You Earn $100 From Fans: What Each Platform Keeps

You earn $100 from your fans this month. How much actually lands in your bank account? On Patreon, roughly $81 to $86 depending on how big your tiers are. On Substack, a touch less. On OnlyFans, exactly $80. On YouTube memberships, $70. And on Peopoli, about the same as Patreon. The headline percentages every platform advertises — 10%, 20%, 30% — are only the first layer of the bill, and the layer most creators forget, the flat per-transaction processing fee, is the one that quietly eats small tiers alive.

I worked the same $100 through each platform’s published rates, transaction by transaction, so you can see the real ranking instead of the marketing ranking. Spoiler: at a $5 tier, the “expensive” 20% platform nearly ties the “cheap” 10% ones. At a $25 tier, the gap opens up to nearly $6 per $100. And if you earn more than a few hundred dollars a month, the smartest move may not be switching percentage platforms at all — it may be switching to a flat monthly fee.

How the bill actually stacks up

Every fan subscription payment passes through up to three layers of fees, and confusing them is how creators end up surprised by their payout:

1. The platform fee. A percentage of what the fan pays. Patreon charges 10% on its standard plan, Substack charges 10%, OnlyFans charges 20%, YouTube keeps 30% of membership revenue, and Peopoli charges 10%.
2. Payment processing. Charged per transaction, usually 2.9% plus $0.30 for US card payments. This is the sneaky one: the $0.30 is flat, so it costs the same on a $5 payment as on a $25 payment — which means it takes 6% of a $5 tier and just 1.2% of a $25 tier.
3. The extras. Payout fees when you withdraw (Patreon charges $0.25 per US bank payout), currency conversion when fans pay in another currency (Patreon adds 2.5%), and Apple’s cut when fans subscribe inside an iOS app (up to 30% on top of everything else on Patreon).

OnlyFans is the exception to the layering: its 20% is all-inclusive, covering subscriptions, tips, and pay-per-view revenue, with no separate processing line. YouTube is similar in the other direction — its 30% is the whole story for memberships, with no extra processing fee added. For Patreon, Substack, and Peopoli, you have to add processing yourself, and that changes the ranking.

One more wrinkle worth knowing before the numbers: Patreon changed its plans on August 4, 2025. Creators who published a page after that date pay a flat 10% platform fee. Creators who published earlier may still sit on legacy plans — Founders at 5%, Pro at 8%, Premium at 12% — and those rates survive only as long as the page stays published. Unpublish an old page and you lose the old rate for good, so if you are on a legacy plan, pause rather than delete.

The $100 table: same earnings, three tier sizes

Here is the math, worked from the published rates as of October 2026. I assumed US card payments, monthly billing, and a creator on Patreon’s standard 10% plan. Payout fees are excluded from the table (Patreon’s $0.25 bank payout is pennies at this scale) and flagged separately below.

Let me show one row of working so you can check me. On Patreon at the $5 tier: 20 fans pay $5, so gross is $100. The platform takes 10%, which is $10. Processing takes 2.9% of each $5 payment ($0.145) plus $0.30, or $0.445 per fan — times 20 fans, that is $8.90. Total fees are $18.90, and you keep $81.10, or $4.05 per fan. At the $25 tier, the same $100 comes from just 4 fans, so processing is only 4 × $1.025 = $4.10, total fees are $14.10, and you keep $85.90. Same $100, nearly $5 more in your pocket, purely because fewer transactions mean fewer flat $0.30 charges.

Substack trails Patreon by exactly $0.70 per $100 at every tier, because Stripe’s 0.7% recurring billing fee applies on top of the same 10% platform fee and the same card processing. That is a small gap, but it is a permanent one — over a year at $1,000 a month, it is $84. The Substack vs Patreon fee comparison verified against both platforms’ official pricing pages in October 2026 reaches the same per-member figures: $4.02 kept on Substack versus $4.05 on Patreon for a $5 membership.

Platform by platform: what the percentage hides

Patreon: 10%, plus everything else

Patreon’s headline is honest but incomplete. New creators pay 10% of membership revenue, then 2.9% + $0.30 per US card payment on top, then $0.25 per payout to a US bank account. Fans paying from outside the US by PayPal cost 3.9% + $0.30, and any fan paying in a different currency from your payout currency triggers a 2.5% conversion fee. The biggest trap is iOS: subscriptions bought inside the Patreon app can carry Apple’s fee of up to 30% on top of Patreon’s own cut. If your audience mostly subscribes on their phones, steer them to your web page to check out — it is the same membership, without Apple’s slice.

What Patreon gives you for that 10%: a membership system built for any kind of work (video, audio, writing, community, one-off digital products), native apps, and a discovery surface of its own. It also handles sales tax and chargebacks for you, which is genuinely worth something once you have hundreds of patrons. Patreon’s pricing page lists the current plan rates.

