Every platform tells you what you can earn. Almost none of them lead with what they keep. That’s what this article is: a ranked table of 15 creator platforms’ revenue splits in 2026, with every figure labeled as either platform-published (from the company’s own docs) or widely reported (from credible third-party reporting — real numbers, but not on the company’s letterhead).
That distinction matters more than most comparison pieces admit. Nearly every “platform pays $X per 1,000 views” table on the internet is built from third-party estimates or single-creator screenshots, not from anything the platform published — one recent audit that checked each platform’s own help pages found the honest split: most platforms publish a share (55%, 10%, 80%) but no rate ($ per 1,000 views). Any article quoting exact per-view payouts as official figures is selling you certainty that doesn’t exist. I’ll quote reported figures where they’re useful, but I’ll always say what they are.
Here’s the direct answer up front: the cleanest split does not mean the most money. Substack’s ~87% creator share beats YouTube’s 55% on paper — but YouTube’s 55% comes from an ad market measured in billions, and 100 paying newsletter subscribers will always be harder to find than 100,000 video viewers. (If you want the competing listicle this article is built to beat, Everything-PR’s 15-platform ranking has the raw numbers — what follows adds the decision logic it lacks.) The split is one variable. Audience size, monetization mechanics, and fee structure are the other three. This article ranks the splits, then gives you the decision framework that turns the ranking into an actual choice.
The ranked table
Ranked by creator retention — what percentage of the money lands with the creator — with the catch that different models can’t be compared on percentage alone. The “read this” column is the part other tables skip.
| # | Platform | Creator keeps | Status | Read this |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beehiiv (subscriptions) | ~100% minus flat plan fee | Platform-published | Flat fee, not a cut — but you pay even in months you earn nothing |
| 2 | Kajabi | ~100% minus flat monthly fee | Platform-published | Infrastructure, not a marketplace: no discovery, you bring the audience |
| 3 | Kick (subscriptions) | 95% | Widely reported | Best sub split in streaming — but a smaller, gaming-heavy audience |
| 4 | Substack | ~85–87% | 10% platform-published; processing widely reported | Cleanest percentage model; Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30 hits small tiers hardest |
| 5 | Patreon (legacy 8% Pro) | ~84–88% | 8% platform-published (locked pre-Aug 2025); processing reported | Legacy tier only — new pages can’t get this |
| 6 | Patreon (Standard) | ~84% | 10% platform-published; processing reported | The real default for anyone starting today |
| 7 | OnlyFans | 80% | Platform-published | Flat 20% at every volume — no loyalty discount |
| 8 | Fansly | 80% | Platform-published | Same headline as OnlyFans; payouts and terms differ |
| 9 | Fanvue | 80% | Platform-published | Same headline; smaller user base, AI-feature positioning |
| 10 | Twitch (70/30 tier) | 70% | Platform-published | Only via the Plus Program at 300+ points — most streamers never qualify |
| 11 | YouTube (fan funding) | 70% | Platform-published | Super Chats, channel memberships — but ad revenue is the bigger pool for most |
| 12 | Twitch (60/40 tier) | 60% | Platform-published | 100 Plus Points unlocks this; the middle tier most partners land in |
| 13 | YouTube (long-form ads) | 55% | Platform-published | The reference benchmark — 55% of a gigantic pie |
| 14 | TikTok (Pulse) | 50% | Platform-published | Premium ad placements only; Creator Rewards is a separate, unpublished-rate program |
| 15 | Twitch (default) | 50% | Platform-published | The default most affiliates start on — the worst major-platform sub split |
| — | YouTube (Shorts pool) | 45% of allocated pool | Platform-published | Pool math means your effective share of total Shorts revenue is much lower |
| — | No per-view payout program | Platform-published (eligibility only) | Subscriptions keep ~100% less Apple’s cut; ad-share essentially doesn’t exist | |
| — | X | No published rate | Platform-published (eligibility only) | Requires paid Premium + impression thresholds; the least transparent economics |
| — | Spotify (music) | ~$0.003–$0.005/stream | Widely reported | Not a share at all — a per-stream pool payout; ~250 streams ≈ $1 |
| — | Spotify (podcasts) | ~50% on SPAN ads | Widely reported | Podcast economics genuinely dwarf music economics on the same platform |
| — | Medium | Paid by read time, no published rate | Widely reported | Rate floats with the monthly pool — unpredictable by design |
A few of these need unpacking, because the headline numbers hide the mechanics that actually determine your income.
YouTube: 55% of what, exactly?
YouTube’s 55% is the most-cited number in the creator economy, and the most misunderstood. It’s 55% of net ad revenue on long-form watch pages — after YouTube takes its cut of what the advertiser paid. It is not 55% of a fixed rate, because there is no fixed rate: CPMs (what advertisers pay per 1,000 impressions) run from roughly $2 to $20+ depending on niche and audience geography. A finance channel with a US audience and a gaming channel with a Southeast Asian audience can have identical view counts and wildly different payouts.
