Buy Me a Coffee vs Ko-fi Comparison 2026
Buy Me a Coffee takes 5 percent from everything, tips, memberships and its small shop alike, with no plan to upgrade to. Ko-fi splits the two: tips arrive whole on its free plan, memberships and shop sales carry the same 5 percent, and Gold at $12 a month removes that cut entirely once memberships pass roughly $240 in a month. For anyone mostly collecting tips, Ko-fi's free plan already beats Buy Me a Coffee's flat rate before any subscription enters the picture.
One page for tips, memberships and sales
Tips, memberships and a shop with no platform cut
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Buy Me a Coffee | Ko-fi | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | From $12 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing (they differ) | Usage-based | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
Buy Me a Coffee
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
- Covers digital products & storefronts
Ko-fi
Tips, memberships and a shop with no platform cut
Ko-fi takes nothing from tips on the free plan, which no other platform of its size does. Memberships, commissions and digital downloads all work from the same page. It is lighter than Patreon in every direction, which is often the point.
Why people weigh these two
- Ko-fi instead of Buy Me a Coffee
- Ko-fi runs the same page of tips, memberships and a shop but takes no platform cut, charging a $12 subscription for extras instead of the 5 percent Buy Me a Coffee keeps.
- Buy Me a Coffee instead of Ko-fi
- Buy Me a Coffee has no paid tier at all, one free page for tips, memberships and sales together, where Ko-fi's shop and membership extras sit behind $12 a month.
Which one should you pick
Pick Ko-fi if tips are the main income, since its free plan keeps 100 percent of them where Buy Me a Coffee keeps 95. Once memberships or shop sales grow past roughly $240 in a typical month, Gold at $12 flat removes Ko-fi's 5 percent entirely, which a percentage-only platform like Buy Me a Coffee cannot match at any volume.
Pick Buy Me a Coffee if a single flat rate across tips, memberships and sales is simpler to reason about than choosing whether to upgrade. It is always 5 percent with never a subscription to weigh against it, which is one less decision for somebody who does not want to run the Gold arithmetic every few months.
Common questions
- Which one takes less from a one-off tip?
- Ko-fi, on its free plan: tips arrive whole, with nothing taken. Buy Me a Coffee takes 5 percent of every payment, tips included, with no way to avoid that on any plan.
- At what point does Ko-fi Gold pay for itself?
- Roughly $240 a month in memberships, shop sales or commissions, since Gold is a flat $12 and removes the 5 percent Ko-fi otherwise takes on those categories. Below that figure, staying on Ko-fi's free plan costs less than the subscription would.
- Does Buy Me a Coffee have an equivalent to Ko-fi Gold?
- No. Buy Me a Coffee has no subscription tier at all; the 5 percent transaction fee is the entire pricing model regardless of how much is earned in a month.
- Which one is lighter, with fewer features to configure?
- Ko-fi's own listing describes itself as lighter than Patreon in every direction, and the same comparison holds loosely against Buy Me a Coffee: both are simple pages, though Ko-fi adds commissions as a named feature that Buy Me a Coffee's listing does not describe.
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.