Substack: 10%, plus Stripe’s billing fee

Substack’s deal is nearly identical on price — 10% of paid subscription revenue, Stripe processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per payment, plus the 0.7% Stripe Billing fee on recurring payments — but the product is different. Substack is built for writing delivered by email, with a reader network and recommendations that help writers get found. Its killer feature for fee-conscious creators is ownership: you can export your email list at any time, so your audience is never fully hostage to the platform. Subscriptions bought in Substack’s iOS app may cost readers more to cover Apple’s fees, but Substack’s 10% is calculated on your web price.

Pick Substack over Patreon when your product is a newsletter and your readers want it in their inbox. Pick Patreon when you make video, audio, or a mix of formats, or you want to sell one-off products next to memberships. On fees alone, the two are a rounding error apart — the format decision matters far more than the $0.70 per $100.

OnlyFans: 20%, and that is the whole bill

OnlyFans takes a flat 20% of everything — subscriptions, tips, pay-per-view, and livestreams — and charges nothing extra for processing. That simplicity is why the $100 table shows $80 at every tier: no per-transaction fee means tier size does not matter. At a $5 tier, OnlyFans is only $1.10 behind Patreon per $100, which surprises most creators who assume 20% is automatically the worst deal. At a $25 tier, it falls $5.90 behind, because the percentage platforms’ processing costs shrink while OnlyFans’ 20% never does.

The real OnlyFans trade-off is not the fee. It is the marketplace and the content policy: the largest built-in fan marketplace of any subscription platform, but one whose history of sudden policy shifts is exactly why many creators treat it as one revenue stream among several rather than their only home. If you earn there, keep your email list somewhere you control.

YouTube memberships: 30%, but the audience is already there

YouTube keeps 30% of channel membership revenue and pays creators 70% — no processing fee on top, but the worst headline rate in this comparison by a wide margin. On $100 of memberships, you keep $70 while a Patreon creator keeps $81 to $86. Over a year at $1,000 a month in memberships, that gap is $1,320 to $1,908.

So why would anyone take 30%? Because YouTube is where the audience already lives. Memberships convert viewers who are already watching you, with no separate signup funnel, no separate app to install, and discovery built in. The honest way to think about it: YouTube memberships are a monetization layer on an audience you already have, not a home for a membership business. If memberships become a serious income stream, the math eventually argues for moving your most loyal fans to a cheaper platform — while keeping YouTube as the top of the funnel that finds them.

Peopoli: 10%, paid to your own Stripe account

Peopoli, the platform behind the October 2026 comparison that inspired this article, charges 10% plus standard card processing, with payouts going directly to your own Stripe account via Stripe Connect. On the $100 table it ties Patreon exactly, because the fee structure is the same shape. The difference is plumbing, not price: money lands in your Stripe account rather than sitting in a platform balance waiting for a payout, and there is no per-payout fee to remember. Treat Peopoli’s own comparison with the healthy skepticism any competitor’s marketing deserves — it is a rival grading its rivals — but the rates it quotes check out against each platform’s published pricing, and the Peopoli fee comparison is a useful second source for the same table.

The $5-tier trap, in plain English

If you take one idea from this article, take this: the flat $0.30 processing fee punishes small tiers. On a $5 membership, processing alone (2.9% + $0.30) takes 8.9% of the payment. On a $25 membership, it takes 4.1%. That is why a creator with 20 fans at $5 keeps less per $100 than a creator with 4 fans at $25 on every percentage-based platform — and why OnlyFans’ flat 20% looks almost competitive at $5 but falls behind at $25.

Three practical fixes, in order of effort:

• Raise your lowest tier, or bundle. Moving a $3 tier to $5 cuts the processing share from roughly 12.9% to 8.9% of each payment. Moving $5 to $10 cuts it to 5.9%.
• Push annual billing. One $50 annual payment costs $1.75 in processing; twelve $5 monthly payments cost $5.34. Annual plans also cut churn, which is usually worth more than the fee saving.
• Send fans to web checkout. A fan subscribing in an app can cost you up to 30% extra to Apple. A link in your video description or newsletter that opens web checkout avoids it entirely.

This connects directly to pricing strategy: if you are setting your first membership tiers, the fee math argues for fewer, higher tiers rather than a long ladder of tiny ones. Our UGC creator rates guide makes the same point from the other side — price the work (base video, hooks, usage rights) as separate line items instead of letting small add-ons get eaten by fixed fees.

When switching platforms actually pays for itself

Here is the break-even math nobody puts in their marketing. Switching from YouTube memberships (30%) to Patreon at a $10 tier (about 15.9% all-in) saves roughly $14.10 per $100 — $141 a month on $1,000 of memberships, $1,692 a year. That is real money, but switching is not free: some fans will not follow you, some will churn in the move, and you will spend weeks rebuilding perks and posts. A 10% churn on a $1,000-a-month membership base costs you $100 a month — nearly wiping out the first month of fee savings. So switch for the long term, not for one month’s fees, and only after you have an email list to announce the move to.

