Patreon Alternatives in 2026: What You Keep From $1,000 a Month

Patreon alternatives at 5% save about $50 a month on every $1,000 against Patreon’s 10% plan, and that saving disappears if fewer than 95 of your 100 members follow you. Run that sum first. Every paying member has to sign up again, so price the move before you announce it. Then read Patreon’s rule on announcing it, which the migration guides leave out.

I read the pricing pages, help centers and terms of the platforms below on November 5, 2026, then worked out what the same 100 members at $10 leave on each one. I didn’t buy a plan or move a real membership, so those figures are arithmetic on each company’s published rates. If your page billed per post, read that section first, because a paused page earns nothing until you log in.

Patreon alternatives at a glance: who should go where

There’s no single winner among Patreon alternatives, because what you make decides which costs matter. Find your row, then read the money and the sales tax columns together.

If you make files or merch, the 5% platforms that also handle tax are the strongest deal here. If you write and can take on the tax admin, Ghost is the one I’d price first, and a podcaster should price it against Supercast. If your members pay you on Patreon because it takes them one tap, the better answer may be to stay.

What changed on November 1, and who did it hit?

Patreon set November 1, 2026 as the date every remaining creator had to be on subscription billing, and it says Apple’s in-app purchase system supports only that model. Subscription billing means each member pays on the day they join, then monthly on that date. Patreon says the change reached “the 4% of creators still using our legacy billing models,” and it gives no total for that 4%. It also calls this “the third such change from Apple in the past 18 months,” so watch for a fourth.

The date has moved before. Patreon first announced the switch on August 12, 2024, dropped the deadline on May 15, 2025 after a US court ruling, then brought it back on January 28, 2026. Its reason this time is blunt: “Late last year, they blocked a Patreon app update,” and it says losing the App Store isn’t an option. The Help Center now says the deadline “has passed,” and any account still on an old billing model gets switched automatically, with an email once it’s done. Look for that email if you haven’t logged in lately.

If you billed per post

Per-creation billing charged fans each time you released a paid post, often with a monthly cap. This group has the urgent job. Patreon’s Help Center says of those pages: “Your billing will be paused after the switch. To resume, log in and review your new monthly tier prices.” It adds that “Paused months aren’t charged later,” so each month you leave the page alone is income you won’t recover.

Your new price comes from a multiplier on your old per-post price, and Patreon’s own pages describe it two ways. The migration guide uses the highest number of paid posts in a single month over the past three months. The iOS FAQ uses the average, “counting any month without a paid post as zero.” Go by the number Patreon suggests when you log in: you can accept it or pick any lower whole number, and a multiplier of 1 keeps your old price. Patreon’s example turns $5 per post into $15 a month at a multiplier of 3. The move to subscription billing “can’t be reversed,” though you can change tier prices later.

Members who set a monthly cap keep it, so someone capped below your new price stays in the tier and pays only the cap: Patreon’s example is $10 a month for a 2-post limit on that $15 tier. If you later change the price for existing members, the cap stops applying.

The harder cost sits with fans who liked paying only when you shipped. “Their stuff is great, but not so great that I’m willing to sign up for a monthly fee that I forget about and then realize 3 years later that they’ve stopped making stuff,” a per-post patron called burkaman wrote on the tech forum Hacker News in August 2024.

Patreon’s own case studies argue the other side. Beneos Battlemaps, a tabletop map maker, says “my earnings for that month increased by over 25%” after switching in February 2023, because charging up front stopped people from joining, downloading everything and canceling before the first charge. Knitty Magazine reports monthly income up “about 15%.” Patreon picked and published both, so read them as the best case, not the typical one.

The Delta Green Patreon shows the middle path. Six posts at $1 became “a one-time $6 a month charge,” meaning one flat monthly fee, and its creator began copying the content to Ghost at the same price while keeping the Patreon running. So set a price now to restart the money, tell members before billing starts again as Patreon advises, and read the per-post section below before you commit to monthly billing for the long term.

If you billed on the first of the month

First-of-the-month billing charged every member on the 1st, whatever day they joined. Less changed here. “Nothing changes for your existing members. They’ll continue to be billed on the 1st of each month. New members are billed on the date they join.” The cost is a messier calendar with two billing patterns on one page, and that alone doesn’t justify a move.

