Patreon's platform fee is 10%. That is the number everyone quotes and it is not what leaves your account. Once you add payment processing, currency conversion and the payout fee, a US creator earning $1,000 a month keeps somewhere between $770 and $865. This page prints the arithmetic, row by row, on Patreon's own published rates.
Last updated July 2026
Arguing about 10% is worth doing after people are paying you. Getting them to pay is our job. Free, confidential application, a reply within 24 hours, and your login and payouts stay yours.
Patreon takes 10% as a platform fee on its standard plan, but a US creator earning $1,000 a month actually keeps roughly $770 to $865 after every fee is settled. The gap is payment processing (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction on US cards), a 2.5% currency conversion fee where it applies, and a $0.25 payout fee. Patreon publishes all of it: the pricing page says you pay "10% of the income you earn on Patreon. Plus payment processing, currency conversion, and payout fees, and applicable taxes."
The thing that moves your take-home number is not Patreon's 10%. It is your tier price. The 10% is identical whether you charge $3 or $50. The $0.30 fixed processing fee is not, and it lands on every single transaction. That one detail is why 333 patrons at $3 and 100 patrons at $10 produce wildly different bank balances on the same revenue. If you are still deciding where to build, start with OnlyFans vs Patreon.
Competing pages quote the first layer and stop. There are four, and Patreon publishes every one of them.
| Fee layer | Published rate | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | 10% | The standard plan, and the only plan open to new creators. Patreon publishes: "10% of the income you earn on Patreon. Plus payment processing, currency conversion, and payout fees, and applicable taxes." Any page published after August 4, 2025 is on this rate. |
| Payment processing | 2.9% + $0.30 | Card and Apple Pay, and PayPal or Venmo from a US fan. Non-US PayPal and Venmo run 3.9% + $0.30. On the standard plan this rate applies to every payment regardless of size, so there is no micropayment discount for new creators. |
| Currency conversion | 2.5% | Patreon publishes: "A 2.5% currency conversion fee applies to any payment made in a currency different from your payout currency." If your audience is all US and you are paid in USD, this layer is zero. |
| Payout fee | $0.25 | Direct deposit via Stripe costs $0.25 per payout for US creators. A PayPal payout instead costs 1% of the payout, minimum $0.25, capped at $20, with a $10 minimum payout. Payoneer is not supported for US creators. |
The old Lite, Pro and Premium tiers are gone for anyone starting today. Publish a page now and you are on the standard 10% plan. Patreon dates the change to August 4, 2025.
Patreon publishes that the platform fee is calculated on the payment amount excluding sales tax, while the processing fee is calculated including tax. Small, but it means the two fees are not levied on the same base.
Withdraw manually at any time, or leave auto-withdrawal on the 5th of each month. Patreon says money typically arrives in one to five days, with a five-day hold whenever you add or change a payout method.
Patreon's own fee page says one-time purchases carry a platform fee of "Between 5% and 12% of successfully processed sales." That 12% appears nowhere in its plan table. We are not printing 12% as a live rate, because Patreon does not either. Read it as an inconsistency, not a hidden charge.
The minimum payout for US Stripe direct deposit. Patreon publishes a $10 minimum for PayPal and $25 for Payoneer, and nothing for direct deposit. We will not guess.
If you and your audience are both in the US and you are paid in USD, the 2.5% conversion layer is zero for you. Processing never is. That is why it deserves your attention first.
Standard 10% plan. USD payout. US fans paying by card at 2.9% + $0.30. One Stripe direct deposit at $0.25. No currency conversion. Same $1,000 of gross in every row.
Nothing changes across these rows except the price of your tier and, therefore, the number of transactions Patreon has to process to collect the same $1,000. Read the last column. Then read the first column again, because the first column is the only thing you control here.
| Your tier x members | Gross | Platform fee 10% | Processing | Payout | Net to you | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $3 x 333 members | $999.00 | $99.90 | $128.87 | $0.25 | $769.98 | 77.1% |
| $5 x 200 members | $1,000.00 | $100.00 | $89.00 | $0.25 | $810.75 | 81.1% |
| $10 x 100 members | $1,000.00 | $100.00 | $59.00 | $0.25 | $840.75 | 84.1% |
| $25 x 40 members | $1,000.00 | $100.00 | $41.00 | $0.25 | $858.75 | 85.9% |
| $50 x 20 members | $1,000.00 | $100.00 | $35.00 | $0.25 | $864.75 | 86.5% |
There is the answer, printed plainly: a new US creator earning $1,000 a month on Patreon keeps roughly $770 to $865, and the thing that moves that number is your tier price, not Patreon's 10%. The platform fee is a flat $100 in four of the five rows. It is the processing column that swings from $35 to $128.87, and it swings because of a fixed $0.30 that has nothing to do with how much money you made.
