Ten Per Cent on One Side, Eight to Twelve on the Other

The Published Numbers

Substack charges a flat 10% of subscription revenue on paid publications. The company states this openly on its pricing page, with no tiered variation by publication size or subscriber count. Payment processing — handled through Stripe — sits on top of that, at the standard Stripe rate of approximately 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. Substack does not bundle processing into its headline fee, which means the total deduction a writer sees per subscription payment is closer to 13% before any currency conversion or international fees apply.

Patreon's structure, as published on its own site, breaks into three tiers. The free Lite plan charges 8% of monthly creator income; the Pro plan charges 12%; and the Premium plan, aimed at larger operations requiring dedicated support, also sits at 12% with added services. Payment processing under Patreon's current schedule runs between 2.9% and 5% depending on payment size — standard payments attract the lower rate, small micropayments the higher. As with Substack, processing is itemised separately from the platform fee, so the effective combined deduction on an international patron payment at the Pro level can approach 17%.

What Each Rate Claims to Cover

The distinction between the two companies lies partly in what they say the percentage buys. Substack's pricing disclosure frames its 10% as covering hosting, email infrastructure, and reader discovery tools including its Recommendations network. Patreon's tiered structure formally ties higher rates to additional features — analytics, free memberships for patrons, merchandise tools, and priority customer support at the top tier — making the fee nominally a product bundle rather than a pure take rate.

Neither company includes payment processing in the labelled platform fee, a framing choice that makes both headline numbers smaller than the effective deduction. Commentators on platform pricing have often noted the tendency to foreground a headline percentage while leaving processing and currency costs to separate lines; the same pattern holds in creator-economy subscription platforms.

What the two structures share is transparency at the tier level: both publish their rates without requiring a login to view them, and both itemise processing as a separate line. Where they diverge is in what the percentage itself is said to purchase — Substack treating it as an undifferentiated infrastructure fee, Patreon binding it explicitly to a feature set that expands with the tier.