Patreon vs Your Own Membership Site: The Fee Math Nobody Shows You
Written by people who pay for this software · Pricing and offer terms checked August 2026 · Destination links auto-checked 21 August 2026
Patreon takes a percentage of everything, forever. Your own membership site charges a flat monthly fee and takes nothing per sale. Those two shapes cross over at a specific, calculable revenue number — and knowing where that number is turns this from a matter of opinion into arithmetic.
This page does the maths honestly, including the part where Patreon wins. If you are earning a few hundred dollars a month, the percentage model is cheaper and you should stay. The interesting question is what happens after that.
What Patreon actually charges
Checked against Patreon's published creator-fee documentation in August 2026 — confirm your own rates in your creator dashboard, because legacy plans differ and terms change.
| Charge | Rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee (standard) | 10% of processed earnings | Applies to pages published after 4 August 2025 |
| Platform fee (legacy plans) | Roughly 5%–12% | Older Lite / Pro / Premium tiers; earlier creators keep their rate |
| Payment processing | ~2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (USD) | Charged per pledge, so many small pledges cost proportionally more |
| Micropledge processing | ~5% + $0.10 | Applies to pledges of $3 or less |
| Payout fee | Varies | Depends on payout method, currency and country |
| Currency conversion | ~2.5% | When the payment currency differs from your payout currency |
The fixed 30 cents is the part that gets missed. A percentage fee scales neatly; a flat per-transaction charge does not. On a $5 pledge, that 30 cents is 6% on its own — more than half the platform fee — which is why a page built on a large number of small pledges loses a materially bigger share of gross than one built on fewer, larger ones.
The fee table at three revenue levels
Three creators, three shapes of page, both models compared. On the owned side we use Membership.io's Grow plan at $119 a month with 0% platform fees, and model card processing at the same 2.9% + 30¢ so the comparison is like for like — you pay processing wherever you are.
| Gross per month | Patreon keeps you at | Own site keeps you at | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| $500 — 100 patrons at $5 | $405.50 (18.9% lost) | $336.50 | −$69 · Patreon wins |
| $2,000 — 200 patrons at $10 | $1,682.00 (15.9% lost) | $1,763.00 | +$81 · own site wins |
| $10,000 — 500 patrons at $20 | $8,560.00 (14.4% lost) | $9,441.00 | +$881 · own site wins |
The arithmetic behind row three, so you can check it: Patreon takes $1,000 as the platform fee, plus 500 × ($0.58 + $0.30) = $440 in processing, leaving $8,560. On your own site there is no platform fee, so it is the same $440 of processing plus a $119 subscription, leaving $9,441. Nearly $900 a month, which is $10,500 a year, for the same audience doing the same thing.
Where the crossover actually is
Crossover is simply the point where 10% of gross exceeds the monthly subscription: $119 ÷ 0.10 ≈ $1,190, and $33 ÷ 0.10 ≈ $330 at the promotional rate. Card processing is excluded because you pay it either way.
That is the whole fee argument, and it is worth stating plainly in both directions. Below about $1,200 a month, Patreon costs you less in cash. Above it, every additional dollar you earn on Patreon hands over another ten cents, forever, while the flat fee stays exactly where it is. At $5,000 a month the gap is around $380; at $10,000 it is around $880. The percentage never stops growing, which is the defining property of a revenue share and the reason it eventually becomes the most expensive line in a creator business.
What you do not own on Patreon
Fees are the measurable part of the argument. These are the parts that only matter once something goes wrong.
- The relationship runs through someone else's billing. You can export your member list — Patreon's Relationship Manager provides a CSV with emails, tiers and pledge data, and you should download it today regardless of your plans — but the subscriptions themselves live on Patreon's rails. Moving people means asking every one of them to re-subscribe somewhere else.
- Discovery is mostly a myth. Patreon is a billing and delivery layer for an audience you brought with you. Some creators do pick up incidental traffic from the platform, but it is not a channel you can plan around, and building a business on the assumption that a platform will find you customers is how people end up disappointed by every platform in turn.
- Platform policy is not your policy. Terms change, fee structures change — as they did for new creators in August 2025 — and content rules are enforced by somebody else's judgement. That risk is small on any given day and non-zero over years.
- Your brand is a page on their site. No custom domain, limited design control, and their navigation around your work.
What an owned membership adds
The upgrade is not only about keeping the 10%. Moving to a real membership platform changes what you can actually offer:
- An organised content library instead of a reverse-chronological post feed. Anything older than about two months on Patreon is effectively invisible.
- Search across your own back catalogue. This is the one that matters most for long-running pages. Membership.io runs AI search over every video and audio transcript, so a member can ask a question and land at the exact minute you answered it — which turns three hundred episodes from an archive into a product.
- Courses and structured paths alongside the ongoing feed, so new members have a starting point rather than a wall of posts.
