Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover community platforms and memberships & subscriptions. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Disciple | Patreon | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $399 | Free |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Usage-based |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Everything, in an open format | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | 10% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Web, iOS, Android | Not stated |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Memberships & Subscriptions | Memberships & Subscriptions, Community Platforms, Monetization & Payments |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | YouTube, Podcast, Discord |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Your community as an app in the app stores
Disciple builds a branded community app and puts it in the Apple and Google stores under your name, rather than sending members to a website that happens to work on a phone. It takes nothing from what members pay, which matters at the price it charges. That price starts at several hundred a month, so it is a business decision rather than an experiment.
Our note
Zero transaction fees against a high fixed cost is the whole shape of this, and it favours communities already collecting real money. Below roughly $8,000 a month in member revenue, a platform taking a percentage costs less.
Membership tiers and posts for paying supporters
Patreon is still where most audiences expect to pay a creator monthly, and that familiarity is worth something. Tiers, member-only posts, and now paid courses and shops. The platform fee is 10 percent of what you earn, before payment processing.
Our note
Patreon costs more than Ko-fi and more than running memberships yourself, and what you buy with the difference is recognition: a listener who hears the word already knows what to do. Once an audience would follow you anywhere, that premium stops earning its keep.
Only on this side
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.