Shorts are a different animal. The 45% figure is 45% of the allocated Creator Pool — YouTube first pools Shorts ad revenue, sets aside a chunk for music licensing, then splits the remainder, giving creators 45%. Your effective share of total Shorts ad revenue is well below 45%. That’s why Shorts RPMs (revenue per 1,000 views) sit around $0.03–$0.07 while long-form runs $1–$25+. The split looks generous; the pool math isn’t.
Fan funding is YouTube’s best deal for creators: 70% on Super Chats, Super Stickers, and channel memberships. If you’re building a paid community, this matters more than the ad split — and it’s the number to compare against Patreon, not the 55%.
The subscription platforms: where the fine print lives
Substack, Patreon, and their cousins look simple — 10% here, 80% there — until payment processing enters the chat. Processing is the footnote that changes every ranking, because it’s charged per transaction on top of the platform fee, and the fixed $0.30 component punishes small tiers disproportionately.
Here’s the worked math on a $10/month fan, the most common subscription price point:
- Substack: 10% platform fee ($1.00) + Stripe processing 2.9% + $0.30 ($0.59) = $1.59 in fees. You keep $8.41 (84.1%).
- Patreon Standard: 10% platform fee ($1.00) + 2.9% + $0.30 processing ($0.59) = $1.59. You keep $8.41 (84.1%).
- YouTube channel membership: 30% to YouTube ($3.00), processing absorbed by Google. You keep $7.00 (70%).
Notice something? Substack and Patreon are identical at this price point, despite years of “Substack takes less” discourse. The 10% headline is the same; the processing is the same. The real differences between them are product differences — newsletter vs. membership scaffolding, discovery, community tools — not fee differences. Anyone choosing between them on fees alone is optimizing the wrong variable.
Now watch what happens at different price points, because the $0.30 fixed fee is doing quiet violence to small tiers:
| Fan pays | Substack/Patreon keep | Effective keep % |
|---|---|---|
| $5/mo | ~$4.06 | 81% |
| $10/mo | ~$8.41 | 84% |
| $20/mo | ~$17.12 | 86% |
The platform fee is flat, but your real take climbs with price. If you’re agonizing over $5 vs. $10 tiers, know that the fee structure itself is voting for the higher price.
And here’s the comparison that should reframe the whole table: percentage models scale against you forever. At $1,000/month, YouTube memberships cost you $300 and Patreon costs you ~$160. At $10,000/month, YouTube costs $3,000 every month and Patreon ~$1,300–$1,400 — while a flat-fee platform at $99/month costs $99 whether you earn $1,000 or $100,000. Over a year at $10K/month, the gap between YouTube memberships and a flat-fee platform is roughly $35,000. That’s not a rounding error; that’s a hire. The percentage model is cheap when you’re small and expensive when you’re big — exactly backwards from what you’d want.
Twitch, TikTok, and the platforms that don’t publish rates
Twitch deserves a paragraph because its split is the most earned in the industry. The default 50/50 is genuinely the worst major-platform subscription deal — you keep $2.50 of a $4.99 Tier 1 sub. But the Plus Program’s 60/40 (100 Plus Points) and 70/30 (300 points) tiers reward scale, and the old $100,000 cap on the better rate is gone. The honest read: Twitch’s split is bad for small streamers and competitive for big ones, which is exactly how Twitch wants it.
TikTok is the transparency problem child. Pulse — its premium ad placement program — publishes a 50/50 split. But the Creator Rewards Program, the thing most TikTok creators actually earn from, publishes no rate at all: rewards are discretionary, based on what TikTok calls legitimate views and engagement signals. Third-party reporting puts it around $0.40–$1.00 per 1,000 qualified views, which is real money at volume but a reported figure, not a promise. And TikTok Shop commissions — 5–20%+ depending on category — frequently outpace ad share for creators who sell. If you’re evaluating TikTok as an income platform, you’re evaluating three different programs with three different economics, only one of which publishes a number.
Instagram and X are simpler: there’s barely a split to rank. Instagram publishes no per-view ad payout — its monetization is subscriptions (~100% to the creator minus Apple’s 30%/15% cut on in-app purchases), Gifts, and bonuses that are invite-only and inconsistent. X publishes eligibility gates (paid Premium subscription, impression thresholds) but no payout rate; creator-reported figures hover around $8–$12 per million verified impressions, which tells you everything about why serious creators treat X as a distribution channel, not an income channel.
The decision framework: turning the table into a choice
Here’s the part that makes this more than a listicle. Four questions, in order:
1. Which mechanic matches your audience? A split percentage is meaningless without the thing it’s a percentage of. Work the actual math for your situation: 100 fans paying $10/month on Substack is $841/month in your pocket. To earn that same $841 from YouTube long-form ads at a $4 RPM, you need roughly 382,000 views a month ($841 ÷ 0.55 = $1,529 in ad revenue ÷ $4 per thousand views). Which is easier for you — finding 100 people who’ll pay $10, or 382,000 people who’ll watch? That single comparison answers more than any ranking.
