Buy Me a Coffee leaves you more of every payment than Patreon does for anyone who published a Patreon page after August 4, 2025. On 100 US card payments of $10, Buy Me a Coffee memberships leave $881 and Patreon’s standard plan leaves $841. Patreon charges the higher fee for a fuller membership product, with free members, video hosting and ticketed livestreams.
How much do Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee take?
Patreon takes 10% from new creators and Buy Me a Coffee takes a flat 5%, both with card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per US payment, as of October 2026. Buy Me a Coffee adds two small charges that Patreon does not.
| Charge | Patreon, standard plan | Buy Me a Coffee |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | 10% | 5% |
| US card processing | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 through Stripe |
| Subscription payments | No extra charge listed | Extra 0.5% |
| Payout | $0.25 per US bank transfer | 0.5% payout processing |
| Foreign payments | Extra 2.5% when the fan pays in another currency | Extra 1% for payments from outside the US |
| Monthly fee | $0 | $0 |
What do you keep at $300, $1,000 and $5,000 a month?
The figures below are arithmetic on published fees, not reported earnings. They assume $10 payments on US cards and one Patreon bank payout a month.
| Monthly revenue | Patreon memberships | Buy Me a Coffee memberships | Buy Me a Coffee one-time support |
|---|---|---|---|
| $300 | $252 | $264 | $266 |
| $1,000 | $841 | $881 | $886 |
| $5,000 | $4,205 | $4,405 | $4,430 |
On Patreon’s standard plan there is no crossover. Buy Me a Coffee’s membership fees add up to 8.9% + $0.30 a payment against Patreon’s 12.9% + $0.30, so it costs 4% of revenue less at every level, about $40 per $1,000 and $200 at $5,000.
Small tiers keep the same order. By arithmetic on published fees, a $3 Patreon tier on the standard plan nets $2.31 and a $3 Buy Me a Coffee membership about $2.43. Buy Me a Coffee also has a setting called Cover credit card fee that adds the card fee to the supporter’s payment instead.
Legacy Patreon creators should run their own numbers. The Founders plan at 5%, open only to creators who joined before May 7, 2019 and never changed plan, costs about 1% of revenue less than Buy Me a Coffee memberships once you earn more than $25 a month. Legacy Pro at 8% still costs more than Buy Me a Coffee. Unpublishing a Patreon page, even briefly, moves it to the 10% plan.
iPhone sales cost more on Patreon. Apple takes 30% of purchases made in Patreon’s iOS app, and that money stays pending for up to 75 days, though US fans can choose web checkout. Our guide to creator platform fees explains how these charges stack.
Which pays out faster, Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee?
Patreon, slightly. You can withdraw your balance once every 24 hours, or take an automatic payout on the 5th of each month, and money usually lands in 1 to 5 days.
Patreon charges $0.25 per US bank transfer and needs $10 for PayPal. Adding or changing a payout method triggers a 5-day hold. Buy Me a Coffee pays into a Stripe account in your name, and you can request a payout from a $10 balance. Its first payout waits on a manual account review and typically takes 7 to 14 days, and later bank deposits usually take 3 to 5 business days. We score Patreon 7 and Buy Me a Coffee 6 on payouts.
Who owns the audience on Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee?
Buy Me a Coffee gives you a little more control, and Patreon helps a little more with growth. We score Buy Me a Coffee 6 and Patreon 5 for ownership, and Patreon 4 and Buy Me a Coffee 2 for discovery.
Patreon’s growth advantage is its login. Many fans already have a Patreon account and a saved card, so checkout is short, and free memberships need only a name and email. Patreon reports that 80% of paid members who cancel stay on as free members. Buy Me a Coffee goes the other way, with one-tap checkout by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Cash App and no fan account at all.
Ownership comes down to billing. Patreon lets you export paid and free member emails as a CSV, but saved cards stay with Patreon, and Memberful’s migration guide says it cannot move them out. Leaving means asking every member to subscribe again. Buy Me a Coffee pays into a Stripe account in your name, says it never emails your supporters and lets you export the list at any time.
What features actually differ?
Patreon is the deeper membership product, and Buy Me a Coffee is the simpler tip page that also runs memberships and a shop.
Patreon’s 10% includes:
- Free memberships as a funnel into paid tiers
- Video hosting, up to 100 hours of uploads a month once you have a paying fan
- Ticketed livestreams, with income held until 7 days after the event
- A shop for digital products, single posts and collections priced from $3 to $5,000
- Subscription billing with free trials, discounts, gifting and tier repricing, which every creator must switch to by November 1, 2026
Buy Me a Coffee’s 5% includes:
- One-time support at a price you set, $5 by default, with optional messages
- Monthly support, which turns a one-time coffee into a recurring payment without a tier
- Unlimited membership tiers with monthly or yearly billing, 7-day free trials, pauses, Discord roles and one lifetime tier
- A shop for digital downloads, physical goods and services with no listing fees
- Stream alerts for Twitch and YouTube, and crypto payments for US accounts pricing in dollars
Which should you choose?
Choose Buy Me a Coffee unless you need Patreon’s membership tools. It keeps about $40 more of every $1,000, charges no monthly fee and lets fans pay without an account. Our best membership platforms list ranks both, Ko-fi vs Buy Me a Coffee covers the cheapest tip option, and Patreon vs Ko-fi shows how Patreon fares against it.
- Pick Patreon if free members, video hosting and ticketed livestreams all matter and you want them on one page.
- Pick Patreon if your fans already have Patreon logins and saved cards.
- Pick Patreon if you are on the legacy Founders plan at 5%, which costs less than Buy Me a Coffee.
- Pick Patreon if you already have paying members there, because moving means every one of them subscribes again.
- Pick Buy Me a Coffee if you want to keep about $40 more of every $1,000 in memberships.
- Pick Buy Me a Coffee if most of your income is one-off support from fans who will not make an account.
- Pick Buy Me a Coffee if you want memberships, monthly support and a shop under one flat 5% fee.