Insights dashboards

This article explains how our Insights dashboards work and how to use them to understand your earnings and membership trends. 

Creator earnings funnel

The following chart identifies the four main steps in the process and the associated dashboards that describe them:

Want to put your data to work? Check out “Reimagined dashboards for deeper insights” on Patreon for Creators. Currently, Patreon for Creators is only available in English.

How to use Insights

• Make sure you follow this guide while on your creator view. Insights can be accessed from the left-hand menu, allowing creators to select specific dashboards to view relevant data.

  

• The creator home provides an overview of key metrics across various dashboards. Creators can access data from the past 30 days.

  
  

Explore your Insights

The Insights dashboard is designed to give you a clear view of your creator activity by breaking it down into different sections. You can use the toggles below to dive into insights on Membership, Shop, Earnings, Posts, Traffic, and Surveys. Each section will help you understand how you’re performing and spot any trends in those areas.

• The Membership insights dashboard helps you track and analyze key membership trends, including active members, new members, and cancellations.

  Here's a brief overview of each view:

  Active members

  All members who currently have access to your Patreon, within the selected timeframe. This includes free members, members with an active payment, members with a retrying payment, free trial members, gifted members, and members who have cancelled but whose access hasn't expired yet.

  Now, members whose payment retries repeatedly fail for ~30 days will become free members. This way, you’ll be able to stay connected with them, while also opening up space in limited-spot tiers (if applicable).

  New members

  Tracks all new members, both free and paid, who joined your page for the first time, as well as former members who rejoined after cancelling.

  Canceled

  Includes free and paid members who have left your membership. Free members are cancelled immediately when they leave. For paid members, the cancellation is recorded on the date their access expires, not the date they cancel.

  Since a large number of members are billed on the 1st of the month, you may notice a corresponding spike in cancellations around that date, as this is when members lose access, and the cancellation is recorded. For failed payments, we will continue to show the member as active in Insights for the time we are retrying the payment. If they become a free member, they’ll also show up as a paid cancelled member.

  In a one-time update, members who have been in a failed payment state since Jan 2024 will become free members. In addition, members in a failed payment state between Dec 2025 and Jan 2026 will also be counted as a paid cancelled member. This means you may see a one-time increase in free and paid cancelled members, which will be reflected in both Membership Insights and Relationship Manager.
  
  Note: Members in a failed payment state prior to Jan 2024 will become cancelled members. However, this will only be updated in Relationship Manager, not Membership Insights.

  You can customize your view using filters such as date range, membership tiers, billing cycle, and paid status to get the most relevant insights.

  For a full breakdown of available insights and how to use them, see the Membership Insights guide.

• The Shop dashboard shows up for creators selling digital products with Commerce on Patreon. Commerce enables creators to sell digital products like downloadable videos, images, and other files directly to customers, whether they are paid members or not.

  

  If you are using Commerce, you can learn more about how to use Shop insights in this guide.

• When it comes to your earnings, be sure to use the Earnings page for an accurate record of your gross and net income (after fees) for each month.

  The Overview section on your main web page provides an estimate by averaging earnings from annual memberships and displaying net monthly earnings after fees. This section is useful for identifying trends and is visible to members if you choose to make your earnings public. However, it should not be relied upon as an accurate representation of your true earnings for any specific month.

  After processing a payment, fees and refunds are deducted, with the remaining amount going to your Creator Balance. This dashboard summarises the flow of funds based on when the transactions occurred. 

  

  Earnings insights filters:

  Customize your earnings view by:

  • Date range: You can view data from past 6 months, Past year (past 12 months), All time, or set a Custom range
  • Earnings type: You can filter by All earnings, Membership, or Shop
  • Currency (Early access): If you’ve changed your shop currency in the past, you can use the currency toggle to view your earnings in your current or any previously used currencies. Note: This feature is currently in early access, which means not all creators will see it yet. It will be gradually rolled out to all users
  • Free or Paid member view: Select either the free or paid member view at the top of the dashboard to filter insights accordingly
  • Daily or Monthly view: Switch between Monthly and Daily views to track earnings trends over different timeframes
  • Tier: Filter your earnings by a specific membership tier to understand which tiers are driving your revenue each month
  • Billing cadence: Filter by monthly or annual to see how payment frequency affects your earnings

  Key sections in earnings insights

  The earnings dashboard summarizes the income associated with your Patreon. We organize data by the time transactions occur. The Gross revenue column on your Earnings dashboard may display a different amount than your total memberships calculated from your Relationship Manager due to mid-month tier switches and refunds.

