Platforms change pricing and features — verify on the provider’s official pages.
The best Patreon alternative depends on the job: Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee for tips, Substack for paid newsletters, Gumroad for digital products, Beacons for an all-in-one storefront, and Brillay for one-time paid requests. Choose Patreon itself when recurring membership and community are the features you actually need. No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate.
Platforms change pricing and features, so confirm current terms on each provider’s official pages before deciding. Brillay’s current terms are available on Brillay’s pricing page.
Why might a creator look for a Patreon alternative?
Creators look for a Patreon alternative when the thing they sell is not a monthly subscription. Patreon is built around recurring membership. If you only want one-off tips or paid requests, you may not want another monthly publishing commitment. A follower pays once for one question, one commission or one video, and nothing is owed afterwards — so the people who were never going to subscribe can still pay you, beside the Patreon you already run.
Patreon's help center defines the platform fee as “Between 5% and 12% of successfully processed sales + applicable taxes, depending on your platform plan” (Patreon, Creator fees overview). Patreon's help center states that “the standard 10% pricing plan + relevant taxes applies to any creator who publishes their Patreon page after August 4, 2025,” while pages published before that date may remain on legacy 5%, 8%, or 11% plans (Patreon, A standard platform fee for new creators effective after August 4, 2025). Patreon charges a separate flat payment-processing rate of “2.9% + $0.30 per commerce transaction” for creators who receive payments in USD (Patreon, How payments reach you). Patreon's own fee example for a $10 sale lists total Patreon fees of $1.59 — a $1.00 standard platform fee plus $0.59 in payment processing, an effective 15.9% cut before taxes.
That model can work well for creators who publish consistently and can provide recurring value. An alternative may fit better when a creator:
- Does not publish often enough to justify monthly billing.
- Wants followers to pay once for a tip, product, answer, or shoutout.
- Primarily sells newsletters, downloads, courses, or Custom Work.
- Wants a different fee structure or fewer recurring obligations.
- Does not need Patreon's membership and community features.
None of the alternatives below is an exact replacement for Patreon's complete membership-and-community product. Each replaces a different underlying function, such as collecting tips, selling products, publishing paid newsletters, or offering one-time follower interactions.
How do Patreon and its six alternatives compare?
Published platform fees across these seven tools run from 0% to 30%: Ko-fi charges 0% on one-time tips for free accounts, Buy Me a Coffee 5%, Beacons 9% on its free tier, Patreon 10% on its standard plan, Substack 10% of subscription revenue, Brillay 8% when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals, and Gumroad 10% + $0.50 on direct sales or 30% through Discover.
Every fee below is quoted from the platform's own pricing page or help center; payment-processing charges are listed separately because most of these platforms bill them on top of the platform fee.
| Tool | Best for | Monthly cost | Platform fee | Follower minimum | Payouts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patreon | Recurring membership and built-in community | $0/month, no monthly fee | 10% of earnings on the standard plan for any page published after August 4, 2025; legacy pages may remain on 5%, 8%, or 11% plans, and Patreon's help center describes the overall range as “Between 5% and 12% of successfully processed sales” | No minimum stated in the cited official pricing or fee documentation | In-platform payout to bank or PayPal; a flat 2.9% + $0.30 payment-processing fee per USD transaction applies in addition to the platform fee (how payments reach you) |
| Brillay | One-time paid follower requests such as Q&A, Personalized Videos, and tips | $0/month, no monthly fee | 8% when a follower pays for work; 5% on tips and goals | No follower minimum | Connect your bank through Stripe, and Stripe pays you out there (how it works) |
| Ko-fi | A tip jar with optional shop, commission, and membership tools | $0/month for a free account; Gold is $12/month | Ko-fi's help center states: “Ko-fi Free - Pay 0% on one-time tips. A flat 5% service fee applies to anything else, such as shop items, memberships, monthly tips, and commissions.” Ko-fi Gold at $12/month removes service fees entirely (Does Ko-fi take a fee?) | No minimum stated in the cited official pricing or fee documentation | Payments go to the creator’s connected PayPal or Stripe account (official pricing) |
