Patreon Fees in 2026: Every Charge and What You Actually Keep

Every Patreon fee in one table

Patreon charges up to six kinds of fees: a platform fee, payment processing, currency conversion, Apple's App Store fee on iOS purchases, payout fees, and in some countries tax on Patreon's own fees. The platform fee gets the attention, but on small tiers processing can cost almost as much.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

Patreon's own pricing page sums this up as 10% of the income you earn, plus payment processing, currency conversion, payout fees and applicable taxes. The detailed rates above come from its Creator fees overview, last updated October 1, 2026.

Which Patreon plan are you on?

If your page was first published after August 4, 2025, you're on the 10% Standard plan. If it was published on or before that date and has never been unpublished, you keep your legacy rate.

Patreon's current fee tables list three legacy rates. Founders (5%) is for creators who joined before May 7, 2019, and it comes with discounted USD processing of 1.6% + $0.30 on cards. Pro is 8%. Pro + Merch, formerly Premium, is 11% in the current tables, though Patreon's older "What is the Founders plan?" article still says 12%.

The rule that catches people is unpublishing. Patreon says that if you unpublish a legacy page, or Patreon unpublishes it for any reason, the page switches to the 10% Standard plan when you republish. Pausing billing doesn't count as unpublishing, and Patreon recommends pausing for breaks.

What Patreon takes from a single payment

The $0.30 charged on every payment hits small tiers hardest. On the Standard plan, Patreon keeps 18.9% of a $5 payment but 13.5% of a $50 one.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

Each cell is the fee on one US card payment on USD payouts: price × (platform fee + 2.9%) + $0.30, or 5% + 1.6% + $0.30 for Founders. Whop's column uses 2.7% + $0.30 plus 0.5% billing on subscription charges (docs.whop.com/fees), with no monthly fee.

This is why creators report losing more than the headline 10%. A $5 Standard payment already costs 18.9% before anything else, and a fan paying in another currency adds 2.5%, which takes it to 21.4%. Threads on r/patreon describe total deductions of roughly 15% to 23%, which lines up with these published rates.

What you keep at $1,000, $10,000 and $50,000 a month

On a $5 tier, Patreon's Standard plan leaves you $811 of every $1,000. The same revenue on Whop leaves $908.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

How we calculated it: fees = payments × (price × percentage + $0.30), with 10% + 2.9% for Patreon's Standard plan and 2.7% + 0.5% billing for Whop. We assume a $5 monthly membership paid by US cards, no payout fees, no currency conversion, no taxes and no optional add-ons, rounded to whole dollars.

Because both platforms charge $0.30 per payment, the gap is 9.7% of revenue at any tier price, or $97 per $1,000. On legacy plans it's 7.7% (Pro) or 3.4% (Founders). Whop's fee page also lists Radar fraud screening at $0.07 per transaction, which would add $14 per $1,000 at a $5 price, and Whop Tax Service adds 2% if you want Whop to collect sales tax and VAT the way Patreon does.

For the full head-to-head, including payouts, discovery and the Apple fee, read Whop vs Patreon. Every Whop charge is listed in our Whop fees explainer.

The Patreon Apple fee on iOS memberships

Apple takes 30% of memberships and digital items bought in Patreon's iOS app by fans outside the US, and Patreon's platform fee still applies on top. Patreon doesn't charge its own processing fee on those payments.

Since November 2024, new memberships bought in the iOS app go through Apple's in-app purchase system. Patreon's help center gives the details:

• Apple's fee is 30% of the iOS price, falling to 15% after a member completes one year of continuous billing. In China it's 25% in the first year and 12% after.
• You can't opt out of Apple's fee for fans outside the US. Fans in the US can choose Patreon's mobile web checkout, which isn't subject to the fee.
• You choose how to handle it. Patreon can raise your iOS prices by roughly 43% so you net about the same, or you keep prices the same and absorb the fee.
• iOS earnings stay pending for up to 75 days, and annual memberships aren't sold in the iOS app.
• Patreon says it can't prompt or reroute existing iOS members on your behalf.

Here's what absorbing the fee looks like on a $10 membership: Apple keeps $3.00, Patreon's 10% still applies, and you're left with about $6, against $8.41 from a $10 US card payment on the web. Raising the iOS price to about $14.29 gets you back to roughly what a web patron leaves you. That 43% markup is why fans sometimes see a higher price in the iPhone app than on the web.