If you were already on subscription billing

Nothing changed for you on November 1. Your reasons to leave, if you have them, are the fee, the iPhone app and who owns the relationship with your members. The next sections put a number on each.

How much does Patreon take from creators?

Patreon takes 10% from a page published after August 4, 2025, plus 2.9% + $0.30 on each card payment. On a $10 membership that’s $1.59, which leaves you $8.41 before payout charges. A member paying in a currency other than your payout currency adds 2.5%, which takes that $8.41 down to $8.16, and PayPal or Venmo from outside the US costs 3.9% + $0.30 instead of the card rate. A direct deposit to a US creator then costs $0.25 per payout.

Older pages keep older plans: Founders at 5%, Pro at 8% and Pro + Merch at 11%. One condition matters if you’re testing an exit. If you unpublish your page, or Patreon does, you move to the 10% plan when it comes back, so a creator on 5% or 8% shouldn’t unpublish to try something else.

The fixed $0.30 is the part most summaries skip. On the standard plan you keep 57 cents of a $1 pledge, 77 cents of $3, 81 cents of $5, 84 cents of $10 and 87 cents of $100. So the “84–87 cents” on a list from Circle, a rival community platform, holds only from about $10 up, and a page full of $3 tiers lives well below it.

A scarier figure, up to 42%, shows up in Google’s AI answer on what Patreon takes. It adds Apple’s 30% to a 12% Premium plan that still appears on an older Help Center page and that new creators can’t buy. On today’s 10% plan the same add-up is 40%, and it applies only to a member who joins inside the iPhone app. One-off sales in your Patreon Shop pay the same 10% on the standard plan.

What you keep from $1,000 a month on each platform

On 100 members paying $10 by US card on the web, Patreon’s standard plan leaves $841, a 5% platform such as Ko-fi, Fourthwall or Payhip leaves $891, Ghost leaves $912 and Ko-fi Gold leaves $929. Those figures assume no tax, no refunds and no bank payout charges. They use each platform’s printed card rate, or the standard 2.9% + $0.30 from Stripe, the card processor many of these platforms connect to, where you bring your own account. The chart shows how the order moves with tier size.

Small tiers punish any charge per sale or per member, so Gumroad and Supercast fall furthest at $5. At $20 Supercast passes every 5% platform, though Ghost’s flat fee stays ahead of it.

Among Patreon alternatives, flat fees change the order as you grow. Ko-fi Gold at $12 a month beats Ko-fi’s 5% once you earn more than $240 a month. Ghost’s $29 Publisher plan, billed yearly at $348, beats a 5% platform above $580 a month and Patreon’s standard plan above $290. That price covers up to 1,000 members and rises after that.

Memberful barely moves the number. At $49 a month plus 4.9% it leaves $843, two dollars more than Patreon, and it passes Patreon only above about $961 a month. To beat a 5% platform it would need about $49,000 a month.

Flat fees work against a small page. At 30 members on a $3 tier, $90 a month, Patreon leaves $69.39 and a 5% platform $73.89, while Ko-fi Gold leaves $66.39, Ghost $49.39 and Memberful $24.98. At that size the $4.50 a month you’d save won’t pay for the disruption of moving an existing page, though a new page can start at 5%.

They work for a large one. At 500 members on $10, $5,000 a month, Patreon leaves $4,205, a 5% platform $4,455, Ghost $4,676 and Ko-fi Gold $4,693. A flat fee puts more than $5,600 a year between you and Patreon at that size, enough to pay for the work of moving.

Now count the members, because every one of them has to sign up again. A 5% platform pays you back only if at least 95 of your 100 follow you: 95 members leave $846, and 94 leave $838, below Patreon’s $841. A flat fee lowers the bar a little, and the chart has each platform’s number.

If you’re on Patreon’s older 8% plan, a 5% platform needs 97. The share stays close to 95% at any size on a 5% platform, because both fees grow with your income. A flat fee does get easier: at 500 members, Ghost needs 450, or 90%.