2. Are you renting or owning? Percentage platforms (YouTube, Patreon, Twitch) rent you their audience and take their cut forever. Flat-fee platforms (Beehiiv, Kajabi, Ko-fi on tips) charge for infrastructure and let you keep the upside. The crossover point is real: once you’re earning a few thousand a month from subscriptions, the flat fee wins by thousands per year. Start on the percentage platform for discovery if you must — but have a migration plan.
3. Who pays the processing, and on what ticket size? If your model is $5 micro-subscriptions, the 2.9% + $0.30 processing stack eats ~19% before the platform takes anything. Either raise prices, bundle into higher tiers, or pick a platform where processing works differently (YouTube absorbs it into its 30%).
4. What’s the platform’s history of changing the deal? This is the risk column. YouTube has held 55% for over a decade — the most stable split in the industry. Twitch has worsened splits over time for smaller streamers. TikTok replaced its Creator Fund with Creator Rewards and changed the economics underneath creators mid-stream. A great split today on a platform with a history of moving the goalposts is worth less than a good split on a stable one. Diversify accordingly: the creators who survive platform shifts are the ones with at least three income streams — ad share, direct subscriptions, and products or affiliates — and an email list no algorithm can take away.
What I’d actually do at three stages
Starting out (under $500/month in creator income): optimize for discovery, not splits. YouTube’s 55% of a huge pie beats Substack’s 87% of nothing. Take the worse split on the platform where audiences actually find you, and start building the email list from day one.
Growing ($500–$5,000/month): this is where the table starts costing you real money. Run the percentage-vs-flat-fee math on your actual numbers. If subscriptions are your engine, price-test $10 vs. $20 tiers (the fee structure favors higher prices) and evaluate whether your discovery still justifies the percentage cut.
Established ($5,000+/month): you are almost certainly overpaying on percentage platforms. The $35,000/year gap between YouTube memberships and a flat-fee setup at $10K/month is the budget for your migration. Move the paying audience to infrastructure you control (Beehiiv, Kajabi, or your own stack), keep the percentage platforms as top-of-funnel, and treat every platform’s split as a customer-acquisition cost — because that’s what it is.
One last honesty note: every number in this article was current as of October 2026, and platform economics change. Before making a platform decision, verify the split on the platform’s own pricing or help page — it takes two minutes, and it’s the only source that counts. If you’re comparing subscription platforms specifically, our Substack vs Ghost vs Beehiiv revenue breakdown runs the same dollar math side by side, and the Beehiiv ad network guide covers how Beehiiv’s revenue-share ads stack on top of its 100%-to-you subscriptions. For Patreon’s side of the ledger, note the legacy billing deadline if you’re on an older plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which platform takes the smallest cut from creators?
On headline percentage, flat-fee platforms: Beehiiv and Kajabi take 0% of your revenue (you pay a monthly plan fee instead), and Ko-fi takes 0% on one-time tips. Among percentage models, Substack and Patreon Standard both land around 84–87% to the creator after processing on typical subscription prices. But the smallest cut doesn’t mean the most money — audience size and monetization mechanics matter more.
Is YouTube’s 55% revenue share good?
It’s the industry benchmark for ad revenue and has been stable for over a decade, which counts for a lot. But 55% is of net ad revenue after YouTube’s cut, CPMs vary enormously by niche and country ($2–$20+), and Shorts’ 45%-of-pool math works out much lower in practice. For paid communities, YouTube’s 70% fan-funding share is the better number — and it’s worse than Patreon or Substack at the same price point.
Why do Patreon and Substack cost the same at $10/month?
Because both charge a 10% platform fee and both run on Stripe-style processing (~2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). On a $10 payment that’s $1.00 + $0.59 = $1.59 in fees either way, leaving you $8.41. The platforms differ in product (newsletter vs. membership community), not in cost. Choose on features, not fees.
What’s the difference between a published and a reported revenue split?
A published split comes from the platform’s own documentation — YouTube’s 55%, Twitch’s 50/50, OnlyFans’ 80/20. A reported figure comes from credible third-party reporting or creator data — TikTok Creator Rewards’ ~$0.40–$1 per 1,000 views, Spotify’s per-stream rates. Reported figures are useful but can change without notice and were never promised to you. Treat published splits as terms and reported figures as weather.
Should I move off a percentage platform once I’m earning well?
Usually yes, for the subscription portion of your income. At $10,000/month, YouTube channel memberships cost you $3,000/month versus ~$99 on a flat-fee platform — roughly $35,000 a year. Keep percentage platforms as discovery and top-of-funnel, and migrate paying supporters to infrastructure you control. Just don’t migrate before your audience is portable; a great split on a platform with no audience is $0.
Do platforms ever change their revenue splits?
Yes, and that’s a real risk. Twitch has tightened terms for smaller streamers over the years, and TikTok replaced its Creator Fund with the Creator Rewards Program, changing the economics underneath existing creators. YouTube’s 55% ad split has been the most stable in the industry. The defense is diversification: ad share, direct subscriptions, and products or affiliates, plus an email list you own outright.