  Refund example:

  • Paid member A joins your community on 16 February but isn’t charged until 1 March. The earnings from that transaction will appear in March.
  • If a refund is processed in October for a transaction that initially occurred in July, the refund will appear in October.
  • Membership: The amount earned from your memberships before any fees, refunds, and declines
  • Shop (Web and Android): The amount earned from purchases made through your shop on both Web and Android, before subtracting any fees, refunds, or declines
  • Shop (iOS): The amount earned from purchases made through your shop on the iOS App Store, before the deduction of any fees, refunds, or declines. Please note that purchases on iOS are subject to an Apple App Store fee. Learn more about iOS pricing here
  • Declines: The value of attempted charges declined this month. This column value will likely decrease as we retry your declined members and process them to your creator balance
  • Refunds: The amount of any refunds issued in that month. This column only includes the creator’s share of any refunds; Patreon’s fee, processing fees, and taxes are refunded by Patreon and therefore do not appear here. This also does not include fraud refunds. Here’s an article with more information on fraud refunds
  • Membership: The amount earned from your memberships after any fees, refunds, and declines
  • Shop (Web and Android): The amount earned from purchases made through your shop on both Web and Android, after subtracting any fees, refunds, or declines
  • Shop (iOS): The amount earned from purchases made through your shop on the iOS App Store, after the deduction of any fees, refunds, or declines. Please note that purchases on iOS are subject to an Apple App Store fee. Learn more about iOS pricing here

• Post insights give you visibility into how your work is reaching your fans and growing your audience and business. Knowing which posts are performing well can help you identify what to make more of.

  With this dashboard, you have access to data about:

  • Reach: How your work is reaching fans across Patreon surfaces (via web, app, email, and push notifications). Includes metrics like:
    • Impressions: How many times your posts were surfaced across Patreon, email, and push notifications
    • Seen: How many times fans started to engage more deeply with your work
  • Conversion: How your posts drive audience and revenue growth, including:
    • Revenue: New paid memberships and one-time sales attributed to a given post
    • Audience: New free members who joined through a given post
  • Live: How your live event performed regarding audience and engagement levels with key metrics such as:
    • Unique viewers: The total number of distinct viewers
    • Average view time: The average number of time each viewer spent watching the Live

  You can also check the individual performance of up to 25 posts within a selected time frame. For additional data, such as RSS downloads, post likes, and post comments, you can export a CSV file.

  To understand the glossary, metrics, and other definitions, including your reach, engagement, and conversion, please see our dedicated article on Post Insights.

• The Traffic dashboard can help you better understand where your visits are coming from and how often they occur, all presented in a visual graph format. You can view traffic data for the past 24 hours, the last 7 days, the previous 30 days or you can add a custom range. Hover over points on the graph to see detailed Information about specific timeframes and gain insights into traffic spikes or trends. Please note that this data is displayed in GMT/UTC.

  

  Here are the key terms you'll encounter on the Traffic dashboard and their definitions:

  Term	Definition
  Total visits	Shows the total number of visits by members and non-members across your creator surfaces (post page, creator page, and shop page).
  Public visits	Shows the total number of visits from non-members and free members. This is useful for you to understand how external promotions are bringing in new users and contributing to your membership growth.
  Overall	The graph offers a general overview of your Patreon's traffic without going into specific traffic sources.
  Sources	The graph provides a detailed breakdown of your traffic sources, offering insights into the specific platforms that contribute the most to your overall traffic volume. Traffic sources include Patreon, X, Facebook, Instagram, and many more. When checking Sources from Total visitors, you might notice that the Patreon percentage is significantly higher. This is because Total visitors include members and non-members, and this is likely why you might see elevated traffic from Patreon. Within sources, you might also see Direct traffic: This is defined as the traffic that has arrived on your website with no source or data, e.g., a user typing in the URL directly or using Incognito mode.

  Please note that visits are different from visitors. A single visitor can visit a page many times, so one visit does not equal one visitor. 

• Available to all creators, welcome surveys let you better understand what’s motivating paid members to join your Patreon. The welcome survey is enabled for all creators by default. You can turn off the welcome survey by navigating to the survey insights tab and clicking the turn off survey link. Follow the prompts to turn off the welcome survey.

  This section is about the welcome survey. You can also analyze exit survey results from your settings.

  What will members see?

  Immediately after completing checkout, new paid and upgraded members will be presented with a multiple-choice survey, where they can select what about their membership they’re looking forward to most. Once they’ve selected their reason, they can add more details in a free-form response.