If you live outside the US

These figures assume a US creator and US cards, so run the same sum with your own rates. Patreon adds 2.5% when a member’s currency differs from your payout currency, and a non-US payout costs more: 1.55% + $0.25 by local bank transfer, or 1% by PayPal with a $20 cap. Buy Me a Coffee’s fee page adds 1% on transactions from outside the US. I priced only Stripe’s US rate, so check your country’s rate on any platform that uses your own Stripe account. If most of your fans are in Europe, settle VAT first, which favors the platforms that say they collect it.

Who owes the sales tax when the fee says 0%?

The merchant of record owes it. That’s the company legally selling to your fan, and a fee table rarely tells you who that is. Many US states and the EU tax digital sales, so someone has to register with each tax office, collect the tax from fans and file returns. Patreon alternatives split into two groups on that job.

Patreon’s Terms of Use say “We are additionally responsible for a number of transactional taxes across the world,” naming value-added tax (VAT, the sales tax used across Europe) and US state sales tax. Fourthwall says “we’re responsible for handling all sales taxes.” Gumroad says it has been merchant of record since January 1, 2025, and Payhip “automatically collects, reports and remits digital EU/UK VAT as well as US/Canadian sales tax on your behalf.”

The other group hands the job to you. Ko-fi says it “is not the merchant of record on any transaction.” Buy Me a Coffee says it “does not handle the collection and remittance of sales tax or value-added tax (VAT) on behalf of creators.” Memberful’s terms call you the seller, Uscreen’s say “Publisher is the seller,” and Ghost’s help page says “Stripe does not remit your taxes for you.” Supercast’s pages don’t say.

Substack crosses over on December 1, 2026, when it “calculates, collects, and remits sales tax or VAT on your paid subscriptions on your behalf, at no additional cost,” except for publishers in Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, India and Thailand.

Whether you personally owe anything depends on where your fans live and how much you sell. Since South Dakota v. Wayfair in 2018, a state can require sales tax from a seller with no physical presence there. Virginia’s line is “more than $100,000 in annual gross retail sales or 200 or more transactions to Virginia customers.” At 100 members you make 1,200 charges a year across all states, so a count of 200 in one state takes a concentrated audience or a bigger page.

Washington applies sales tax to “all digital products, regardless of how they are accessed,” with exclusions listed on the same page. The EU tells sellers of digital services based outside the EU: “You charge VAT at the rate of the customer’s country.” That page prints no threshold for those sellers, so don’t assume a small page is exempt.

Put a price on that before you compare fees. Stripe’s Tax Complete, which adds registrations and filings, starts at $90 a month, and TaxJar’s Professional plan is $99 a month. Either one costs more than the $50 a 5% platform saves you at $1,000 a month, and more than Ko-fi Gold’s $88 or Ghost’s $71.

You may never need one at this size, but on those platforms you have to find out. On your own Stripe account, Stripe’s cheaper Tax Basic plan, at 0.5% per transaction where you’re registered, lists “Tax obligation monitoring and alerts,” which is the low-cost way to learn where you’ve crossed a line. Take your own numbers to an accountant, because rules differ by state and by what you sell.

That’s why Fourthwall and Payhip look so strong here. They charge the same 5% as Ko-fi and say they handle the tax themselves.

The best Patreon alternatives, by what you make

The best Patreon alternatives depend on what you make: Fourthwall for video and merch, Payhip for files, Ghost for writing, Supercast for podcasts, Ko-fi for small tiers. These are sites like Patreon sorted by the job you’re hiring them for, and each entry names who handles the tax, because that changes the price you actually pay. Each Patreon alternative below also shares one problem, covered further down: your members have to sign up again.

Ko-fi, for tips, small tiers and commissions

Ko-fi takes 5% on memberships, shop sales and commissions, and you get paid directly through your own Stripe or PayPal: “we never hold your money.” Its default Standard mode charges 5% on everything and includes supporter-only content and scheduled posts. Its Free mode drops one-off tips to 0% but removes those tools, so a membership with locked posts belongs on Standard. Gold costs $12 a month and removes the 5%, which leaves $929 on $1,000 a month.

Is Ko-fi better than Patreon? At $1,000 a month it leaves you $50 more, or $88 on Gold. The trade is that a fan has to come to a new page and enter a card, and Ko-fi’s help pages make the tax your job. It also connects to Twitch, YouTube and Discord roles, which suits streamers. Pick it if your members are a small, loyal group who’d follow a link.

