Free Online Calculators
Patrons × Pledge minus Lite/Pro/Premium fees, Stripe & VAT
This calculator shows your real Patreon take-home income after deducting the platform fee (Lite, Pro, or Premium), Stripe payment processing fees, and any applicable VAT. Just enter your number of patrons and the pledge amount per patron. You'll instantly see exactly how much actually lands in your pocket.
Patreon charges creators on a tiered platform plan, not a flat rate — and the difference adds up fast. As of 2026, the three plans are Lite at 5%, Pro at 8%, and Premium at 12% of your monthly pledge revenue. On top of that, Stripe's payment processing adds roughly 5% (a blended rate across the standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction plus Patreon's own processing cut). That means a Pro plan creator is surrendering roughly 13% off the top before counting chargebacks, declined cards, or currency conversion losses on international pledges.
The reason Patreon uses a percentage-based model rather than a flat monthly fee is simple: it aligns their revenue with yours. Premium at 12% is expensive, but it includes a dedicated partner manager and merch integration — features that only pencil out once you're pulling $5,000+/month. Lite at 5% strips everything down to pledge collection and basic posts, which is fine for a creator who already has audience tools elsewhere. Most mid-tier creators land on Pro, paying 8% for audience analytics, tier customization, and the membership shop.
Take a podcaster launching on Patreon with 80 patrons across two tiers: 50 patrons at $5/month and 30 at $15/month. Gross monthly income is (50 × $5) + (30 × $15) = $250 + $450 = $700. On a Pro plan (8%), Patreon takes $56. Payment processing at 5% pulls another $35. Net monthly drops to $609 — roughly 87% of gross. Annual net comes to about $7,308 before any income tax. Not a living, but a real supplemental income that funds equipment or travel.
Now scale that same creator to 400 patrons: 250 at $5, 100 at $15, and 50 at $30. Gross jumps to $1,250 + $1,500 + $1,500 = $4,250/month. Patreon's 8% takes $340. Processing (5%) takes $212.50. Net monthly is approximately $3,697 — about $44,370/year. At this level, Premium's 12% plan would cost $510/month in platform fees versus $340 on Pro. That $170/month premium only makes sense if the partner manager or advanced tools are generating more than $170 in value. For most creators at this size, they're still on Pro.
One pattern worth noting: a creator charging fewer patrons at higher tiers nets more per patron than one with hundreds at $1–$2. The $0.30-per-transaction component of Stripe's fee hits micro-pledges hardest. A $1 pledge nets roughly $0.65 after fees; a $10 pledge nets about $8.80. Structuring your lowest tier at $3–$5 rather than $1 meaningfully improves your effective take rate.
For creators with an existing engaged audience — newsletter readers, YouTube subscribers, podcast listeners — Patreon converts well because the payment infrastructure and community tools are already built. You're not building a store; you're adding a revenue layer to trust that already exists. Substack handles a similar function for writers but bundles content hosting with subscriptions, charging 10% (less than Patreon Premium, more than Lite or Pro). Teachable and Podia make more sense for course-first creators who want one-time sales alongside memberships.
Where Patreon underdelivers is for creators who are counting on the platform to supply discovery. Patreon has no meaningful internal search or recommendation engine as of Q4 2025. Every patron you get comes from your own audience-building. If you're starting from zero followers and hoping Patreon's explore tab builds your subscriber base, it won't. The platform rewards creators who already have reach and want a clean monetization layer on top of it.
The most expensive calculation error is ignoring patron churn. Monthly churn on Patreon typically runs 5–10% for new memberships — meaning if you launch with 100 patrons, by month three you may have 75–85 unless you're actively re-engaging. A creator projecting $600/month at launch who ignores 8% monthly churn will actually average closer to $430/month across the first six months. The fix is modeling your projection with a churn assumption, not flat patron counts.
The second mistake is treating the 5% processing fee as a flat deduction when it behaves more like a blended rate. Patrons paying in currencies other than USD trigger additional conversion fees of 1.5–2.5%. Creators with large European or Australian audiences — common in gaming, craft, and language-learning niches — can see effective processing costs closer to 7%. If 40% of your audience is international, your net figure from a basic calculator will be optimistic by 1–2 percentage points.
On the Pro plan (the most common), Patreon takes 8% of your pledge revenue. Stripe processing adds roughly 5%, bringing the combined deduction to about 13%. So a $10 pledge nets approximately $8.70. On Lite (5% + 5%), you'd net about $9.00. On Premium (12% + 5%), about $8.30. The exact rate varies slightly with currency conversion and per-transaction Stripe minimums on small pledges.
Lite (5%) covers basic pledge collection and posts — no analytics or membership shop. Pro (8%) adds audience insights, tier customization, and the merch shop. Premium (12%) adds a dedicated partner manager and priority support. The right plan depends on whether the features in Pro or Premium generate enough additional revenue to justify the higher percentage cut.
On a Pro plan with an average pledge of $8/month, you'd need roughly 290–300 patrons to clear $2,000 net after Patreon's 8% and 5% processing fees. At a $15 average pledge, that drops to around 160 patrons. The calculator above lets you model this with your specific tier structure instead of relying on averages.
No — Patreon only charges its platform percentage on paid pledges. Free membership tiers cost you nothing in platform fees, though they do count against your patron list and can be useful for audience building. The processing fee similarly only applies when money changes hands. Free-tier patrons have no fee impact until they upgrade to a paid tier.
Yes, and most serious creators do. ConvertKit or Mailchimp typically handle email nurturing for free subscribers while Patreon manages paid membership. Some creators use Podia or Teachable for standalone course sales and route recurring supporters to Patreon. If you're running affiliate links alongside memberships, the Affiliate Marketing Earnings Calculator on simple-calculator.online helps model that income stream separately so you get a clean picture of total creator revenue.
Plug your own tier pricing and patron counts into the calculator above to see your exact net monthly and annual figures — including how many patrons you'd need to hit a specific income target.