Patreon Fees Explained: Platform, Processing, and Payout

Patreon fees, in short

• Platform fee: 10% of each payment on the standard plan, for pages published after August 4, 2025. Eligible legacy pages keep 5%, 8%, or 11% instead.
• Processing fee: 2.9% plus $0.30 per USD payment by card, Apple Pay, or US PayPal or Venmo on the standard plan. It is charged per payment, not per month.
• Currency conversion: 2.5% when a member pays in a currency different from your payout currency, calculated on the full payment including tax.
• Payout fee: a separate charge when your balance is transferred, $0.25 for US direct deposit, or 1% for PayPal with a $0.25 minimum and a $20 cap.

Each charge is calculated on a different base and at a different moment, which is why no single headline percentage can tell you what a given month will pay. The rest of this guide defines each fee, puts the published rates in one table, and works one complete example.

What Patreon fees are, and what they are not

Patreon fees are the amounts Patreon deducts for running the platform and moving the money: a share of each successful member payment for hosting, billing, and community tools, the card and wallet charges for processing each payment, a conversion charge when a payment crosses currencies, and a transfer charge when your balance is paid out to you.

They are not one combined rate, and they are not calculated on your profit. Patreon calculates the platform fee on the payment amount excluding sales tax, while the processing fee is calculated per payment on the total payment, including any applicable tax.

Purchases made inside the Patreon iOS app follow a separate path: Apple applies a 30% App Store fee, Patreon does not add its own payment processing fee on those transactions, and the platform fee still applies. Fans in the US may be offered a mobile web checkout instead, which is not subject to the App Store fee.

How these rates were checked

• Primary source. Every rate on this page comes from Patreon's own Help Center: its creator fees overview and its standard-plan guide, fetched and read in full on November 4, 2026. Where Patreon's pages did not publish a figure, this guide says so instead of estimating one.
• Scope. The table uses USD payout rates, because those are the rates the linked calculator models. Patreon publishes different processing and payout rates for other payout currencies, and this page does not convert or infer them.
• Arithmetic. The worked example applies the published rates in the order Patreon describes: platform fee on the payment, processing on each individual payment, then the payout charge on the transfer of the remaining balance.
• Review. The rates are re-checked against Patreon's pages at the review dates shown at the top of this guide, and sooner if Patreon announces a change.

Patreon fee rates, in one table

The published Patreon rates behind the calculator, checked on November 4, 2026.

One-time purchases, such as digital products sold through Patreon, carry the same platform and processing fees as membership payments. Where the law requires it, Patreon also collects VAT, GST, or sales tax on its own fees, shown as a separate line rather than folded into the rates above.

A worked example: 100 members at $10

The example uses the standard plan and US card processing from the table above. Platform fee equals the payment multiplied by 10%. Processing equals the payment multiplied by 2.9%, plus $0.30, charged once per member payment. The payout charge is applied once, when the balance is transferred by US direct deposit.

Synthetic arithmetic example, not a benchmark: $1,000.00 minus $100.00 minus $59.00 equals $841.00, and $841.00 minus the $0.25 payout charge equals $840.75. These values are invented only to demonstrate the order the fees are applied in, and they do not describe a typical creator.

Run your own tier mix, plan, and payment profile in the Patreon revenue calculator. It shows every input it uses, so you can change the assumptions instead of trusting a blended rate.

Net payout at 100, 500, and 1,000 patrons

The worked example above scales at the same rates. This table applies the standard plan, US card processing, and one US direct deposit payout to a single $10 tier at three page sizes, so the size of each charge is visible side by side.

Synthetic arithmetic example, not a benchmark: processing is $0.59 per $10 payment at every size, so it grows in direct proportion to the patron count, while the payout charge stays at one $0.25 transfer. A page on a legacy plan, at a different tier price, or with other payment methods lands on different numbers; run your own inputs in the Patreon revenue calculator.

Which fees deserve your attention

Which line in the table matters most depends on the page you run:

• New page. The standard plan is the only platform option, so your levers are tier prices, billing period, and payment mix, not plan choice. Spend your attention on the processing line, because it is the one your pricing can change.
• Legacy page. Your 5%, 8%, or 11% rate survives only while your page stays published. Patreon states that unpublishing your page, even briefly, moves you to the standard 10% plan when you republish, so use the pause tool instead of unpublishing.
• Small tiers. On the standard plan the fixed $0.30 part of processing is charged on every payment at every price, so it takes a much larger share of a $5 payment than of a $25 payment. Fewer, larger payments reduce that drag, and an annual membership is processed as one payment for the year instead of twelve monthly ones.
• International audience. If members pay in a currency different from your payout currency, budget for the 2.5% conversion fee on those payments, and remember that PayPal and Payoneer may add their own charges when you move money onward.

But Patreon advertises one percentage, so is that not the fee?

The advertised percentage is real, but it is only the platform fee, the first of the charges in the table. Processing is charged on top of it for every payment, conversion is added when currencies differ, and the payout charge arrives at the end, so the share a creator actually keeps depends on tier prices, payment methods, and member locations.

That is why a single blended figure misleads. In the worked example above, payment fees removed $159.00 of $1,000.00 before the payout charge, a very different picture from the platform percentage alone, and the same rates would remove a larger share from a page built on small tiers.

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