Buy Me a Coffee Fees and Pricing for Creators

Buy Me a Coffee has no monthly plan and takes a 5% platform fee on every payment: one-time coffees, memberships and shop sales. Stripe then charges 2.9% plus $0.30 a payment and 0.5% on payouts, with an extra 0.5% on membership payments and 1% on payments from outside the US. On a $5 coffee from a US supporter you keep about $4.28.

We read the Buy Me a Coffee help center on October 5, 2026, including its own article on how charges are calculated. Most fee guides stop at "5% plus Stripe" and leave out the payout and membership surcharges, which is why their take-home figures run a few cents high on every payment. A few cents on a $5 coffee is a lot of money across a year of supporters.

Buy Me a Coffee fees in 2026, every charge

Buy Me a Coffee says it always sticks to its 5% and that card fees go to the card networks and Stripe, not to it. There is no paid tier that lowers the 5%, which is the main difference from Ko-fi, where a $12 monthly Gold plan removes the fee.

How much you keep from a coffee, a membership and a shop sale

The fixed $0.30 is what makes small payments expensive. On a $5 coffee it is 6% of the payment by itself, so the total cost lands near 14%. On a $25 shop item the same charges come to under 10%.

Each row adds the 5% platform fee, Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30, the 0.5% payout fee, and the membership or international surcharge where it applies. If you sell coffees at $3, the $0.30 alone is 10% of every payment, so raising the default coffee price to $5 or more is the single biggest lever on your fee rate.

Does Buy Me a Coffee take a percentage?

Yes, 5% of every payment, and it is the same 5% whether a supporter buys one coffee, joins a membership or orders from your shop. Buy Me a Coffee does not charge a monthly fee, a setup fee or listing fees, and it says it never shows ads or sells data. Its help center puts it simply: creators keep 95% of what supporters pay before processing.

Can supporters cover the fee?

Partly. In your page settings you can let supporters cover the credit card fee, so the processing charge is added to what they pay instead of coming out of your earnings. The 5% platform fee still comes out of your side. On a one-off coffee the extra is about $0.45 on $5, which most supporters will hardly notice. On memberships it shows up every month, so test it there before leaving it on.

How do Buy Me a Coffee payouts work?

You can request a payout once your balance reaches $10. The first request sends your account to a one-time human review that checks your page against Buy Me a Coffee's content rules, and the help center says a first payout can take 7 to 14 days in total. After approval the money moves to your connected Stripe account and from there to your bank, which usually takes another 3 to 5 business days depending on the bank. Later payouts skip the review. Links to where you promote the page and your social accounts speed the review up.

Buy Me a Coffee vs Ko-fi and Patreon on fees

The three platforms people compare most, priced on the same two membership businesses with card processing included: 200 members at $5 a month and 500 members at $10 a month.

Buy Me a Coffee lands between Ko-fi and Patreon. Against Ko-fi Gold the gap widens as you grow: at $5,000 a month in memberships it is close to $290 a month, or about $3,450 a year. Our Ko-fi fees and Ko-fi Gold pricing breakdown covers Ko-fi's three modes, and the Patreon alternatives comparison prices Substack, Memberful, Ghost and Kajabi on the same two businesses.

When Buy Me a Coffee is the right choice

Buy Me a Coffee earns its 5% on simplicity. One-time support needs no account from the supporter, checkout takes one tap with cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Cash App, and memberships, a shop, posts and supporter messages are all included without a plan to manage. Live stream alerts work with OBS, Streamlabs and StreamElements. For a creator earning a few hundred dollars a month, that convenience is worth more than the difference to Ko-fi, which is about $10 a month on $1,000 of memberships.

The case for moving gets stronger in two situations. If memberships pass about $1,000 a month, a flat-fee option such as Ko-fi Gold or Ghost starts saving real money. And if most of your income is product sales rather than support, a storefront built for selling usually costs less and converts better; our Gumroad alternatives page prices Lemon Squeezy, Payhip, Fourthwall and Stan Store per sale.

Tracking what Buy Me a Coffee actually pays you

The Buy Me a Coffee dashboard shows supporter totals, but your real income sits in Stripe after five separate charges, and it arrives on a different schedule from YouTube, Patreon or your shop. Supporter income is also generally taxable self-employment income in the US, and the platform and processing fees are business expenses, so you want gross, fees and net kept apart all year rather than rebuilt in April.

Earnly puts every payout on one board with gross, fees and take-home per platform, so Buy Me a Coffee sits next to AdSense, brand deals and Patreon. The fee breakdown per platform shows what each one costs you as a percentage, which is the number that tells you when a flat-fee plan or a move is worth it. And if supporter messages start piling up faster than you can reply, an assistant that answers fan messages for you keeps people feeling heard without eating your evenings.