| Buy Me a Coffee | Simple one-click support, a shop, and optional memberships | Free; $0/month | Buy Me a Coffee's help center states it applies “a 5% platform fee per transaction, which means you get to keep 95% of your earnings,” with Stripe processing of 2.9% + $0.30, 0.5% payout processing, 1% on international payments, and 0.5% on subscriptions charged separately (How to calculate charges on your payment) | No minimum stated in the cited official help documentation | Stripe payout to the creator’s bank (charge calculation) |
| Substack | Paid newsletter subscriptions | Free to start; $0/month until paid subscriptions are enabled | Substack's support center lists “10% of each transaction” to Substack, plus “a credit card fee (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee) and a Billing fee for recurring subscriptions (0.7%)” (How much does Substack cost?) | No minimum stated in the cited official help documentation | Stripe payout to the creator’s bank (Substack cost explainer) |
| Gumroad | Selling digital products or courses repeatedly | Free; $0/month | 10% + $0.50 per direct transaction through the creator’s link; 30% for sales through Gumroad Discover (official pricing). Gumroad's help center states this fee “does not include: Credit card processing (2.9% + $0.30)” (Gumroad's fees) | No minimum stated on the cited official pricing page | Direct deposit or PayPal, depending on country (official pricing) |
| Beacons | An all-in-one storefront, media kit, link-in-bio, and paid requests | Free plan through $90/month across four tiers | Beacons' help center states: “The 9% fee applies to users on the free plan or the $10/month Creator plan. If you're on the $30/month Creator Plus plan or the $90/month Creator Max plan, there are no transaction fees” (Beacons help center) | No minimum stated on the cited official pricing page | Payments go to the creator’s connected PayPal or Stripe account |
Who is Brillay best for?
If you are unsure whether followers will pay, start with one clear choice: a $25 Personalized Video for a birthday, or an optional $3 Tip to support your work. Each is one purchase that ends the moment it is made, so a follower who would never commit to a monthly pledge can still pay you today.
Typical Brillay requests include:
- Paid Questions let a follower pay upfront to ask one private question, and you send one written reply on your own time — no live call or scheduling.
- A Personalized Video: one custom video at a fixed price and delivery time you set.
- Custom Work for a small custom service.
- A one-time Tip.
- Goals to help fund a particular project.
- Brand Collaboration Inquiries for brands that want to work with you.
One Brillay link can hold Personalized Videos, Tips, and the creator's other offers, including Paid Questions, Custom Work, Goals, and Brand Collaboration Inquiries. Brillay supports creator payouts in 41 countries. Stripe processing fees are deducted separately from creator earnings. Brillay sets no follower minimum, so a creator with 40 followers and a creator with 400,000 can open the same paid-request page. You connect your bank through Stripe, and Stripe pays you out to that bank account.
Brillay is not strictly cheaper than Patreon. Patreon's standard platform fee is 10% of processed sales against Brillay's 8% fee when a follower pays for work and 5% fee on tips and goals, making Brillay 2 to 5 percentage points lower than standard Patreon; against legacy Patreon plans at 5% or 8%, Brillay ranges from equal to 3 points higher for work and from equal to 3 points lower for tips and goals. The practical difference is how they make money: Patreon is built to retain recurring subscribers, while Brillay only makes money when you get paid for standalone interactions.
Consider two hypothetical ways to generate $100:
- Four $25 Brillay requests produce $100 in follower payments and an $8 Brillay platform fee at Brillay's published 8% work rate. Each follower pays once for one video, so you do not need to persuade them to renew next month.
- Twenty $5 Patreon memberships produce $100 only if all 20 supporters subscribe in the same month, and Patreon's standard 10% platform plan would take $10 of that before its 2.9% + $0.30 per-transaction processing fee. On twenty separate $5 transactions that processing fee adds roughly $8.90, so the all-in cut is closer to $18.90 of the $100.
The right choice depends on the offer. For a Personalized Video you publish one price and one delivery time, the follower pays upfront as a guest and can be declined if the brief does not suit you, so the whole job is settled before you record. A Tip is one-time support with nothing to deliver in return.
How do the other Patreon alternatives compare?
