Memberful vs SubscribeStar Comparison 2026
Both cover memberships & subscriptions and monetization & payments. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Paid memberships bolted onto a site you own
Membership tiers with the fees printed
At a glance
- Only SubscribeStar has a free tier.
- Memberful takes 4.9% of what you earn against SubscribeStar's 5%.
Side by side
Memberful | SubscribeStar | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $49 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Paid subscription | Free |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing (they differ) | Monthly or annual | Usage-based |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
Memberful
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.
Only on this side
- Covers community platforms
SubscribeStar
Membership tiers with the fees printed
SubscribeStar runs paid membership tiers and posts for creators, and prints its fee arithmetic on the front page rather than in a help centre. A free profile gets the publishing tools and the money only costs something when it moves. It is smaller than the platform everybody names first, which matters, because a membership platform is only worth what an audience will follow you onto.
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.