Patreon vs. Memberful vs. Ghost: True Cost of Membership Fees
Patreon vs. Memberful vs. Ghost: see how platform and processing fees stack up at $2k, $10k and $50k a month, and who owns your subscribers' card data.
Photo: Pixabay
On this page 7 sections
- Patreon vs. Memberful vs. Ghost: How Each Platform Charges
- Processing Fees on Top: What Members' Cards Really Cost
- Membership Platform Fees Comparison at $2k, $10k and $50k
- Who Owns Subscriber Card Tokens, and Can You Export Them?
- Payout Timing, Currencies and International Members
- When It Makes Sense to Own Your Subscriber Payments
- Next Steps
Key takeaways
- The true cost of a membership platform is the platform fee plus card processing, failed payments, disputes and currency conversion, so compare totals, not headline rates.
- In the illustrative model, percentage-based pricing keeps the same share of revenue at every level, while flat-fee pricing gets cheaper as a share of revenue as you grow.
- Ask who the merchant of record is, because that usually determines whether you can take subscriber card tokens with you if you leave.
- Moving to your own merchant account can lower costs at scale, but you also take on billing software, tax, auto-renewal compliance and chargebacks yourself.
If you run a paid community, newsletter or creator membership, the platform you choose decides how much of each member's payment you keep. It also decides whether you can take your paying members with you if you ever leave. This guide compares Patreon vs. Memberful vs. Ghost on total cost. It covers how each platform prices its service and what card processing adds on top. It also models illustrative totals at $2,000, $10,000 and $50,000 in monthly revenue and explains who controls subscriber card data.
One note before the numbers. All three platforms revise their pricing, and plans differ by account age, tier and region. The structures described here are general. Confirm current rates on each platform's pricing page before you decide. Every dollar figure in this article is illustrative and is not any platform's quoted price.
Patreon vs. Memberful vs. Ghost: How Each Platform Charges
The three platforms use different pricing models. That difference matters more than any single rate.
| Platform | General pricing structure | Who processes members' cards | Best fit (general) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patreon | A percentage of creator earnings, plus payment processing charges | Patreon, as the merchant of record | Creators who value discovery, a member app and hands-off billing |
| Memberful | A monthly plan fee plus a per-transaction percentage | A Stripe account connected in your name | Creators with an existing website who want branded memberships |
| Ghost | A hosting subscription (or self-hosting) instead of a cut of membership revenue | A Stripe account connected in your name | Publishers and newsletter writers who want their own site and list |
Patreon: A Share of What You Earn
Patreon's model is built around a revenue share. The platform takes a percentage of what members pay. Depending on the plan and payment type, processing costs either apply on top or are folded in. Because Patreon is the merchant of record, it handles the card relationship and much of the billing logic. In many regions it also handles tax collection on members' purchases. Confirm the current details with Patreon.
The trade-off is that your cost rises in step with your revenue. A creator earning ten times more pays roughly ten times more in platform fees.
Memberful: Plan Fee Plus Transaction Fee
Memberful combines a recurring plan fee with a percentage of each transaction. Card processing runs through a Stripe account you connect, so Stripe bills its processing charges separately from Memberful's fee. At low revenue the plan fee is a meaningful share of income. As revenue grows, the transaction percentage becomes the larger cost.
Ghost: Flat Hosting Instead of a Revenue Cut
Ghost is a publishing platform. Its paid hosted service, Ghost(Pro), is priced by plan and audience size, and you can also self-host the software. Ghost charges for hosting rather than taking a cut of membership revenue. Members pay through a Stripe account you connect, so Stripe bills the processing.
Ghost's membership fees therefore come down mostly to the hosting tier plus Stripe's processing. If you self-host, add your own server and maintenance costs.
Processing Fees on Top: What Members' Cards Really Cost
Platform fees are only part of the bill. Every card payment also carries processing costs: interchange set by the card networks and issuers, network assessments and the processor's markup. On Memberful and Ghost these costs show up on your Stripe statement. On Patreon they are part of Patreon's fee structure.