Each alternative replaces one function of Patreon rather than the whole product: Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee replace the tip jar at 0% and 5% platform fees, Substack replaces the paid newsletter at 10% of subscription revenue, Gumroad replaces product sales at 10% + $0.50 per direct sale, and Beacons replaces the storefront at 9% on its free tier.
Ko-fi is the cheapest listed option for one-off tips: Ko-fi's help center states that a Ko-fi Free account pays “0% on one-time tips” and “a flat 5% service fee applies to anything else, such as shop items, memberships, monthly tips, and commissions” (Does Ko-fi take a fee?). Ko-fi Gold costs $12/month and removes Ko-fi's service fees on those other payment types. Ko-fi supports shops, memberships, and creator-defined commissions; check its current official documentation to see whether its request flow covers paid Q&A or one-video Personalized Videos. For commissions, the dividing line is the inbox: Ko-fi has you agree the job with the buyer first, while a Brillay Custom Work order arrives with the brief submitted, the published boundaries and delivery window attached, and the payment made.
Buy Me a Coffee charges a 5% platform fee before its listed processing and payout charges, and its help center states the platform applies “a 5% platform fee per transaction, which means you get to keep 95% of your earnings” (How to calculate charges on your payment). Applying Buy Me a Coffee's published components to a $10 domestic payment — 5% platform, 2.9% + $0.30 Stripe processing, and 0.5% payout processing — gives $1.14 in total charges, or 11.4% of the payment (How to calculate charges on your payment). Buy Me a Coffee suits quick support payments and optional memberships; check its current official documentation if you also need followers to order a defined paid request.
Substack is the most direct alternative when the intended product is a recurring paid newsletter. Substack's support center lists the cost of a paid subscription as “10% of each transaction” to Substack plus “a credit card fee (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee) and a Billing fee for recurring subscriptions (0.7%)” (How much does Substack cost?). On a $10/month subscription those published components total $1.66, or 16.6%, leaving the writer $8.34 per subscriber per month. Substack is therefore specialized for writers and newsletter publishers rather than for creators selling Personalized Videos or individual answers.
Gumroad replaces the product-selling part of some Patreon businesses. Gumroad's pricing page lists “Direct sales: 10% + 50¢ per sale, $0 monthly” and “Discover marketplace sales: 30%”. Gumroad's help center adds that the direct-sale fee “does not include: Credit card processing (2.9% + $0.30)” or PayPal fees, so a $10 direct sale carries $1.50 in Gumroad fees plus $0.59 in card processing. Gumroad does not provide Patreon's equivalent membership-and-community experience. Brillay serves a different job: you publish a priced listing for what you will make and how fast, then create each order for the one follower who placed it rather than uploading one finished product for every buyer.
Beacons combines a storefront, media kit, link-in-bio, and paid requests. Beacons' help center states that “the 9% fee applies to users on the free plan or the $10/month Creator plan” and that “if you're on the $30/month Creator Plus plan or the $90/month Creator Max plan, there are no transaction fees” (Beacons help center and Beacons pricing). A creator selling $300/month on the Free plan therefore pays $27 in Beacons fees, while the $30/month Creator Plus plan costs $30 in software but $0 in transaction fees at that volume. It is broader than Patreon and may suit creators who want products and paid requests on the same page — creators weighing that storefront model against other options can see how Beacons compares to its own alternatives.
Is there a truly free Patreon alternative?
Ko-fi comes closest to genuinely free for pure one-off tips, because a Ko-fi Free account pays a 0% platform fee on one-time tips while every other payment type carries a flat 5% service fee. No platform on this list is free end to end: payment processors still take a cut of each transaction on all seven.
Ko-fi's help center states that a Ko-fi Free account pays “0% on one-time tips” and a flat 5% service fee on shop items, memberships, monthly tips, and commissions (Does Ko-fi take a fee?).
“Free” on the other platforms means free to open and maintain a page, not free to process paid transactions:
- Brillay has no monthly fee but charges 8% when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals.
- Buy Me a Coffee has no monthly fee but charges 5% plus its listed processing and payout charges.
- Substack has no monthly fee but charges 10% plus processing and recurring-billing fees on paid subscriptions (cost explainer).
- Gumroad has no monthly fee but charges 10% + $0.50 on direct transactions (pricing).
