How Much Does Patreon Take? Fees per Member in 2026

Patreon takes 10% of every payment on its standard plan, and processing adds 2.9% + $0.30 for a US card, so the total cut is about 94 cents (19%) on a $5 member and $3.52 (14%) on a $25 member. Payout, currency and Apple fees can take more on top. That is why a $5 tier pays out well under the $4.50 the headline 10% suggests.

Below is every fee Patreon lists for a new creator, run through a script at $3, $5, $10 and $25 for each way a fan can pay, then lined up against YouTube memberships, Payhip and Kit.

This is not licensed tax or financial advice. Fees change; every rate here was read on Patreon’s and the other vendors’ own pages on October 5, 2026, and Patreon’s were re-checked on October 19, 2026, and the IRS rules are on irs.gov. How Patreon income is taxed, with the rest of a creator’s forms and deadlines, is collected in the creator tax guide.

Every fee Patreon charges a new creator

Any creator page that went live after August 4, 2025 sits on Patreon’s standard plan, which carries a 10% platform fee. Patreon’s pricing page says the same, and adds that processing, currency conversion, payout fees and taxes sit on top. There’s no monthly charge; you pay nothing until a fan pays you.

Here is each line in the order the money moves, as of October 2026, for a creator paid in US dollars.

Two details in that table get missed often.

First, there is no small-payment discount on the standard plan. Patreon’s fee page lists a micropayment rate of 5% + $0.10 for payments of $3 or less, but only under legacy plans; standard-plan creators pay 2.9% + $0.30 on everything. Several fee calculators still apply the old rate to new creators, which flatters a $3 tier by about 14 cents a member.

Second, the platform fee and the other fees use different bases. The 10% is calculated without sales tax, while processing and the currency fee are both taken on the full payment including tax. A fan in a country that adds VAT costs you a little more in processing and conversion than the sticker price suggests.

On a small tier, the processing line is the one to watch. On a $3 charge, the fixed 30 cents alone costs as much as the entire 10% platform fee.

Legacy plans and the November 1 date

Pages that have stayed published since on or before August 4, 2025 keep their old rate: Founders at 5%, Pro at 8%, Pro + Merch at 11%. Unpublish the page and republish it later, and it moves to the standard 10%. Founders pages also get their own processing rate of 1.6% + $0.30 on cards.

The date in the headlines is about billing, not the fee. Patreon says every creator still on legacy billing must switch to subscription billing by November 1, 2026. Nothing on Patreon’s fee pages says legacy platform rates end on that date. Creators who haven’t switched by then are moved automatically, and Patreon’s help page, updated October 8, 2026, says billing pauses until you log in and set a new price multiplier or update your prices.

Does it cost money to start a Patreon?

No. Patreon’s pricing page says starting a Patreon is free and that you only pay once you start earning. There is no monthly subscription and no setup charge, and a page with no paying members costs nothing.

Everything you pay comes out of fan payments as they arrive: the 10% platform fee and processing on each charge, then a payout fee when you withdraw. Patreon’s fee page adds that where the law requires it, Patreon charges VAT, GST or sales tax on its platform fee and lists it as a separate line, so in those places the 10% costs slightly more.

What you keep per member at $3, $5, $10 and $25

The table below comes from a short script that applies Patreon’s published standard-plan rates to each tier price, one monthly charge at a time, rounded to the cent. Rates were collected October 5, 2026.

How to read it. The “another currency” column adds the 2.5% conversion fee to a card payment and assumes no tax on top; with VAT added, it drops a few cents more. The PayPal payout column takes 1% off the US card figure, which is what PayPal’s payout fee works out to per member until your payout passes $2,000 and the $20 cap kicks in. The two absorbed iOS columns assume the 10% is taken on the full list price, because Patreon’s fee page says the platform fee still applies on iOS but doesn’t state the base. Treat those two as the cautious case.

The direct-deposit fee barely registers. At $0.25 for a monthly payout, it costs each member about a cent at 20 members and a tenth of a cent at 200.

The pattern that matters is the left column. A $3 tier keeps 77 cents on the dollar and a $25 tier keeps 86. If you’re on the standard plan, start your lowest paid tier at $5, not $3, because the fixed 30 cents is the reason the bottom row looks so bad.

Annual billing

The standard plan includes annual memberships. Because processing is charged per payment, one annual charge pays the 30 cents once instead of twelve times. Run through the same script at the same price, an annual member keeps between $3.24 and $3.34 more per year than a monthly member at every tier from $3 to $25. Whether that’s worth an annual discount is your call; the fee saving alone won’t fund much more than a few percent off.