Several cost drivers hit membership businesses harder than most:
- Fixed per-transaction fees on small tickets. Most online pricing includes a fixed amount per charge. On a low-priced monthly tier, that fixed amount can cost as much as the percentage portion.
- Card mix. Rewards and corporate cards usually cost more to accept than basic debit cards. You don't choose which cards your members use.
- International cards and currency conversion. Cross-border cards often carry extra fees, and converting to dollars adds more.
- Failed renewals. Expired or replaced cards cost you renewal revenue, and repeated retries can trigger network fees. Our guides on keeping subscribers billing when cards expire with card account updater and Visa and Mastercard retry limits cover both problems.
- Disputes. Members who forget they subscribed sometimes file chargebacks instead of canceling. Each dispute usually carries a fee whether you win or lose.
The table below shows how much the fixed fee matters at different tier prices. The figures are illustrative and assume 3% plus $0.30 per charge.
| Monthly tier price | Fixed fee as share of price | Total illustrative processing share |
|---|---|---|
| $5 | 6.0% | 9.0% |
| $10 | 3.0% | 6.0% |
| $25 | 1.2% | 4.2% |
Annual plans reduce the fixed-fee drag. A member who pays once a year triggers one fixed fee. The same member paying monthly triggers twelve.
Membership Platform Fees Comparison at $2k, $10k and $50k
The model below compares the three pricing structures at three revenue levels. All rates are illustrative assumptions chosen to show how each structure behaves. They are not Patreon's, Memberful's, Ghost's or Stripe's actual prices. Substitute your real quotes to get your own numbers.
Illustrative assumptions:
- Average membership price: $10 per month, so $2,000 means 200 charges, $10,000 means 1,000 and $50,000 means 5,000.
- Processing: 3% plus $0.30 per charge, the same for every model.
- Percentage model (Patreon-style structure): an 8% platform fee on revenue.
- Plan-plus-transaction model (Memberful-style structure): a $50 monthly plan plus a 4% transaction fee.
- Flat hosting model (Ghost-style structure): hosting of $30, $100 and $250 per month as the audience grows.
| Monthly revenue | Processing | Percentage model total | Plan + transaction total | Flat hosting total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $2,000 | $120 | $280 (14.0%) | $250 (12.5%) | $150 (7.5%) |
| $10,000 | $600 | $1,400 (14.0%) | $1,050 (10.5%) | $700 (7.0%) |
| $50,000 | $3,000 | $7,000 (14.0%) | $5,050 (10.1%) | $3,250 (6.5%) |
The model shows three patterns:
- Percentage pricing stays flat as a share of revenue. At $50,000 a month, the 7.5-point difference between the percentage and flat models is $3,750 a month in this example.
- Flat pricing improves with scale. The hosting fee grows more slowly than revenue, so its share shrinks.
- At higher revenue, processing becomes the biggest line item in the plan-plus-transaction and flat models. In the flat model at $50,000, processing is most of the cost, so small rate changes matter. At that volume, each 0.5 percentage point is $250 a month, and each $0.10 per charge is $500 a month across 5,000 charges.
The table leaves out costs that aren't fees but still matter:
- Discovery traffic a platform sends you
- Tax compliance the platform handles
- Your time maintaining a site
- Dunning or recovery tools
A platform that costs more on paper can still be the better deal if it brings in members you wouldn't otherwise reach.
Who Owns Subscriber Card Tokens, and Can You Export Them?
Creators often overlook this question until they want to leave. When a member saves a card, the processor stores it as a token, a stand-in for the card number. Whoever controls that token can keep billing the member.
If you can't take the tokens with you, every member has to re-enter card details on your new system, and some won't.
| Setup | Who generally holds the tokens | What leaving typically looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Patreon | Patreon, as merchant of record | You can typically export member details such as names, emails and tiers. Members generally need to sign up again with payment details on your new system. |
| Memberful | The Stripe account in your name | Card data sits in your Stripe account. Processors such as Stripe generally offer a way to request a card data migration to another PCI DSS-compliant processor. Confirm the current process with Stripe. |
| Ghost | The Stripe account in your name | Similar to Memberful. Your Stripe account holds the payment data, separate from your Ghost hosting. |
| Your own merchant account and gateway | Your gateway's token vault | Portability depends on your gateway agreement. Ask about it before you sign. |
Export policies change, so confirm the current process with each provider. Before you commit to any setup, ask these questions:
- Who is the merchant of record for my members' payments?
