Fee vs similar platforms
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
Each dot is one platform that takes a percentage of what you earn, placed at the middle of its published fee range. Buy Me a Coffee is the large blue dot; the dashed line is the median. Further left means more of each payment reaches you. Switch between similar platforms and every platform in the directory, or pick another platform to overlay it.
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% |