Understand the numbers listed on my Patreon

The earnings number and paid member count listed under your Patreon heading and your Membership insights page are approximations of your monthly or per creation earnings and membership count. Think of the overview and summary as a snapshot of your current membership health.

The paid member count and earnings estimations are pulled from the active paid members list in your Relationship Manager.

While our examples show a US Dollar ($) amount, yours will appear in the supported currency you and your paid members have selected. To learn more about currencies, please visit this help center article: Selecting my billing currency

Use the Earnings dashboard, and Payouts reports for your monthly totals. These reports are reliable records of what we've processed for you in a given month.

The earnings number listed on your Patreon will fluctuate as paid members come and go and as we retry declined payments throughout the month. While you can use this number as a snapshot of your earnings, it will adjust throughout the month.

Your Membership dashboard is your best resource for digging into paid member count by join date and tiers.

How are we calculating the number shown on your Patreon?

• Payment fees 
  We use the percentage of your payment processing fees from the previous month as an estimator. There may be fluctuation in this amount depending on what is processed.
• Platform fee
  This fee will vary depending on the plan that you are on and is deducted from the total to give you a more accurate estimation of your take-home earnings. 
  To find out more about the platform fee, visit this help center article: Creator fees breakdown.
  If you are on the legacy Founder's Pricing, visit this article: My earnings fees (founding creator)
• The App Store fee
  Apple requires that all new sales (digital goods and memberships) made in the Patreon iOS app use their in-app purchase system. As a result, Apple charges a 30% fee on the price of these products. Patreon does not charge any additional payment processing fees on in-app iOS transactions. Learn more about how iOS in app purchases work and your options for pricing
• Declines
  The total amount of declined payments from the month. Paid members can have an active membership and still be in a declined state — don't worry, they won't have access to your page content until they resolve their payment. We remove declined payments and members from your paid member count and earnings estimation that you see until their payment is resolved.

There are a few reasons why you can see fluctuations in the earnings number and paid member count listed under your Patreon heading and your Membership insights page.

• If you use our subscription billing model, new members can join at any time throughout the month. This means your earnings, estimates, and member counts might fluctuate more frequently compared to legacy billing models. This is a normal part of the subscription billing model. While it may seem different from what legacy creators are used to, it offers a more dynamic and potentially stable revenue stream as members join at their convenience. This is more in line with what members expect the billing experience to be. Learn more about how subscription billing works
• If you use a legacy billing model (Charge Up Front, Per Creation, and Non-charge up front), we process your paid members’ payments throughout the day on the 1st. Due to this, the earnings and paid member count listed on your Patreon may fluctuate the most in the first few days of the month
  • If you use charge up front, you’ll see the biggest shift on the 3rd of the month. There is a brief delay between payment processing on the 1st of each month and when paid members who canceled in the previous month are removed from your Active member list and paid member count. Paid members who canceled in the previous month do not have access beyond the 1st of the month; however, these members are not removed from your paid member count and Active list until 12 midnight Pacific Time on the 3rd of each month. If you notice a sudden decrease in your paid member count, it means that those canceled members have been removed from your count
    • You can check which members canceled in the previous month by heading to your Relationship Manager and filtering by the Cancel Date column
• For Declined payments, while members who have declined are not removed from your count, the declined amounts are deducted from the earnings number listed on your Patreon. We regularly retry processing your paid members' declined payments throughout the month. As a result, your earnings number will likely increase as these payments are successfully processed