Brillay vs. Topmate

Topmate is built around booked, calendar-based sessions: a client picks a time slot and meets by video. Brillay is built around asynchronous paid requests: a follower pays upfront for a written answer, a personalized video, or a defined deliverable, with no calendar and no live call. Topmate charges 10% or 20%; Brillay charges 8% when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals. Nothing to apply for, nobody ranking you, and the answer is written instead of booked.

The full Brillay fee breakdown is on the pricing page.

Should I choose Brillay or Topmate?

Choose Topmate if clients want a 30- or 60-minute live call. Choose Brillay if followers want a written answer, a Personalized Video, or a fixed review without matching calendars. They pay upfront without an account; you set the price and delivery time, then complete the work later. Choose Brillay if what you sell is an answer or a deliverable that never requires both people to be awake at the same moment. Topmate schedules time; Brillay prices requests. If Topmate itself is not a fit for other reasons, a roundup of Topmate alternatives covers the wider field beyond just Brillay.

Topmate's own 1:1 meetings page says the platform is "Trusted by 300K+ creators" and publishes counters of 1M+ bookings and $10M+ earned by creators (Topmate 1:1 meetings). Topmate describes the product plainly on that same page:

"Set your rate, share one link, and get paid. Free Zoom Pro, calendar sync, and instant payouts — no subscription."

— Topmate, 1:1 Meeting Platform for Experts, Coaches & Consultants

On Brillay, a follower opens your page, chooses an offer, and pays by card as a guest before you start the work. For requests, they pay upfront and you deliver inside the window you set, and you can decline one that is not for you (how it works). Calendars get harder as an audience spreads out, and the United States and its territories alone contain 9 time zone boundaries according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Asynchronous requests fail in the opposite case: when a follower needs to talk something through in real time.

How do Brillay and Topmate compare side by side?

Both platforms help coaches charge for their work, but Topmate is for booked calls while Brillay is for answers, Personalized Videos, and defined work completed later. Topmate charges 10% or 20% depending on sales channel, while Brillay charges 8% for work and 5% on tips and goals. The table below compares Brillay product documentation with Topmate's official meetings and pricing pages, accessed September 9, 2026.

What does Topmate charge, and what does Brillay charge?

As of September 9, 2026, Topmate's pricing page lists a 10% fee for sales through your own profile or link and 20% when a new customer buys through its marketplace. Neither platform charges a monthly subscription to join.

Topmate states its model at the top of its pricing page:

"We charge a small commission on your earnings. No CC required. No upfront fees. No recurring charges."

— Topmate pricing page

The fee comparison therefore depends entirely on where the buyer comes from. When a creator drives the traffic — bio link, newsletter, LinkedIn post — Brillay's 8% work rate is two points cheaper than Topmate's 10%, and tips and goals on Brillay are charged 5%. When a new customer arrives through Topmate's marketplace, that transaction is charged at 20%, which is twelve points above Brillay's flat rate.

How much would I keep from each sale?

On a $50 sale, an illustrative net is $44.25 on Brillay, $43.25 through a Topmate own-link sale, and $38.25 through a Topmate marketplace sale, after platform fees and assumed United States card processing. The gap is $1.00 in Brillay's favor on your own traffic and $6.00 in Brillay's favor on marketplace traffic.

The estimates apply Brillay's 8% work fee (its fee on tips and goals is 5%) and Topmate's 10% own-link and 20% marketplace rates. Every column also subtracts card processing at the rate Stripe publishes for the United States: 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction, with an additional 1.5% for international cards (Stripe pricing).

These examples show what you might earn before any payout fees, currency conversion, refunds, disputes, or taxes; your actual earnings may differ. Actual processing cost varies by country, card type, and currency, because Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ is United States online-card pricing rather than a universal rate.

Does Topmate require a calendar and live video calls?

Topmate's flagship product does depend on a calendar. The Topmate meetings page describes automated scheduling where "clients book themselves," Google Calendar syncing "in one click," and free Zoom Pro with no 40-minute cap. Live conversation is a genuine strength for anyone whose value is delivered by talking.

That Zoom benefit is a real one: Zoom limits almost all meetings scheduled and hosted by Basic (free) users to 40 minutes, on both free and paid accounts (Zoom Support, meeting duration limits).

Topmate is not calls-only, though, and a fair comparison has to say so. Topmate's Priority DM product lets an expert put a price on incoming messages, and Topmate's own help documentation says the feature lets you "assign a price to DMs which can help you to prioritize and allocate your attention towards them".

The difference is emphasis. On Topmate, paid messaging sits alongside a scheduling-first product. On Brillay, the asynchronous request is the whole product, and there is no scheduling layer to configure or ignore.