The more interesting break-even is the flat-fee escape hatch. Platforms like Ghost charge a flat monthly fee and take 0% of your subscription revenue — Ghost’s Publisher plan runs $29 a month for up to 1,000 members, with only Stripe processing on top. Ko-fi Gold is $12 a month with a 0% service fee. Because processing costs the same wherever you go, it cancels out of the comparison, and the break-even is simple: a flat fee beats a 10% platform fee once 10% of your monthly gross exceeds the monthly fee. For Ghost at $29, that is $290 a month in memberships. For Ko-fi Gold at $12, it is $120 a month. Below those lines, percentage platforms are cheaper (and free to start). Above them, you are paying a growing tax for the privilege of staying.

That threshold is the real decision rule. Under $300 a month, pick the platform that fits your format and stop worrying about fees. Over $300 a month, run the flat-fee math. Over $1,000 a month, a flat-fee platform saves you roughly $70 a month versus Patreon at $10 tiers — $840 a year — and over $200 a month versus YouTube memberships.

What the fee table does not tell you

Fees are the easiest thing to compare and the least important thing about a membership platform once you are past the break-even line. Four things matter more:

• Who owns the list. Substack lets you export your email list freely; Patreon lets you export member emails too, though the relationship lives inside Patreon. YouTube memberships live inside YouTube’s system. Wherever you build, keep a copy of your fans’ contact details somewhere you control, because platforms change rules and the list is the business.
• Discovery versus independence. YouTube and Substack bring you new fans through recommendations and their own networks. A flat-fee platform on your own domain brings you nobody — you are the entire marketing department. That trade is worth it at scale, and a trap at zero audience.
• Payout timing. Getting paid matters as much as how much you keep. Platform balances, payout minimums, and holds all delay cash, and a platform that pays monthly is different from one that pays into your Stripe account as fans pay. Our YouTube $20 payout test guide shows the same timing problem on the ad side — small creators waited months to clear a $100 threshold, and a lower threshold changed their cash flow without changing their earnings by a cent.
• Tax and admin. Platforms report your gross earnings (before their fees) for tax purposes, and most handle sales tax on fan payments for you. Moving to your own platform means owning more of that admin yourself. Set aside a tax reserve from gross, not from what lands in your account, or April will surprise you.

A switching checklist, before you move anyone

If the math says switch, do it in this order: export your member and email lists first, while you still have full access. Announce the move to fans with a reason that is about them (better perks, a lower price you can pass on, content the old platform restricted), not about your fees — fans do not switch to save you money, they switch for something better. Offer founding pricing or a locked rate for movers, keep the old page live for at least one billing cycle so stragglers are not cut off, and test the new checkout yourself on both phone and desktop before you send a single fan there. Finally, check the iOS question: if most of your fans subscribe on phones, make sure your announcement links to web checkout, not to an in-app purchase screen.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which platform keeps the least of my $100 in fan subscriptions?

YouTube memberships keep the most at 30%, leaving you $70 per $100. OnlyFans takes a flat 20%, leaving $80. Patreon and Peopoli leave $81.10 to $85.90 depending on tier size, and Substack leaves $80.40 to $85.20 — slightly less than Patreon because of Stripe’s 0.7% recurring billing fee.

Why do I keep less on a $5 tier than a $25 tier?

Because payment processing includes a flat $0.30 per transaction. On a $5 payment that is 6% before the percentage fee; on a $25 payment it is 1.2%. Fewer, larger payments mean fewer flat charges, so the same $100 costs less to collect at higher tiers.

Is Patreon still 10% for everyone?

No. Creators who published a page after August 4, 2025 pay a flat 10% platform fee. Creators who published earlier may keep legacy rates of 5%, 8%, or 12% as long as the page stays published. Processing fees apply on top in both cases.

Does Substack really cost more than Patreon?

Slightly, yes — by 0.7% of gross, which is Stripe’s recurring billing fee that Substack passes through. On $100 of subscriptions that is $0.70. The difference is small enough that you should choose between them on format (writing and email versus multimedia memberships), not on fees.

At what income should I switch to a flat-fee platform like Ghost?

Once 10% of your monthly membership gross exceeds the flat monthly fee. For Ghost’s $29 Publisher plan, that is about $290 a month; for Ko-fi Gold at $12, about $120 a month. Below that line, percentage platforms are cheaper; above it, the flat fee wins and the gap grows with every dollar.

Do fans pay extra if they subscribe on an iPhone?

Sometimes, and it can cost you. Subscriptions bought inside an app can carry Apple’s fee of up to 30% on top of the platform’s own cut, and some platforms pass that cost to readers as a higher price. Linking fans to web checkout avoids the app-store fee entirely.