Same math, different settings. These are all the same $1,000, run through the same published rates with one variable changed each time.
| Scenario on $1,000 gross | Net to you | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline: $10 x 100, US card, ACH payout | $840.75 | 84.1% |
| Legacy Pro plan (8% platform fee), $10 x 100 | $860.75 | 86.1% |
| PayPal payout instead of direct deposit, $10 x 100 | $832.59 | 83.3% |
| All fans on non-US PayPal or Venmo (3.9% + $0.30), $10 x 100 | $830.75 | 83.1% |
| All fans paying in a foreign currency (+2.5%), $10 x 100 | $815.75 | 81.6% |
Look at what the variables are worth. A grandfathered 8% plan buys you $20 a month over the standard plan. An international audience paying in their own currency costs you $25 a month. Choosing PayPal over direct deposit for your payout costs about $8. Every one of these is smaller than the $70.77 you lose by pricing your entry tier at $3 instead of $10. Fee optimisation on Patreon is mostly pricing, and pricing is free to fix.
The percentage fees scale with your revenue. The fixed fee does not. It scales with your number of patrons, which is a completely different thing.
Take the two rows in the middle of that table. 333 patrons at $3 gross you $999. 100 patrons at $10 gross you $1,000. Functionally the same business, on paper. Now count the transactions. Patreon has to process 333 payments in the first case and 100 in the second, and it pays a fixed $0.30 on each one. That is $99.90 in fixed fees against $30.00 in fixed fees, for the same money.
Net result: $769.98 versus $840.75. The $3 page hands over $70.77 more every month, roughly $849 a year, for identical revenue and three times the audience to keep happy. And the fixed fee is only half the injury. The percentage fee on a $3 payment is $0.087 in processing, so the $0.30 is over three times larger than the percentage it is bolted onto. On a $3 tier, the fixed fee is effectively a 10% charge in its own right.
Worth knowing: legacy plans had a micropayment rate of 5% + $0.10 on tiers of $3 or less, which softened exactly this problem. Patreon does not offer that on the standard plan. New creators pay 2.9% + $0.30 on every payment regardless of size, so the cheap-tier penalty is strictly worse for anyone starting today than it was for creators who joined years ago.
The practical read: a $1 tier is close to a rounding error after fees, a $3 tier is a genuinely expensive way to collect money, and everything from $10 up behaves sanely. Price your entry tier at a number a real fan will actually pay, then put a second tier well above it. Creators who model their income before they set prices tend to land in a better place, which is the same discipline behind what OnlyFans models actually earn and how the OnlyFans payout system handles its own cut. If you want the tactical version of this section, we wrote it up separately in how to avoid Patreon fees.
This is the least-discussed line in Patreon's own documentation, and it is the one that can cost a long-running creator real money.
Three legacy plans exist and none of them accept new creators. Founders paid 5% and closed on May 7, 2019. Pro paid 8% and Pro + Merch paid 11%, and both closed after August 4, 2025. If you were on one of those before the door shut, you kept it. That is the good news.
Here is the part that deserves a warning label. Patreon publishes this: "If you unpublish your page or if Patreon unpublishes your page for any reason, you'll be subject to Patreon's new, standard 10% plan." Read that twice. It does not say you lose the legacy rate if you close your account. It says you lose it if your page is unpublished, by you or by them, for any reason at all.
So a creator on the 8% Pro plan who unpublishes for two days to rebuild their tiers comes back on 10%. A creator who gets unpublished during a policy review and reinstated a week later comes back on 10%. On a page grossing $5,000 a month, that is $100 a month, permanently, for an administrative decision that felt reversible at the time.
Patreon's own advice is short and worth following exactly: use the pause tool instead of unpublishing your creator page. Pausing stops billing without unpublishing, so your legacy plan survives it. If you are on 5%, 8% or 11% and you feel the urge to take your page down for a while, pause. Do not unpublish. This also raises the stakes on staying compliant with Patreon's content rules, which are stricter than most adult creators expect. We cover exactly where the line sits in what Patreon allows for NSFW creators, because an enforcement unpublish is not just a content problem, it is a permanent 2-point pay cut.
Nothing on this page hurts as much as a fan joining through the iPhone app.
Patreon publishes that Apple's in-app purchase system takes 30% on eligible purchases made inside the Patreon iOS app. This is Apple's cut, not Patreon's, and Patreon has no ability to waive it.
The platform fee does not disappear because Apple took its share first. Patreon publishes that its own fee still applies on top of the Apple cut.
Apple reduces its rate to 15% once a member has completed one year of continuous in-app billing. That helps your long-term patrons and does nothing for your new ones.
