Managing discounts

This guide explains how to create, manage, and track both product discounts for your shop and membership discounts. If you're looking for frequently asked questions, please check out our Discounts FAQ.

Discounts Overview

Discount codes are a powerful tool to grow your Patreon. Whether you're looking to boost product sales or drive more sign-ups to your membership, discounts can help you engage your audience and offer exclusive deals.

On Patreon, there are two types of discounts:

• Product Discounts – Discounts applied to digital products in your shop, encouraging sales by offering special deals
• Membership Discounts – Promotions designed to attract new paid members by offering discounts on the first month or year of membership tiers

What you need to know about discount codes:

• Discount codes can be shared with fans on and off Patreon
• You can create and run multiple discount codes for your entire store, select products, or membership tiers
• While multiple codes can be active, fans can apply only one discount code per product or membership at checkout — Discounts don’t stack
• For product discounts, if the code reduces the product price below the minimum, customers will receive a partial discount. The minimum price will be displayed when you create your product
• You can add discount codes to both existing products and products saved as drafts
• Membership discounts are available for any tier but only apply to new members during their first month or first year of membership — The full price will apply for subsequent billing cycles
• If you are running a public sale for membership discounts, only one discount can be publicly displayed on your page at a time

Set up a Membership Discount

Follow these steps while on your creator profile. You can check your profile by clicking your profile picture in the bottom left corner and clicking the profile you’d like to view.

1. Click on the Promotions tab from the left-side navigation
2. Select the Discounts page at the top, where you can view your current and past promotions
3. Click the Add discount button to create a new discount
4. If you're selling digital products, you can choose between Membership Discount or Shop Discount. If you're not selling digital products, you'll proceed directly to the Membership Discount flow
5. Complete the discount code form with the following:
   • Name: Only visible to you as the creator
   • Code: Click the generate option to get an auto-generated code, or type in your own custom code with at least three characters
   • Valid for: Choose if this discount applies to their first month, first year, or both. If annual memberships aren’t on, you’ll default to monthly
   • Discount amount: Choose a discount amount between 5 - 90%
   • Applies to: Your code can apply to all your tiers or selected tiers
   • Display this discount publicly on your Patreon: Toggling this on will automatically show this discounted rate to anyone except existing paid members
     You can only display one discount publicly at a time and must wait 7 days between each active public discount
   • Start date & time: Set the date you’d like your code/public sale to become active.
   • End date & time: You will need to set an end date to your discount. You can also stop a discount at any time
6. Once you’ve filled out the discount form, click on Create code.
7. You can share this code with fans on and off Patreon to be applied at checkout — Anyone with the discount code can use it at checkout. If the code was shared with a small group, people outside of the group can still use it if it’s shared around

When you set up an annual discount, the percentage off will be from your annual price, which may already be discounted depending on how you set up your annual membership. Keep this in mind as you create your discounts

Set up a product discount

You can add discount codes to existing and future products.

• Follow these steps while on your creator profile. You can check your profile by clicking your profile picture in the bottom left corner and clicking the profile you’d like to view.

  1. Click on the Promotions tab from the left-side navigation
  2. You’ll land on the Discounts page
  3. Click the Add discount button
  4. Complete the discount code form with the following:
     • Name: only visible to you as the creator
     • Code: click the generate option to get an auto-generated code, or type in your own custom code with at least three characters
     • Discount amount: your code can apply a set discount amount or a percentage of the product price (max 50%)
     • Applies to: your code can apply to your entire shop or to select products in your shop
     • Start date & time: set the date you’d like your code to become active
     • End date & time (optional): toggle the end date option if you’d like your code to have an expiry date
  5. Once you’ve filled out the discount form, click on Create code
  6. You can share this code with fans on and off Patreon to be applied at checkout

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• Follow these steps while on your creator profile. You can check your profile by clicking your profile picture in the bottom left corner and clicking the profile you’d like to view.

  1. Click the Create button
  2. Choose the Product option
  3. Set your digital product title, prices, description, and upload your work
  4. Click on the downward arrow on the Publish button to save your digital product as a draft - products must be saved as a draft or already published before you can add a discount code
  5. Click the Pricing options button
  6. Click on the Discounts tab
  7. You can choose from an existing discount code by clicking the next to that code or choose to add a new code to apply to your product
     
     • You can apply as many discount codes as you’d like to a product, and customers can redeem one applicable code at checkout. This can be useful if you want to promote on different platforms - you can measure code usage to determine the places where customers are coming from
  8. Fill out the form and click Create code if you’re adding a new discount
     

Managing and editing discount codes

To edit, duplicate, or end a promotion, visit the Promotions page from the left-side menu.

Editing product discounts

Once you’ve created a discount code, you can edit aspects of your discount by visiting the Promotions page, clicking the more menu, and choosing Edit.  

Here’s what you can edit depending on your code’s status:

End promotion

To delete a product discount, visit the Promotions page from the left-side menu. Once you’ve landed on the Discounts tab, click the more menu and select End promotion. When you end a promotion, its status will update to Expired, and you’ll have the option to Delete it.

Tracking discount code redemption

You can track the redemption of your discount codes and see who used them.

Promotions tab

On the Discounts page, you’ll see your active and expired sales, plus how many times your code has been redeemed. You can click on each one to see more information.

Once you click in, you can click View Details under redemptions to see who redeemed your code.

Sales tab (Product Discounts Only)

Click on Audience from the left-side navigation and then the Sales Tab to view a list of all of the customers who have redeemed a discount code by searching for the discount code or by clicking the View details button in the expanded view of a discount in the Promotions tab.

What customers see

For membership discounts

There are two ways fans can redeem a membership discount:

• Using a Discount Code: Fans can enter the discount code during checkout by clicking the Discount code section in the Order Summary
• Public Sale: If you are running a public sale, the original price of the membership will be crossed out, showing the new discounted monthly price

For product discounts

When customers check out, they can apply the discount by clicking on the Discount code section in the Order summary

Partial Discounts

Customers will receive a partial discount if your discount code makes your product's price less than the minimum. For example, if your item is $3.25 and you set a 50% discount for your entire shop, a customer will receive a $0.25 discount and pay $3 since the minimum for USD items is $3. The minimum for your currency will be listed when you create your product. Partial discounts ensure that prices don’t drop below the minimum threshold for your currency. 

How discount codes are applied on the iOS app

Discounts are applied to the list price you set before any price increases are made to account for Apple’s App Store fees.

For example, if you offer a 10% discount on a $5 item (priced at $7.50 on iOS), it will be $4.50 on web and Android and $6.50 on iOS.

Visit our Apple in-app purchases page to learn more.