Fee distribution
At 5%, Buy Me a Coffee is cheaper than 56% of the 9 creator platforms that charge a percentage fee (median 10%).
What this shows
How common each fee level is: the bars count the platforms whose fee (middle of the published range) falls in each 2.5-point band. The blue bar holds Buy Me a Coffee. A tall bar left of it means many cheaper options; right of it, many dearer ones.
How it is calculated
Fees come from each platform's published pricing, as stored on its listing. We parse every percentage in the fee text with fee_parse(): a range such as "8–15%" or "from 33% down to 18%" becomes its lowest and highest number, and we plot the middle (for "8–15%", 11.5%). Platforms whose text says they charge nothing are "free" and are left out of this plot, as are flat or per-task fees, subscriptions and revenue shares ("you keep 70%"), because a percentage cut is not comparable with them. Tips paid on top by customers and GST/VAT mentions are ignored. "Cheaper than" counts peers whose middle fee is strictly higher.
Data table 10 rows
| Platform | Fee (middle of range) |
|---|---|
| Buy Me a Coffee (this platform) | 5% |
| Mighty Networks | 1.3% |
| Circle | 2.3% |
| Ko-fi | 2.5% |
| Memberful | 4.9% |
| Boosty | 10% |
| Gumroad | 10% |
| Substack | 10% |
| Patreon | 12.9% |
| Fanvue | 17.5% |