small transaction fee is deducted per donation. So the creator keeps what is raised whether or not a target is met, where Kickstarter funding is all-or-nothing. That makes the two models unlike each other, and this is not a like-for-like comparison. No view is offered here on which costs less.

What the fee pages do not tell you

  • Kickstarter’s full fee breakdown page (kickstarter.com/help/fees) and Indiegogo’s pages returned HTTP 403 to automated fetch on 2026-10-07. They are not cited and not worked here, and their fees are not described from memory or from third-party articles.
  • The Kickstarter processor fee is only given as a range, “roughly 3-5%”, and the goal-setting article says it varies by country and number of backers. The exact rate for your project is not on the help pages checked.
  • The place to find the real deduction is the payout invoice. Kickstarter says a payout’s funding summary is available about 48 hours after the payout has been successfully processed by your bank, with a printable invoice listing the fees deducted by Kickstarter and Stripe, plus gross pledges, dropped pledges and refunds.
  • Funds timing: the pages checked here do not state when funds reach the creator. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: an official Kickstarter or GoFundMe help article, fetched with readable text, stating payout timing.] No number of days is given in this post.

A short checklist before setting the goal

  1. Write the net budget, including shipping and reward costs, as the amount you need in hand.
  2. Pick the fee rate from the platform’s own page, and use the high end of any range.
  3. Gross it up: net / (1 – fee rate), rounded up. For GoFundMe, add the $0.30 per donation to the net first, using a realistic donation count.
  4. Add the tax percentage from the platform’s calculator or an accountant’s figure, and consider the 10% margin Kickstarter suggests.
  5. Read the platform’s funds-timing page for the one you will use, since this post could not source it. If the project is an event, ticketing platform fees on a social-driven sale is another one-off fee stack worth reading.

Disclosure: followedapp is published by the team behind RecurPost, which is covered vendor #34 under the same rules as every other vendor.

FAQ

Are Kickstarter fees charged if the project fails to reach its goal?

No. Kickstarter’s fees article states that if a project does not reach its funding goal, no fees are collected, and its all-or-nothing article says that when a campaign ends short of its goal, no money changes hands, backers are not charged and the creator receives no funds.

Should the funding goal include fees?

Per Kickstarter’s goal-setting article, yes: the goal should cover the costs of the project and the fees, not what the creator hopes to raise. The working is goal = net needed / (1 – fee rate), so $10,000 at a 10% combined fee gives $11,112.

Sources

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