We are not printing an iOS take-home figure, because Patreon does not publish whether its 10% is levied on the gross payment or on what remains after Apple. Anyone showing you a precise iOS number is guessing.
Patreon publishes that US fans can check out through mobile web instead of the iOS app. Same page, same tier, no Apple layer. Send your link, not your app listing.
Every share, bio and post should point at your Patreon URL. A fan who taps that in a browser costs you the fees on this page. A fan who searches the App Store costs you a third before Patreon has touched it.
Put it in perspective. Moving your entry tier from $3 to $10 is worth about $71 a month on $1,000 of revenue. Keeping your fans off iOS in-app checkout is worth a multiple of that on the same money. Neither of these is a Patreon problem. Both are yours to fix, and both are free.
Direct answers first. Published figures only. Where Patreon does not publish a number, we say so.
No. 10% is only the platform fee. Patreon itself publishes that the 10% comes "plus payment processing, currency conversion, and payout fees, and applicable taxes." Stack all four layers and a US creator on the standard plan keeps roughly 77% to 86% of gross, depending almost entirely on their tier price.
On the standard plan, about $1.59 of a $10 US card payment: $1.00 platform fee plus $0.59 processing (2.9% + $0.30). You keep roughly $8.41 before the payout fee, which is $0.25 per direct deposit spread across your whole month, not per member.
No. Founders (5%) closed on May 7, 2019. Pro (8%) and Pro + Merch (11%) closed to new creators after August 4, 2025. Existing creators are grandfathered, but Patreon publishes that unpublishing your page moves you permanently to the standard 10% plan.
You cannot avoid the 10% platform fee, but you can shrink the rest. Raise tier prices so the fixed $0.30 per transaction lands on fewer, bigger payments. Get paid in your own currency to skip the 2.5% conversion fee. Ask US fans to join on mobile web instead of the iOS app to avoid Apple's 30% cut.
It depends on your tier price, not on Patreon. At $50 tiers you keep 86.5% of $1,000. At $3 tiers you keep 77.1% of the same money, because the fixed $0.30 per transaction hits 333 payments instead of 20. Patreon is cheap for high-ticket pages and expensive for cheap ones.
Patreon takes 10% as a platform fee on the standard plan, plus payment processing (2.9% + $0.30 for US cards), a 2.5% currency conversion fee where it applies, and a payout fee ($0.25 for US direct deposit). In practice that is 13.5% to 23% of gross for a US creator.
One more that nobody asks: what does the fee actually cost you after tax? Patreon fees are a business expense, and in the US a creator is an independent contractor with no withholding, so the fees you paid and the self-employment tax you owe are two separate calculations that both come out of the same money. Our guide to creator taxes and what you can deduct covers the mechanics, and they apply to Patreon income exactly as they do to subscription income anywhere else.
The difference between a 77% and an 86% take-home rate is about $95 a month. The difference between 30 patrons and 300 is not close to that. Guess which one we work on.
A page with no traffic has no fee problem, it has a demand problem. We promote where paying fans already gather, on Reddit, X, TikTok and Instagram, and we send that traffic to your page.
Everything on this page says the same thing: your tier price decides your take-home rate. We set entry, mid and top tiers at numbers that convert in your niche instead of the $3 default everyone copies.
Most upgrades happen in conversation, not on a pricing page. Our chatters answer around the clock, handle upsells and turn free followers into paying members.
Patreon is right for some creators and wrong for others, especially in adult. We tell you which, and we run the page you actually pick.
We work through team access, never your primary password. The account, the content and the payout method stay in your name.
We watermark, geo-block where you ask, and file DMCA takedowns when something leaks, so a bigger audience never means losing control of your work.
Not sure Patreon is the right home? See Patreon alternatives for adult content and the wider list of OnlyFans alternatives.
Patreon's cut is fixed at 10% and there is no negotiating it. Your member count, your tier prices and your promotion are all entirely negotiable, and that is where the money is. Send a free, confidential application and we promote, price and message for you. A reply within 24 hours, no fees to apply, and your login and payouts stay yours.
Apply nowWhat you can legitimately cut, what you cannot, and the pricing changes that move your take-home rate the most.
ComparisonTwo membership models, two very different rulebooks. Fees, content policy, audience and who each one actually suits.
PolicyWhat adult creators can and cannot post on Patreon, and why an enforcement action costs more than you think.
GuideWhere adult creators go when Patreon's policy does not fit, and what each option takes from you.
Getting paidThe cut, the holds, the minimums and the timing on the biggest subscription platform in the category.
MoneySelf-employment tax, quarterly payments and the deductions creators routinely forget to claim.
Captions, bios, DM scripts, tip menus, pricing and more, generated in seconds. No card needed.