Buy Me a Coffee, for the simplest support page

Buy Me a Coffee takes 5% of each transaction with no monthly fee. Stripe then adds 2.9% + $0.30, another 0.5% on subscription payments and 0.5% on payouts, plus 1% on transactions from outside the US. That puts it about $5 behind Ko-fi before the payout charge. It offers monthly and yearly tiers, member limits, free trials and one lifetime level per account, where a fan pays once and stays a member. The tax is yours here too, and I’d choose Ko-fi unless you specifically want that lifetime option.

Fourthwall, for video makers and anyone selling merch

Fourthwall takes 5% on memberships on both its plans and calls itself merchant of record, so at $1,000 a month you get Ko-fi’s price without Ko-fi’s tax question. Physical products carry no platform fee at all, only payment processing, which is why merch sellers should run the numbers here first. Its Pro plan is $15 a month and removes the 5% on digital products only, so it pays back above $300 a month in digital sales and does nothing for memberships. Payouts carry no fee, but they arrive once a month after your balance reaches $25.

Its importer moves posts and maps tiers, and it offers creators a branded mobile app. Its own guide is plain about the limit: “You can’t transfer members or their payments, so every member still needs to sign up on Fourthwall.” For most video makers and merch sellers, this is where I’d start the budget conversation.

Ghost, for writers and podcasters who want their own site

Ghost charges 0% and connects to your own Stripe account, so the only recurring line is the plan. Publisher at $29 a month billed yearly is the cheapest plan that takes paid subscriptions, since Starter doesn’t include them, so expect $348 up front. Ghost leaves $912 at $1,000 a month, and you’re the seller, with the tax work that brings. Ghost imports your Patreon list as free members, who then have to choose a paid plan.

The Missing Witches podcast reported a month after launching there that “the extra 8% we’ll keep by having them here instead of on Patreon covers the cost of paying for the Ghost-hosted plan for a year.” About half of its new sign-ups were brand new members, which is the outcome you’re hoping for and can’t assume.

Memberful, if you already have a website

Memberful’s footer reads “Memberful is a Patreon company,” and Memberful’s blog announced the sale on August 8, 2018. It connects to your own Stripe account and works with WordPress, so you do get your own member relationship. Patreon’s ownership buys you no shortcut. Memberful’s own import guide covers “migrating from Patreon or some other platform where we’re not able to migrate your credit cards.”

At $49 a month plus 4.9% it leaves only $2 more than Patreon on $1,000, and at $5,000 a month it still trails a 5% platform by $44. I’d pick it only if charging for access to an existing site is the actual job. If the site itself is still undecided, Wix vs Squarespace and whether Squarespace is worth paying for cover that budget line.

Payhip, for files and single releases

Payhip’s Free plan takes 5%, Plus takes 2% for $29 a month and Pro takes 0% for $99 a month, with memberships and digital products on all three. Plus beats Free above about $967 a month, and Pro beats Plus above $3,500. You connect your own Stripe or PayPal, which charge their usual rates, and Payhip says it collects and remits EU and UK VAT and US and Canadian sales tax for digital sales.

For someone selling each release as a file, that’s the cleanest budget line in this guide: 5%, card fees, and a tax question you can mostly set aside.

Gumroad, for one-off files and its marketplace

Gumroad takes 10% + $0.50 per sale on direct sales, and its help page says that fee “does not include” card processing of 2.9% + $0.30. That’s $791 on 100 memberships at $10 and $711 on 200 at $5, well behind the 5% platforms. Sales it finds for you through Discover cost a flat 30% with processing included. It’s merchant of record, and direct sales drop to 5% + $0.50 once you pass $20,000 in a calendar month.

Use it for files priced well above $5, when you want its marketplace or its tax handling. It’s the wrong home for a small monthly tier.

itch.io, for games and mods

On itch.io you choose what the platform takes, from 0% to 100%, and the default is 10%. The payment provider generally takes 2.9% + $0.30, so a $10 game leaves $8.41 at the default, the same as a $10 Patreon membership. Sales can go direct to you, which makes you the seller, or pass through itch.io, which collects the payment and becomes merchant of record. I didn’t find a recurring membership in its creator docs, so treat it as the shop that sits beside a monthly tier somewhere else.