- Your domain, your branding, your emails. The list is yours, in your system, exportable on your terms.
- Unlimited members and 0% transaction fees, so growth does not increase what you pay — the exact inverse of the model you are leaving.
What the move costs in the first quarter
Three months of the Membership.io Grow plan for one $99 payment — Grow lists at $119 a month, so three months at list is $357, a $258 saving. That covers the entire parallel-run and migration window described below, at an effective $33 a month, which moves the crossover point down to roughly $330 of monthly earnings for the duration. Grow includes three Member Hubs, 250 media hours, five team members, the AI Hub Builder, custom branding and domains. New customers only; renews at $119/month unless cancelled. Terms verified August 2026 — confirm at checkout. Full plan detail is on our pricing page.
The migration checklist
- Export everything first. Download the member CSV from your Relationship Manager — emails, tiers, pledge amounts, join dates. Do this before you tell anyone anything, and keep it as a backup even if you decide to stay.
- Build the new home and put real content in it. Migrate your best twenty pieces, not all four hundred. Patrons need to arrive somewhere that already feels worth the move; the rest of the archive can follow over the next few months.
- Announce with a reason and an incentive. Explain the move in your own words — fees, ownership, or simply that you want to build something better — and give existing patrons a rate they keep. They have been paying you for years; they should end up better off, not merely relocated.
- Run both in parallel for one month. Nobody should feel forced to act on your schedule. During that month, email everyone individually rather than relying on a public post: personal messages migrate people, announcements do not.
- Sunset deliberately. Set a date, say it three times, then stop posting on Patreon and leave a final post pointing at the new home. Do not delete the page — it stays as a signpost for anyone who arrives late.
The honest counter-argument
If you are earning a few hundred dollars a month, stay on Patreon. A percentage of a small number is a small number, and a flat $119 subscription against $400 of monthly income is a bad trade you would feel every month. Patreon's zero-fixed-cost model is genuinely well suited to small pages, and the migration effort would be better spent on making the thing people are paying for. Come back to this page when the 10% line starts to look like real money — somewhere north of $1,200 a month is when the argument turns, and past $5,000 it stops being close.
There is also a middle path worth naming: keep Patreon as the free or entry tier and build the paid inner circle on your own platform. That is the same two-tier structure we recommend for converting a free community to paid, and it lets you test an owned membership without dismantling anything that currently works.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Patreon really take?
Two cuts, not one. Patreon’s published creator fees put the standard platform fee at 10% of processed earnings for pages published after 4 August 2025, with legacy plans running roughly 5% to 12% for creators who were there earlier. On top of that sits payment processing — around 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction in USD, with a separate micropayment rate of about 5% plus 10 cents for pledges of $3 or less — plus payout fees and a currency-conversion charge where applicable. Checked against Patreon’s help centre in August 2026; confirm your own rate in your creator dashboard, since legacy plans differ. The practical effect is that many creators lose somewhere between 13% and 19% of gross, and small pledges are hit hardest because of the fixed 30 cents.
Can I export my Patreon members?
Yes. Patreon’s Relationship Manager lets you download your member list as a CSV, including email addresses, tier and pledge details, and you can filter by active, free or declined patrons before exporting. That is genuinely important, because it means leaving is a migration rather than a restart — you keep the ability to contact the people who were paying you. Do the export before you announce anything, and treat it as your backup regardless of whether you ever move.
Will patrons actually follow me off Patreon?
The ones who value what you make will; the ones who forgot they were subscribed will not. Expect to lose some of the second group, and understand that this is the same clean-out that happens whenever a free audience becomes a paying one. Give a real reason for the move, make the new thing visibly better rather than merely different, offer a transition incentive, and run both in parallel for a month so nobody has to act on your timetable.
What is the cheapest way to leave Patreon?
Move during a promotional window so the first quarter is close to free, run both platforms in parallel for exactly one month, and migrate people yourself rather than asking them to hunt for a link. The cheapest mistake to avoid is moving too early: below roughly $1,200 a month in earnings, Patreon’s percentage-only model genuinely costs you less in cash than a flat monthly subscription. The fee argument only becomes a real argument once you are past that point.
What do I lose by leaving Patreon?
The convenience of somebody else handling billing, tax handling in some jurisdictions, an app your patrons already have, and whatever small amount of incidental discovery the platform provides. Those are real, and for a small page they can outweigh the fees. What you gain is ownership: your own domain, your member emails in your own system, content that is properly organised and searchable, and a platform-policy risk that belongs to you rather than to somebody else’s terms of service.
Keep reading
- Free Community to Paid
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- Best Membership Site Platforms
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- Membership.io 3 Months for $99
Grow plan for one payment — the fully verified offer.
- Membership.io Pricing
Start, Grow, Scale and Enterprise — and the media-hour trap.
- Founding Member Launch
Sell 10 to 30 lifetime-discount places before you build anything.