- Beacons offers a free entry plan but also sells paid tiers costing up to $90/month (pricing).
Which Patreon alternative is cheapest?
Ko-fi is cheapest for one-off tips at a 0% platform fee on a Ko-fi Free account, and Buy Me a Coffee is cheapest among the general-purpose tools at 5%. Beyond that, the answer depends on transaction type and size: platform fees of 8% to 10% sit close together, and per-transaction processing dominates on small payments.
Ko-fi's 0% platform fee on one-time tips for a Ko-fi Free account is the lowest listed platform fee of the seven tools compared here (Does Ko-fi take a fee?). Buy Me a Coffee's 5% platform fee is half Patreon's standard 10% rate and 3 percentage points below Brillay's 8% work rate, while matching Brillay's 5% rate on tips and goals, though Buy Me a Coffee adds Stripe processing, 0.5% payout processing, and a 1% international charge on top of that 5% (How to calculate charges on your payment). Because processing is a fixed $0.30 plus 2.9% on most of these platforms, a $5 payment loses about 8.9% to processing alone while a $100 payment loses 3.2%.
Gumroad is not automatically cheaper than Patreon once both platforms' card-processing charges are counted. Gumroad's help center states that its 10% + $0.50 direct-sale fee “does not include: Credit card processing (2.9% + $0.30)”, and Patreon's help center lists the same 2.9% + $0.30 USD processing rate on top of its 10% standard platform fee. Applying both published formulas, a $10 sale costs $2.09 on Gumroad against $1.59 on Patreon, and a $100 sale costs $13.70 on Gumroad against $13.20 on Patreon:
| Transaction | Gumroad all-in fee (10% + $0.50 + 2.9% + $0.30) | Patreon all-in fee (10% + 2.9% + $0.30) |
|---|---|---|
| $10 | $2.09, or 20.9% | $1.59, or 15.9% |
| $100 | $13.70, or 13.7% | $13.20, or 13.2% |
At both transaction sizes Patreon's standard plan is $0.50 cheaper than Gumroad's direct-sale pricing, because Gumroad adds a flat $0.50 per sale that Patreon does not charge; Gumroad's advantage is that it sells a product once rather than requiring a renewed monthly pledge.
Brillay's 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work and 5% fee on tips and goals are separate from Stripe's payment-processing fee, the same way Patreon's 10% platform fee sits on top of its 2.9% + $0.30 processing rate.
Frequently asked questions
Do supporters need to subscribe to leave a Tip?
No. Tips sit outside any membership: the follower taps once, pays by card as a guest with no account to create, and that is the whole transaction — nothing renews and nothing is owed on either side.
How do I ask for Tips without sounding like I am begging?
Make Tips optional and connect them to a concrete reason, such as helping you keep writing, drawing, or publishing free work.
How much should I charge for a Personalized Video?
Set one fixed price based on the video you promise and the time it takes to record. For example, this comparison uses $25 for one birthday message.
What is the closest alternative to Patreon?
For recurring paid newsletters, Substack is the closest specialized alternative, charging 10% plus its listed processing and recurring-billing fees. Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee are closer for tips with optional memberships. For one-time paid interactions, see Brillay vs. Patreon.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Patreon?
Yes, for some transaction types. Ko-fi can charge 0% on one-off tips, and Buy Me a Coffee’s platform fee is 5% (Ko-fi fee explainer and Buy Me a Coffee charge calculation). However, neither is an exact replacement for Patreon's complete membership-and-community product, and payment-processing charges can change the final comparison.
Do creators need a minimum following to use these platforms?
Brillay explicitly has no follower minimum. Patreon, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, Substack, Gumroad, and Beacons list no follower or audience-size minimum in the official pricing and help pages cited in this comparison.
Can followers buy a Personalized Video or leave a Tip without creating an account?
Yes. A follower can enter their email and name, pay by card as a guest with no account needed, and buy a Personalized Video or leave a Tip.
Where can creators learn more?
For a direct comparison, see Brillay vs. Patreon. For a broader overview of creator business models and tools, see Best Creator Monetization Platforms in 2026.
Offer a Personalized Video or optional Tip to support your work, then point followers to a simple Brillay checkout. Create your free Brillay page