MyMiniFactory Tribes, for 3D models

MyMiniFactory is the one platform here built around 3D-model subscriptions, and it collects sales tax or VAT at checkout. It’s also expensive: 15%, 12.5% or 10% by creator tier, plus 3.49% + $0.49 per payment, which leaves about $766 at the 15% tier. At $3 or less the processing rate rises to 5% + $0.49, so a $3 tier keeps about 64% at that level. Those rates come from its store fee page, and I couldn’t confirm a separate Tribes rate.

You’d pay that for the audience, since the people browsing there already print models. Its Loyalty Importer carries points over by subscription month for “external subscribers, such as patrons,” but no payments move. It suggests a free Tribes trial so nobody gets charged twice during the move.

Supercast, for podcasts

Supercast charges $0.59 per subscriber a month on top of your own Stripe account’s 2.9% + $0.30 and 0.7% billing fee. It’s built around paid listening, with a “2-tap subscription for listeners” and public episodes synced from your podcast host. Per-subscriber pricing rewards higher tiers: 50 members at $20 leave about $920 against Patreon’s $856, while 200 at $5 leave $786 against $811.

Ghost still leaves $927 at that $20 tier, so price isn’t the reason to pick Supercast. Pick it if the show is the whole product, and pick Ghost if you also publish writing. Since February 10, 2026 it has belonged to Red Seat Ventures, part of Fox’s Tubi Media Group. Its pages say nothing I could find about sales tax, so assume it’s yours. If you edit your own show, what Descript costs a podcaster is a line in the same budget.

Uscreen, for a video catalog

Uscreen’s Starter plan is $49 a month, or $39 for the first six months at the current offer, with no per-subscriber fee and a limit of 100 subscribers. The 101st member is where the budget breaks. Growth is $149 a month at the regular price, or $119 billed annually for the first 12 months, plus $1.99 per subscriber, which comes to $320 to $350 a month at that size. Its own iOS and Android apps start on App Essentials, $449 a month at the regular price. Uscreen’s terms make you the seller, and its migration guide says members will “re-enter their payment details.”

If short clips bring in your audience, Opus Clip alternatives covers the tool that sits in front of a catalog like this.

Substack, if writing is the product

Is Substack or Patreon better? For writers, Substack’s network is the case for it, because Patreon’s fee and Substack’s are close. Substack takes 10% and Stripe adds 2.9% + $0.30 plus 0.7%, which leaves $834, or $7 less than Patreon. From December 1 it also takes on the tax. If you’re choosing between newsletter platforms, start with Substack alternatives and beehiiv vs Substack, which cover that decision in full.

If your fans are really a community that talks to each other, price a community platform instead of any of the above. Serial fiction writers will also meet Ream, which sells subscriptions and single-sale books to readers. Its pricing page didn’t load when I checked, so I’m not printing a fee.

Adult work raises a different question: whose content rules and whose payment processors will carry you. I haven’t ranked platforms for that work here. SubscribeStar is a name you’ll meet there, and its pricing page lists 5% “for regular content providers,” processing from 3% + $0.30 up to 10% + $0.40, and a reserve that can hold back 10% of earnings. Read each platform’s content policy before you move anything.

If you charged per post, what replaces it?

Nothing on Patreon replaces it one for one, and almost nothing does elsewhere. In a count of 34 platforms’ own pages for this guide, finished November 5, 2026, one charges on each release as far as its pages say, and one adds releases up monthly. Most Patreon alternatives sell each release as a separate product or stick to monthly and annual billing. That’s a count of what those pages state, and pages can stay silent about features that exist.

Folloverse, which still carries a beta label, advertises: “Charge fans each time you publish a paid post instead of every month.” It takes a flat 6% plus Stripe processing, 0% for the first three months, with a monthly cap for fans, and it says it’s merchant of record. Backers Club, the international name for Denmark’s 10er, has fans pick an amount per release and collects once a month, and “Take a break and nobody is charged.” It takes 8% plus Stripe fees and lists the US among its creator countries. I haven’t tested either with real money, and both ask your fans to join a name they don’t know.