  Members who rejoin your Patreon or join for free won’t be presented with the welcome survey upon signup.

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  • 

  Previewing the welcome survey

  1. Navigate to the surveys insights tab
  2. Click the Preview button to see all survey options
  3. Click the Next button for the free form option where members can add more details

  Since the welcome survey is intended to get insights from members, the multiple-choice options are disabled in the creator preview mode.

  Currently, welcome survey customization isn’t an option.

  How do I use my welcome survey insights?

  You can review survey results by navigating to the surveys insights tab. From here, you can drill into welcome survey results based on the past 30 days, 6 months, Past year, All time or add a Custom range of your choice. You can also use the tier filter, which defaults to all tiers, to better assess trends driving fans to join which tiers.

  Hover over points on the graph to gain more information about specific snapshots, giving you a clearer picture of each moment’s impact on your survey results. Additionally, you can view free-form survey responses by clicking the comment link for a multiple-choice response.

  Successfully using your welcome survey results:

  • You can leverage survey responses to tailor your offering to what fans want most. Understand what benefits resonate the most to adapt your benefits and promotion strategy
  • Use aggregated survey responses to spark creative ideas, discover trends, and ensure your content strategy aligns with your fans’ expectations

  

  You can export welcome survey results as a CSV to review individual responses and further analyze responses with the visualization tool you prefer.

  Turning off the welcome survey

  You can navigate to the surveys insights tab and click the designated link to turn off the welcome survey.

FAQ

• They’re a set of tools that help you track how your creator business is doing. You’ll find info on your memberships, shop, earnings, posts, traffic, and surveys. All in one place. You can access them from the left-hand side menu on Patreon.

• Membership insights: every 4 hours

  Traffic Insights: show recent activity (like the past 24 hours or 30 days) and are based on GMT/UTC

  Other dashboards update either daily or in real time, depending on what you’re looking at

• Shop, Earnings, and Survey Insights let you pick from the last 30 days, 6 months, 12 months, or even a custom range.

  Membership and Posts Insights let you pick from the last 24 hours, 30 days, 6 months, 12 months, and even a custom range.

  Traffic Insights offers quick views like 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, 12 months or custom dates.

• The Earnings dashboard shows money when it actually hits your account, not necessarily when someone signed up. So if a member upgrades mid-month, gets refunded, or their payment is delayed, the numbers might not match what you expected.
• Yes, you can filter earnings by type, like Membership or Shop, and view daily or monthly totals. There’s also a breakdown showing things like platform fees, refunds, declines, and your final net earnings.
• As of April 2023, Patreon switched from tracking views to impressions, so that’s what you’ll see now.
  • Impressions refer to how many times your post showed up (in feeds, on mobile, etc.)
  • Seen means how many people actually clicked through to view the full post

• Visitors are individual people checking out your page.

  Visits are how many times they’ve landed on it—so one person might have multiple visits.

• You’ll see results from two types of surveys:
  • Welcome surveys show why new or upgrading members joined
  • Exit surveys explain why someone canceled. You can filter the results by tier, change the time range, and even export the data as a CSV file if you want to deep dive into the data.
• Email opens are tracked using a pixel in the email. When the email is opened and the pixel loads, it counts as an open. However, some email apps block tracking or load the pixel even if the email isn’t fully opened. While you look at open rate over time to spot trends, individual open rates should be taken as a rough estimate. This is true for open rates for all email services, not just Patreon.
• In the Post Insights dashboard, select Export data as CSV at the bottom of the screen to get like and comment data.
• In the Post Insights dashboard, select Export data as CSV at the bottom of the screen to get RSS downloads.
• First, keep in mind that click-through rate might not be the right metric if you’re just sharing an update or message that doesn’t require any action (e.g. if the member can consume the post directly from their email). If clicks are your goal, try looking for patterns among posts that have had high click rates.
  Some factors that impact click-through rate include:
  • Audience: Paid members tend to be the most heavily engaged. If you’re sharing a post to free members who aren’t as involved in your community, you may see a lower click-through rate
  • Media type included in the email: Exclusive media, like bonus episodes or polls, tend to drive clicks to Patreon. If you distribute that media elsewhere, like a public RSS feed or YouTube, your click-throughs may be lower since fans are consuming on other platforms
  • Calls to action: Personal calls-to-action, like “Comment with your thoughts” or “Vote here on what I make next” tend to drive higher clicks, as do limited-time offers like discounts
  • Full post vs. preview: If you include the full post in the email rather than a preview, you might see lower click-throughs since fans don’t have to leave their inboxes