The iPhone app

Apple’s fee only applies to new memberships bought inside the Patreon iOS app after November 4, 2024; existing members weren’t affected. By default, Patreon raises the iOS price by roughly 43% (1 divided by 0.7) so that, after Apple’s cut, you earn at least as much as on a web purchase. Patreon doesn’t add its own processing fee on iOS purchases; the platform fee still applies.

You can switch the default off and keep one price on every platform. Then Apple’s fee comes out of your share, which is where the $3.00 on a $5 tier comes from. Apple’s rate falls to 15% once a member has a year of continuous billing.

Two more details from Patreon’s FAQ. iOS purchases can sit as pending in your balance for up to 75 days while Apple settles them. And US fans can choose Patreon’s mobile web checkout instead, which isn’t subject to Apple’s fee.

Keep the default unless your fans complain about the iPhone price. Absorbing a 30% cut to keep one price is the most expensive choice in the table.

Patreon vs YouTube memberships, Payhip and Kit

The same script, pointed at three other ways to sell a monthly membership. Each row uses that vendor’s own published rate as of October 2026, a US card buyer, and Stripe’s standard 2.9% + $0.30 where the vendor sends you to Stripe for processing.

A few notes on the rows. YouTube pays 70% of net revenue on memberships and leaves sales tax out of the split, but its help page doesn’t itemize what else comes out before “net,” so the YouTube figures are a ceiling. Payhip lists 5%, 2% and 0% on its Free, Plus and Pro plans, includes memberships on all three, and says Stripe and PayPal charge their usual rates on top. Stripe adds 1.5% for international cards, which applies to the Payhip rows but not to Kit, whose fee is all-in by its own description. Kit lists the same 3.5% + 30 cents on its Free, Creator and Pro plans.

The break-even math from the same rates: Payhip Plus beats Payhip Free once memberships pass about $967 a month, and Payhip Pro beats Plus at $3,500 a month. Below the first line, Payhip’s free plan is the cheaper Payhip.

On fees alone, Patreon loses to everything except YouTube. That isn’t the whole decision. Patreon gives fans an app, a checkout many of them already have a saved card in, and a page they recognize. Payhip and Kit give you the customer’s email and a smaller cut, and you do the work of bringing people to the checkout.

YouTube memberships sit in a different spot. They open earlier than ad revenue: 500 subscribers, three qualified uploads in the last 90 days, and either 3,000 qualified long-form watch hours in a year or 3 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days. And they keep the fan inside the app they’re already using.

That last point carries more weight than the 70% suggests. I grew a YouTube channel past 130,000 subscribers as a one-person operation, and the view I came away with is that every extra step between a viewer and an action loses part of the audience. Sending a viewer from a video to a separate site to sign up is one of those steps. A fee table can’t show that cost; your own conversion numbers will.

So the choice I’d make: if most of your audience watches you on YouTube and you qualify, start with channel memberships. If you already own an email list, run the numbers on Payhip or Kit with our digital product fee calculator. Pick Patreon when the fans you want are people who already use Patreon. For how YouTube’s other income lines work, see YouTube RPM by niche, and for the processor side of an independent checkout, Stripe vs PayPal for digital products.

Taxes: the 1099-K shows gross, not what you kept

For the 2025 tax year, Patreon sends a Form 1099-K to US creators with more than $20,000 in earnings. Some states set a lower line: $2,500 in Arkansas, $1,000 in Illinois, $600 in New Jersey, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia and Vermont, and any earnings at all in Oregon. The federal line for payment platforms is gross payments over $20,000 and more than 200 transactions, which the One, Big, Beautiful Bill reinstated retroactively.

The number on the form is gross: Patreon reports earnings before fees and refunds. The IRS says the same about every 1099-K and adds that fees and refunds aren’t taxable income, so you can deduct them from the gross amount on Schedule C.

That makes the per-member table above a tax document too. On a $5 tier, about 94 cents of every charge is a deductible fee that will still appear in the 1099-K total. Patreon’s Earnings dashboard has a Payment Fees column, and the Payouts documents tab lets you download a monthly earnings breakdown. Save those at year end. The 1099-NEC vs 1099-K guide covers how to report the form without counting income twice.

You still owe tax on Patreon income below the threshold. No form doesn’t mean no income.

Pricing tiers once you know the fees

Fees should set your floor, not your price. With the standard plan, the bottom paid tier loses the largest share to fixed costs, and the share you keep on a US card only crosses 80% at about $4.23. Five dollars is the first round price above that line. Past that point, price on what the tier delivers; our guide to digital product pricing works through how to anchor tiers.

Before you set or change a tier this week, download last month’s earnings breakdown from the Payouts documents tab and compare the fee on each charge with the left column of the table above. If your $3 tier is losing more than 23% to fees, that is your case for making $5 the entry price.