Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover memberships & subscriptions and community platforms. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Memberful | Patreon | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $49 | 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 | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | 4.9% of what you earn | 10% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Web | Not stated |
| Covers | Memberships & Subscriptions, Community Platforms, Monetization & Payments | 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 |
Paid memberships bolted onto a site you own
Memberful sells memberships from a site you already run rather than moving your audience to a platform, and it is the tool most WordPress publishers reach for when they start charging. One price covers everything and the money is charged on top as a percentage. Nothing is billed until a first payment comes in, so a launch that never launches costs nothing.
Our note
The 4.9 percent is the number to model, because it is charged on revenue rather than on profit: at $2,000 a month collected it is about double the subscription. Against Ghost, which takes nothing, this wins on flexibility and loses on arithmetic once you are large.
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.