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.
| LaunchPass | Patreon | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $29 | Free |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Usage-based |
| Free trial | 14 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | 3.5% of what you earn | 10% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Not stated | Not stated |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Memberships & Subscriptions, Monetization & Payments | Memberships & Subscriptions, Community Platforms, Monetization & Payments |
| Works with | Discord | YouTube, Podcast, Discord |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Charge for access to a Discord or Slack group
LaunchPass puts a paywall in front of a chat community you already run, and hands out and removes the roles as people pay and lapse. It connects to Discord, Slack and Telegram, and the money arrives through your own Stripe account. It manages access rather than hosting anything, so the community stays where your members already are.
Our note
Sensible if your community is already somewhere and already wanted. Compare it against DoorFee if the community is on Discord, since DoorFee sells the membership as well as gating it, and against Circle or Skool if you were half thinking of moving anyway.
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.