Pa Patreon
Tiered membership platform for creators offering recurring support, exclusive posts, chat spaces, and a built-in shop.
Visit Patreon → Get your launch kit →About Patreon
Patreon is the best-known recurring membership platform for creators. Patrons subscribe to monthly tiers in exchange for exclusive content, community access, and merch. In 2025 Patreon consolidated older Lite/Pro/Premium plans into a single 10% fee for new creators; pre-existing creators keep their grandfathered tiers.
Our take
Patreon is the membership platform everyone has heard of, with 2024's unified 10% fee making pricing finally honest. Strengths: native video, podcasts, tiered memberships, one-time payments, and a recognizable URL your fans will click through. Weaknesses: the 10% cut plus payment processing compounds, you don't own the email relationship, and discovery is essentially dead — you bring your own audience. Best for: established creators whose fans already know to look for them on Patreon, especially podcasters and video creators who benefit from native hosting. Skip if: you're a newsletter writer (Substack/Beehiiv fit better) or you want to retain email ownership.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Best-in-class membership tools
- Strong community features (chats, DMs, Discord)
- Accepts multi-media content across tiers
Cons
- No full email export — Patreon owns the subscriber relationship
- Apple takes 30% on iOS in-app purchases
- Legacy fee tiers locked — new creators pay 10% flat
Full breakdown
- Platform fee
- 10% · of revenue
- Payout speed
- monthly
- Minimum payout
- $10
- Countries supported
- Wide (excludes RU, CN, IR, KP, SY, CU)
- Email list export
- Limited (CSV export of patron list)
- Custom domain
- No
- Community features
- Up to 10 Chat spaces, DMs, Discord integration