Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover digital products & storefronts and monetization & payments. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Buy Me a Coffee | Gumroad | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Pricing model | Free | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | 5% of what you earn | 10% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Not stated | Not stated |
| Covers | Tips & Donations, Digital Products & Storefronts, Memberships & Subscriptions, Monetization & Payments | Digital Products & Storefronts, Monetization & Payments |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
One page for tips, memberships and sales
Buy Me a Coffee is the shortest path between a reader wanting to pay you and money arriving in your bank account. A page, a button, and no plan to choose. Memberships and a shop for one-off things sit on the same page, and the 5 percent it takes is cheap until you are earning enough that a percentage stops being cheap.
Our note
The right first step and rarely the last one. Once memberships pass a few hundred a month, run the 5 percent against what a fixed monthly plan elsewhere would cost, because that is when the simplicity starts having a price.
Only on this side
Sell digital products with almost no setup
Gumroad is the fastest way to put a file behind a payment link. No store to build, no plan to choose, and a flat 10 percent on every sale. That rate is high once you are doing real volume, which is when people usually leave.
Our note
Start here, and do the arithmetic every quarter. The moment 10 percent is more than a competitor's monthly fee plus a lower rate, move. Until then nothing is simpler.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.