One more consequence: per Patreon, unpublishing your page cancels iOS in-app memberships without automatic refunds, while web and Android memberships are paused.

Currency conversion and international fans

Fans who pay in a currency other than your payout currency cost an extra 2.5%, and payouts in currencies other than US dollars carry higher processing rates.

Patreon calculates the 2.5% conversion fee on the full payment, including tax. Fans can pay in 16 currencies and creators can be paid in 14 of them (Patreon supported currencies). On a $10 payment from a fan paying in euros to a creator paid in dollars, the Standard plan takes $1.84, or 18.4% before tax.

If you're paid in a currency other than US dollars, processing on the Standard plan looks like this:

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

Payout fees and timing

Getting paid costs $0.25 per payout for US creators using a bank transfer, and money typically arrives 1 to 5 days after you start the payout.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

You can start a payout once every 24 hours, or turn on automatic payouts, which go out on the 5th of each month. Adding or changing a payout method puts a 5-day hold on your balance. Some earnings aren't available right away: shop sales on the web and Android stay pending for up to 7 days, iOS purchases for up to 75 days, and ticketed live events until 7 days after the event (Patreon, How payouts work).

Taxes on Patreon payments and fees

Patreon handles most sales tax on your fans' payments, but it may also charge tax on its fees to you.

Patreon describes itself as the merchant on fan payments. Where it has the obligation, it calculates, collects and remits VAT, GST and US sales tax, added on top of your price based on the fan's location (Patreon help center VAT and sales tax articles). Separately, Patreon collects VAT, GST or sales tax on its own platform fees where the law requires it, so depending on where you live, the 10% can cost a little more.

This page explains published fees. It isn't financial or tax advice.

How Patreon's fees have changed

Patreon hasn't raised the rate on legacy pages that stayed published. The changes since 2023 have landed on new pages, iOS purchases and one-time sales.

• October 4, 2023: the 5% Lite plan was retired, and Lite creators moved to Pro features at 5% (Wayback copy of Patreon's fees article, January 2025).
• November 2024: Apple's in-app purchase became required for new memberships bought in Patreon's iOS app, bringing Apple's 30% fee.
• Late May 2025: new sellers' one-time purchase fee changed from a flat 5% to their plan's rate. Patreon's help pages give both May 22 and May 26 as the date.
• August 4, 2025: new pages moved to a single 10% Standard plan with standardized processing, and Pro and Premium closed to new creators.
• April 2026: Apple's lower China rates (25% in year one, 12% after) applied to new iOS memberships.
• November 1, 2026: deadline for creators on per-creation or first-of-the-month billing to switch to subscription billing. Patreon will switch anyone who hasn't and pause their billing until they approve a price multiplier.

Fees you can reduce

A few choices on your side lower what Patreon keeps without changing platforms.

• Keep your page published. If you need a break, pause billing instead of unpublishing, or a legacy rate becomes 10%.
• Offer annual memberships on the web. One annual payment pays the $0.30 fixed fee once instead of twelve times, which saves $3.30 per patron per year.
• Price tiers above $5 where your audience allows it. The fixed $0.30 is 6% of a $5 payment but 1.2% of a $25 one.
• Match your payout currency to where most fans pay from, so fewer payments carry the 2.5% conversion fee.
• Decide on iOS pricing deliberately. Raising iOS prices by about 43% protects your earnings; absorbing Apple's fee costs you about 30% on each of those memberships.

How Patreon's fees compare

Of the platforms we track, only Whop and Ko-fi Gold cost less than half of Patreon's Standard plan on a $10 payment, while Substack and Gumroad cost more.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

All rows assume a US card payment. Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, Memberful and Substack use Stripe's standard 2.9% + $0.30 (plus Stripe's 0.7% recurring billing fee for Substack). Discord's row is web and desktop purchases: 6% processing, then 10% of the rest. Gumroad's is direct sales at 10% + $0.50 plus processing. For monthly totals at $1,000 to $50,000 and what each platform is best for, see our ranked Patreon alternatives, and for Gumroad specifically, Whop vs Gumroad.

Calculate your own Patreon fees

Your real cut depends on your tier prices, how many fans pay through Apple and how many pay in another currency. Enter yours in the fee calculator to see your monthly and yearly fees on Patreon next to Whop. If the numbers make the case for moving, our Patreon to Whop guide covers how patrons re-subscribe without being charged twice.

What changed

• October 3, 2026: First published. Patreon fees checked October 3, 2026.