Our mission at Patreon is to get you as much money as possible. It's why we have a fee of just 5% and why we do everything we can to minimize payment processing fees.
There are three different fees on Patreon. They are explained in detail below:
1: Patreon Fee
The Patreon fee is 5% of successfully-processed payments. This means that we only take money if the creator is making money. This is also listed on your Dashboard as "Patreon Fee".
2: Payment Processing Fees
This is the cost of moving funds from your patrons to your creator balance. This fee can be viewed in your Dashboard and is listed as the "Processing Fees".
Payment processing fees represent the amount that our payment processors charge each time they process a successful pledge or refund. Payment processors charge a percentage of the transaction amount plus a fixed number of cents. Your payment processing fees will vary based on your tier amounts (results in the pledge amounts charged), your patrons’ method of payment (i.e. - card or PayPal), and how many patrons you share with other creators. On average, we find payment processing fees have an effective rate of 5%. There are factors that reduce or increase that effective rate, detailed below.
Shared patronage can reduce your processing fees. Shared patronage is when you have patrons in common with other creators on Patreon. To provide an optimal patron experience, Patreon processes all of a patron’s pledges on one transaction each month and delivers one receipt to the patron. The creators included in the one transaction benefit from sharing the transaction fee.
Tier amount can increase or decrease your effective processing rate due to the fixed fee component. While the fixed fee varies due to patron payment method and shared patronage, it can be as high as 30 cents per transaction. We generally recommend keeping your lowest tier priced above $1.00 to avoid a high processing fee effective rate
Another way to look at it: If you have many patrons with small pledge amounts, then processing fees will be a larger percentage of your overall earnings. If you have just a few patrons with large pledge amounts, then processing fees will be a smaller percentage of your overall earnings.
Finally, Value-Added Tax (VAT) can increase your processing fees. Patreon is legally required to collect VAT from European Union (EU) patrons. This is a tax charged on top of your tier amount if the patron is located in an EU country. Payment processors charge fees on the transaction amount, which includes tax if Patreon collected VAT. While you as the creator don’t have to worry about collecting VAT from your EU patrons, it can affect your effective payment processing rate. Learn more about VAT collection.
3: Payout fees
The charge for moving funds from your creator balance to your bank, PayPal, or Payoneer account. This fee is not listed in the fees breakdown within your creator dashboard. This is taken once you transfer funds out of your Patreon account and toward your bank account.
To learn about these fees, please visit this help center article.