The practical answer for most irregular creators is two lines in the budget. Keep a low monthly tier for the people who want to support you regardless, and sell each release as a one-off. Patreon can do that itself with one-time purchases at your plan rate. Four releases at $5 with 25 buyers each leave about $406 on Patreon’s standard plan, $431 on a 5% platform and $356 on Gumroad.

What you give up is the automatic charge, so fans have to decide every time. Patreon’s annual-only memberships could suit slow release schedules, but its Help Center still says “We’re actively building” them.

What comes with you when you leave Patreon, and what doesn’t?

Your content and most of your member list can come with you, and your members’ saved cards can’t. No Patreon alternative I read says otherwise. Ghost’s docs say “there is no direct migration path to move your paid subscriptions from Patreon to other platforms.” Podia says “we are unable to migrate payment plans, subscriptions, or payment details.” Substack’s guide puts it this way: on “a platform like Patreon, where you don’t own subscriber payment details,” plan on a free month and a prompt to pay.

The member list has gaps too. You can download your member list as a spreadsheet (CSV) from Patreon’s Relationship manager, and Patreon’s help page explains uploading it to MailChimp. But “Fans can opt out of sharing their email address with creators,” so a blank in that column may be a fan’s own choice. Count the blanks before you count on an email campaign.

The rule the migration guides leave out

Patreon’s guidance on off-platform activity has one line that belongs in your budget: “Attempts to direct, coerce, lure, or otherwise lead people from Patreon to third-party websites or experiences are strictly prohibited unless otherwise stated.” The same page lists “Requesting personal contact information from Patreon users, including email addresses,” and the sanctions include “penalizing, suspending, or removing violating accounts.” In money terms, the account paying you $841 a month is the stake, and the prize is about $50 a month.

Set that beside what the alternatives tell you to do. Fourthwall’s guide says “Announce the move on Patreon.” Ghost’s says “share the Ghost Offer link in posts on your Patreon page.” Mighty Networks says to edit your About section to include “a link to your new platform.” All nine alternatives lists I read from the top search results omit the rule, and so do those guides.

I can’t tell you how Patreon enforces it. The policy has no printed exception for a creator who’s leaving, and I found no report of anyone penalized for a farewell post, though Reddit threads wouldn’t open for me. Public posts on Patreon announcing a move to Ko-fi are online, from 2024 and from this year. The policy also doesn’t say whether emailing a list you exported counts. So the risk is unmeasured, and I wouldn’t price it at zero.

How many members actually follow?

Nobody independent has measured it. The numbers I found come from the platform people moved to. Fourthwall publishes a pair of creators going from 187 Patreon members to “460 members in just four months,” a count that includes new members, so it isn’t a retention rate. Supercast says one podcast “Migrated 75% of their existing paid audience from Patreon to Supercast” within a month.

Run that 75% through the $10 model on a 5% platform, and you’d earn $668 against $841 until new members close the gap. Uscreen says many customers “retain most of their subscribers” and prints no number.

The closest thing to an independent signal is older, and it isn’t about moving at all. When Patreon announced a patron-side fee in December 2017, Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content told Engadget the page had lost “between 200 and 250 patrons, out of over 5,000” within two days, before anyone was charged. That’s 4% to 5% gone over an email, and Patreon withdrew the fee a week later. A move asks much more of people than that did.

Commenters describe the same friction. “If you set up a Ko-Fi account as a creator, you will receive a fraction of the subscriber-base that you’ll receive on Patreon,” danShumway wrote on Hacker News in August 2024. The same arithmetic applies on any membership platform, and our guide to what leaving a platform with paying subscribers actually costs runs it for newsletters.

If you still want to move

Fourthwall’s guide says to “Run both platforms simultaneously for 4 to 6 weeks.” Ghost describes a softer option: keep Patreon and Ghost side by side, synced through Zapier, while you go on paying Patreon’s percentage. The policy pages I read don’t bar an account elsewhere, because the rule is about leading people from Patreon to it. This order keeps the most income running:

1. Download the member CSV with every column switched on, and count the missing emails.
2. Ask Patreon Support in writing about announcing the move.
3. Build your tiers on the new platform and copy enough content that nobody arrives at an empty page.
4. Offer something for moving, such as Substack’s free month or a Ghost offer, and set an end date.
5. Keep Patreon running through that window. In the channels Support clears, ask members to cancel there only after they’ve joined, so nobody pays twice.
6. Don’t unpublish an older-plan page until enough members have moved to clear your break-even.

