SubscribeStar vs Whop 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.
Membership tiers with the fees printed
Sell access to a community with no monthly fee
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
SubscribeStar | Whop | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Pricing model | Free | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | 5% of what you earn | Not stated |
| Runs on (they differ) | Web | Web, iOS, Android |
| Covers | Tips & Donations, Memberships & Subscriptions, Monetization & Payments |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
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.
Our note
Patreon takes 10 percent and gives you an audience that already has an account there. This takes half that and gives you none, which is the entire decision. It is worth running as a second option rather than a replacement.
Only on this side
- Covers tips & donations
- Works with YouTube
- Works with Discord
Whop
Sell access to a community with no monthly fee
Whop sells memberships, courses, software and communities from a storefront that handles the checkout and the access control together, so a paying customer lands inside whatever they bought rather than in an email thread. There is no setup cost and no monthly cost; the money comes off each transaction. Rates differ by how the customer pays, with cards cheapest and instalment financing dearest. The marketplace side brings its own traffic, which is either the reason to be here or noise to ignore depending on what is being sold.
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.