Can I get paid for advice without booking a call?

Yes. With Paid Questions, a client pays your set price upfront to ask one private question, and you reply in writing by the reply time you set — nothing to book, nothing held on either calendar. If you are not sure clients will pay for advice, test a clearly scoped Paid Question around $20–$35 before offering a higher-priced review.

For a résumé review, training-log review, deck critique, or screenshot audit, use Custom Work: name the fixed deliverable, set one price and delivery time, and state what the client gets, what you need from them, and what is not included. The follower can attach up to five files, 50 MB each, and the creator sends one delivery containing a note plus files and/or links within the set delivery time. That one package is the order; a materially different request is a new order. That one-delivery boundary is the scope-creep guardrail: endless changes are not bundled into the original Custom Work order. One Brillay link can show Paid Questions, Personalized Videos, Custom Work, Tips, Goals, and Brand Collaboration Inquiries, so followers can choose the right offer from one page.

For creators weighing formats rather than platforms, paid Q&A versus coaching calls and async custom work versus live calls go deeper.

Which platform fits an async coaching business better?

Brillay fits when clients pay for a written answer, a document review, or a Personalized Video you record later; Topmate fits when clients want to talk with you live. Advisory time is priced high enough that the format choice moves real money, so a coach should pick deliberately rather than defaulting to whichever tool they signed up for first.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual wage of $101,860 for management analysts in May 2025, roughly double the $50,980 median for all occupations in the same month. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also counts 1,077,100 management-analyst jobs in 2025 and projects the occupation to grow 10 percent from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all occupations (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).

An hour of professional advice is expensive to give away and awkward to schedule for a client three time zones away. Remote delivery is now ordinary rather than exceptional: 35 percent of employed people in the United States did some or all of their work at home on days they worked in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey. A written answer priced at $25, or a document review priced at $150, is easier to sell across those distances and does not consume a calendar block.

Brillay has no follower minimum and nothing to apply for, so you can test async offers with a small audience. Creators can receive payouts in 41 supported countries, which matters if your coaching business is cross-border. For creators comparing more than these two tools, the best platform to sell coaching packages covers the wider set.

What are the honest tradeoffs between the two?

Topmate's tradeoff is that its strengths arrive bundled with a calendar; Brillay gives you a written answer instead of another call. Topmate wins on real-time delivery, while Brillay wins on time-zone independence, one flat rate on work however the buyer arrived, and having no scheduling layer to maintain.

Topmate builds the entire flow for live conversation — pricing, calendar sync, booking, meeting links. Brillay offers the opposite shape: a coach sells a written answer instead of a live 1:1 video call, and there is no calendar, no booking, and no scheduling system to keep in sync.

Brillay's advantage is that nothing depends on finding a shared hour. You set your delivery time, up to 5 days for Personalized Videos and Custom Work, and a request you decline simply closes instead of becoming work you owe.

Topmate's fee advantage is conditional. Brillay's 8% work rate beats Topmate's 10% own-link rate, while a Topmate marketplace transaction is charged at 20%; Brillay tips and goals run at 5%. Marketplace placement is not a promise of buyers, so on either platform a creator should plan to send people to their own link.

Frequently asked questions

Is Topmate cheaper than Brillay?

It depends on the sales channel. Topmate charges 10% on sales through your own profile or link, which is higher than Brillay's 8% work rate or its 5% on tips and goals, and 20% per transaction when a new customer buys through Topmate's marketplace.

Does Brillay have booking or a calendar?

No. Brillay has no booking system, no calendar integration, and no live 1:1 video calls. A follower pays upfront for a defined request, and the creator delivers later within the reply or delivery time the creator set.

Can I use Brillay and Topmate together?

Yes. A coach can sell booked calls on Topmate and use Brillay for questions answered later, fixed-price reviews, or Personalized Videos. Splitting the two keeps live sessions priced as live sessions instead of absorbing every free-form request that arrives by DM.

Do I need a minimum audience to use Brillay?

No. Brillay has no follower minimum, and its platform fee is 8% when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals.

Can a client send me a file on Brillay?

On Custom Work, yes: the follower can attach up to five files, 50 MB each, and the creator can deliver a note plus files and/or links. For Personalized Videos, the follower sends written instructions, and the creator delivers one video.

Ready to try Brillay?

If clients keep asking for “just fifteen minutes,” send one link to a fixed-price $25 written answer or $50 review instead of doing more free advice in DMs. It feels less like asking for support because the buyer chooses a clear, one-time offer with a defined result. Create your free Brillay page