- Can I export card tokens to another PCI DSS-compliant processor, and how long does that take?
- Does the export include billing dates, plan details and member consent records?
- Will a migration interrupt renewals, and who notifies members?
Payout Timing, Currencies and International Members
Fees affect profit, and payout timing affects cash flow. The two setups handle money differently:
- Patreon collects from members and pays you on its own schedule. Payout method fees and currency conversion may apply depending on where you're paid.
- Memberful and Ghost settle through your Stripe account to your bank on Stripe's schedule. New accounts and accounts with a sudden spike in volume can face holds or reserves. If that has happened to you, read our guide on what to do when Stripe closes your account.
International members add cost and complexity:
- Currency. Pricing in members' local currencies can improve conversion, but it adds conversion and settlement decisions.
- Authentication. Many international issuers require strong customer authentication. 3-D Secure authentication helps with this and can shift liability for some fraud disputes.
- Tax. A merchant of record may collect and remit VAT or sales tax for you. On your own Stripe account or merchant account, that responsibility generally falls on you. This is general information, so confirm your obligations with a tax professional.
If a large share of your members live outside the U.S., review international payment processing options such as multi-currency acceptance and settlement in USD or local currency.
When It Makes Sense to Own Your Subscriber Payments
Owning the payment relationship through your own merchant account and billing stack is not right for every creator. It usually makes sense when several of these apply:
- Your monthly revenue is large enough that a few percentage points cover the cost of billing software and the work of managing it.
- Most of your members come from your own audience, such as an email list, website or social channels, rather than from platform discovery.
- You want full control of card tokens, pricing, trials and renewal communications.
- You need payment options or integrations your current platform doesn't support.
Staying on a platform usually makes more sense if you're just starting out, rely on the platform for new members or don't want to manage tax and compliance.
What You Take on With Your Own Merchant Account
Leaving a managed platform shifts these responsibilities to you:
- Billing software to run plans, trials, proration and dunning. Our comparison of subscription billing costs for Stripe Billing, Recurly and Chargebee walks through the options.
- Auto-renewal compliance, including clear disclosures, consent and easy cancellation. Start with our compliance map of automatic renewal laws by state. This is general information, so confirm your obligations with a qualified attorney.
- Dispute management, especially "cancelled recurring" chargebacks. See our guide on how subscription sellers win cancelled recurring chargebacks.
- Underwriting. Processors often treat recurring billing as medium risk. Expect questions about your refund policy, cancellation flow and dispute history. Our article on why subscription businesses land in the medium-risk tier explains what processors look for. Describe your business model accurately on the application.
Patreon Alternatives With Lower Fees: A Practical Path
Memberful and Ghost are designed around Stripe, so a separate merchant account generally won't plug into them directly. Confirm with each platform. Creators who move to their own merchant account usually pair it with billing software or a site platform that supports their gateway, such as WooCommerce memberships or a gateway like Authorize.net or NMI.
MannyPay provides merchant accounts for low- and high-risk businesses, online payment gateways and e-commerce processing, 3-D Secure and international processing. We can't promise approval or a specific saving. What we can do is look at your volume, ticket size and dispute history and quote a merchant account and gateway setup for your business. Our guide to getting a subscription merchant account approved covers what to prepare.
Next Steps
- Pull your last three months of statements and calculate your real effective rate, including platform fees, processing, disputes and currency conversion.
- Rerun the model above with your actual quotes, average tier price and member count.
- Ask your current platform how it handles exports and card tokens, and get the answer in writing.
- If owning your subscriber payments looks worthwhile, set up billing software and plan for compliance before you migrate members.
When you're ready to compare, request a free processing quote from MannyPay. A specialist will respond within one business day.
This article is for general educational purposes and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Card network rules and state laws change; confirm current requirements for your business.
