Ko-fi vs Patreon vs Buy Me a Coffee: Where Should Artists Take Support in 2026?
Fees, hidden catches and the Apple deadline nobody told you about. An honest comparison of the three big creator-support platforms for artists — and the question that matters more than any of them.
Sooner or later, someone asks where they can support you — and you realise you don’t have an answer. So you go looking, and find three platforms that all seem to do roughly the same thing, with fee structures written in a language that appears to be English but isn’t.
Here’s the honest version: what each one actually takes, the catches that aren’t on the pricing page, and the question that matters more than the comparison itself.
First, these aren’t three versions of the same thing
The most common mistake is comparing them on fees alone, when they’re built around different behaviours.
- Ko-fi is built for one-off support and selling things: tips, digital downloads, and commissions. Memberships exist, but the centre of gravity is the single transaction.
- Patreon is built for recurring memberships: tiers, subscriber-only posts, a content schedule. It’s a small subscription business with tooling to match.
- Buy Me a Coffee is the simplest possible version of both, trading flexibility for a very low-friction setup.
That distinction matters more than a few percentage points, because the wrong model will fail no matter how good the fees are. Recurring memberships ask supporters for an ongoing commitment, which means you need to keep delivering something ongoing. If you post finished pieces irregularly — which describes most artists — a tip jar and a shop will out-earn a membership you can’t feed.
Patreon: the most powerful, and the most complicated
Patreon has the deepest toolset here, and in 2026 it also has the most fine print.
The platform fee depends on when you signed up. Creators who published a page after 4 August 2025 pay a standard 10% platform fee. Creators who published on or before that date keep the older tiered pricing — Lite at 5%, Pro at 8%, Premium at 12%. If you’re on a legacy plan, note that unpublishing and republishing your page can move you onto the 10% standard fee, so don’t idly take your page down.
Then there’s the Apple problem, which is the part most artists haven’t heard about. New memberships started inside the Patreon iOS app are subject to Apple’s in-app purchase commission: 30%, dropping to roughly 15% after a year of an active subscription. That is charged on top of Patreon’s own cut.
The workaround is real and worth knowing: supporters who join through a web browser avoid Apple’s commission entirely, and can still read everything in the app afterwards. If you promote your Patreon, sending people to the website rather than the app is worth actual money to you.
And a deadline: Apple has required Patreon to move every creator onto subscription billing by 1 November 2026. This only affects the small share of creators still on legacy per-creation or first-of-the-month billing — around 4% — but if you’re one of them, this is not optional, and Patreon has asked creators wanting hands-on migration help to get in touch well before the deadline. Check which billing model you’re on rather than assuming.
Worth it when: you have a real recurring audience, you can reliably deliver something on a schedule (process posts, PSD files, tutorials, early access), and you want tiers and member management handled for you.
Ko-fi: the artist-shaped one
Ko-fi’s structure is the friendliest to how most artists actually earn:
- Tips and donations: 0% platform fee.
- Shop sales, commissions and memberships: 5% on the free plan.
- Ko-fi Gold removes that 5% across the board for a flat US$12/month.
Payment processing — roughly 2.9% + 30c per transaction — applies on every plan and every platform in this article. That money goes to Stripe or PayPal, not to Ko-fi, and nobody can make it disappear.
The Gold break-even is simple arithmetic, and worth doing before you subscribe to anything. Gold saves you 5% of your non-tip earnings, so it pays for itself at monthly fee ÷ 0.05 — at $12/month, that’s $240 a month in shop, commission and membership sales. Below that, the free plan is cheaper. Above it, Gold wins. Re-run that sum whenever the price changes rather than trusting a number in a blog post, including this one.
The catch nobody mentions: new Ko-fi accounts are reportedly enrolled by default into a “Contributor” programme, which applies a 5% fee to tips that would otherwise be free. It’s a setting you can switch off. Go and look at your settings now rather than discovering it in a year’s worth of payouts.
The genuine standout is that commissions are a first-class feature — a proper request-and-approval queue with defined stages, rather than a Google Form and a prayer. If you take commissions, that alone is a strong argument. Pair it with our commission pricing guide and the red flags to watch for and you have a workable setup.
Worth it when: you take commissions, sell digital downloads or brushes, or simply want a tip jar that costs nothing until it’s earning.
Buy Me a Coffee: the frictionless one
Buy Me a Coffee charges a flat 5% platform fee on everything — tips, memberships and shop sales alike — with Stripe processing on top, plus a small payout fee of around 0.5%.