Who holds the cards next time?

You pay this cost once per move, and you can lower the odds of paying it twice. On platforms that run through your own Stripe account, the billing records sit with you. Supercast says “you can take that information with you at any time,” Uscreen says “your billing run through your own Stripe,” and Memberful’s docs have a separate import path for existing Stripe subscriptions. Patreon holds those records itself, which is why this section exists. Ask any platform the same question before you sign: if I leave, who holds the cards?

Which alternatives have an iPhone app, and what does Apple take?

Apple takes 30% of a new membership bought inside an iPhone app, falling to 15% after a year of continuous billing. On Patreon, a US fan can choose web checkout inside the app and avoid it. A fan outside the US can’t, though the same fan pays no Apple fee on mobile web, desktop or Android. Existing members aren’t affected.

Patreon lets you absorb the fee or raise the app price by about 43%, since 1 / (1 − 30%) is 42.86%. On a $10 tier, that makes the app price about $14.29. If you hold the price at $10 instead, you keep $6.00 to $6.30 from that member against $8.41 on the web, because Patreon charges no card processing there and doesn’t say whether its 10% comes before or after Apple’s cut. Those iOS funds can sit pending “for up to 75 days.”

Among Patreon alternatives, some apps sell through Apple, some send buyers to the web, and many pages don’t say. Apple’s share works the same way inside a community app, so these rules aren’t special to Patreon.

An app is worth paying for if your fans listen or watch on their phones every day. If they mostly read on a laptop, a web-only platform costs you little. Keep one date in the plan: the US Supreme Court hears Apple’s appeal in its App Store case with Epic Games on January 11, 2027, and the outcome could change that US web route.

YouTube and Discord memberships: alongside, not instead

Use YouTube and Discord memberships as a second door beside your main platform, because neither leaves as much as a 5% platform. YouTube gives creators “70% of membership revenue after applicable taxes and fees” and covers card costs, which is $700 on $1,000, the lowest result on the $10 model. Discord takes 6% for processing on desktop and browser sales, then 10% of the rest, which leaves $846. On iOS the store fee replaces that 6%, and Discord raises the app price to cover it.

They earn their place with people who won’t leave the app they’re already in. The audience is there, and joining takes a tap. If YouTube is where people find you, a low YouTube tier can sit beside a higher one elsewhere.

Who should stay on Patreon?

Stay if most of your members support several creators there. “I already have a Patreon account hooked up with my payment info. I subscribe to 10-12 different people I like. Adding one more is trivial,” a user called chime wrote on Hacker News in 2018, and that one-tap habit is what you’d be asking them to give up.

Stay if you’re on an older 5% or 8% plan, because the saving shrinks and leaving closes that door. Stay if tax is the reason you’re here: “Patreon handles the ugly details of making sure the right amount of VAT / sales tax is paid on transactions,” robinsonb5 wrote on Hacker News in 2023, “and from a creator’s point of view this is a big part of their value proposition.”

Stay if you’re still building an audience, because a small page has little to gain from a move. Patreon lists “Creator-first discovery” on its pricing page, and I can’t measure what that’s worth. Don’t stay for that alone, because how algorithms decide reach is a poor thing to bet a new page on.

Leave for a reason you can price, such as a per-post model that no longer exists, a tax plan you’ve worked out or a business that has outgrown 10%.

Why do most lists of Patreon alternatives put their publisher first?

Because the publisher usually sells an alternative. I read nine lists of Patreon alternatives from the top results for this search on November 5, 2026, and seven are published by a company with a competing product. Five put their own product first. The one media site in the set, Influencer Marketing Hub, is dated September 2021.

The gaps follow the incentive. None of the nine mentions a merchant of record, and one mentions sales tax or VAT, under Gumroad. Only Printful explains the billing change, though its “can freeze payouts” goes further than Patreon’s wording, which pauses billing. Several pages still quote “5-12%” as Patreon’s fee, a range that new creators can’t get.

Memberful is on five of those lists, and two say who owns it. Printful leaves it off on purpose: “Patreon owns it, so it’s not a true alternative for creators leaving Patreon.”

Frequently Asked Questions