Its virtue is that there’s essentially nothing to configure. You get a page, a button, and money arrives. Its weakness is the same thing: less control over presentation, a weaker shop, and no commission tooling worth the name.
That flat 5% also makes it strictly worse than Ko-fi’s free plan for the thing tip jars are mainly used for. If most of your income is tips, Ko-fi charges 0% where Buy Me a Coffee charges 5%. On $500 of tips, that’s $25 a month for a simpler signup page.
Worth it when: you want a support link working in the next ten minutes and genuinely don’t want to think about it again.
The comparison, in one table
| Ko-fi (free) | Ko-fi Gold | Patreon | Buy Me a Coffee | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tips / donations | 0% | 0% | n/a | 5% |
| Commissions | 5% | 0% | n/a | n/a |
| Shop sales | 5% | 0% | n/a | 5% |
| Memberships | 5% | 0% | 10% (new creators) | 5% |
| Monthly cost | $0 | $12 | $0 | $0 |
| Built-in commissions | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| iOS signup penalty | No | No | Apple’s 30% | No |
Payment processing of ~2.9% + 30c per transaction applies to all of the above. Figures are current at the time of writing — all three change their pricing, so verify before committing.
Which one, in one line each
| If you… | Use |
|---|---|
| Take commissions | Ko-fi |
| Sell digital downloads or brushes | Ko-fi (Gold past ~$240/mo) |
| Post reliably on a schedule to a real audience | Patreon |
| Want a support link in ten minutes | Buy Me a Coffee |
| Are just starting out | Ko-fi, free plan |
| Already earn well on Patreon | Stay, but push web signups |
Also worth saying: you can have more than one, and plenty of artists do — a Ko-fi for commissions and tips, a Patreon for the members who want the process posts. There’s no exclusivity clause to worry about.
The part that actually decides your income
Here’s the thing all three pricing pages are quietly counting on you not noticing.
A tip jar is a conversion tool, not a discovery tool. None of these platforms will bring you a single new supporter. They are checkouts. They convert people who already care about your work into people who pay for it — which is genuinely valuable, and completely useless if the number of people who already care is eleven.
Run the numbers honestly. The difference between the best and worst option here is a few percent of your earnings. The difference between 50 people seeing your work and 5,000 seeing it is your earnings. If you’re choosing between a 0% and a 5% fee on an income of forty dollars, you are optimising the wrong end of the problem — and the fix is visibility, a portfolio worth linking to, and enough work in one place that a stranger can tell what you do.
So set up whichever platform fits how you earn — it should take an afternoon, not a fortnight of spreadsheets — then put the rest of your energy into the audience side, where the actual leverage is.
That’s the half artbase is free to join for: somewhere your work builds into a portfolio instead of scrolling away, where tags put it in front of people who are looking for exactly what you make, and where your Ko-fi or Patreon link sits on a profile that gives strangers a reason to click it. Get the discovery right and the tip jar looks after itself — whichever one you picked.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better for artists, Ko-fi or Patreon?
For most independent artists, Ko-fi is the better starting point. Tips and donations are free of platform fees, commissions are a built-in feature rather than something you bolt on, and there is no monthly cost until you are earning enough for it to pay for itself. Patreon makes more sense once you have a genuine recurring audience and want to run tiered memberships with structured content delivery.
How much does Ko-fi take?
On the free plan Ko-fi takes 0% of tips and donations, and 5% of shop sales, commissions and memberships. Ko-fi Gold removes that 5% for a flat monthly fee. Payment processing charges of roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction apply on every plan, because those go to Stripe or PayPal rather than Ko-fi.
What is Patreon's platform fee in 2026?
Creators who published their Patreon page after 4 August 2025 pay a standard 10% platform fee. Creators who published on or before that date keep their older Lite, Pro or Premium pricing of 5%, 8% or 12%. Payment processing and payout fees are charged separately on top.
Do I pay extra if someone subscribes to my Patreon through the iOS app?
Yes. New memberships started inside the Patreon iOS app are subject to Apple's in-app purchase commission of 30%, which typically drops to 15% after a year of an active subscription. Supporters who sign up through a web browser instead avoid this entirely, and can still read your content in the app afterwards.
Do I need a Patreon or Ko-fi to make money from art?
No. These platforms are payment tools, not audiences. They convert people who already follow your work into people who pay for it. If very few people are seeing your art yet, building visibility and a portfolio will do far more for your income than choosing between tip jars.