Digital goods
Ko-fi fee calculator
Tips, memberships, shop sales and commissions. 0% or 5%, plus Stripe or PayPal.
Ko-fi charges a 5% service fee on payments, or nothing on Ko-fi Gold, which costs $12 a month. On the free plan, one-time tips carry no Ko-fi fee at all while memberships, shop sales and commissions still pay 5%; Standard, the default for new creators, charges 5% on every payment type. Ko-fi does not process payments itself: supporters pay your own PayPal or Stripe account, which deducts its usual processing fee from the same payment. So most Ko-fi payments carry two separate charges from two separate companies, and both are counted below.
The sale
Optional — for profit
On a $51.00 sale, $4.33 goes in fees — 8.5% of what the buyer paid: $2.55 to Ko-fi and $1.78 to Stripe — and $46.67 reaches you. You keep 91.5% of the order.
Every line of it
| Buyer pays | item + shipping | $51.00 |
Ko-fi service fee | 5% of $51.00 | −$2.55 |
Stripe card processing Charged by Stripe, not Ko-fi, on the whole payment. | 2.9% of $51.00 | −$1.48 |
Stripe per-transaction fee Charged by Stripe, not Ko-fi, on the whole payment. | $0.30 flat | −$0.30 |
| Total fees | −$4.33 | |
| Reaches your account | $46.67 | |
On this sale, Ko-fi ranks 10 of 29 for what reaches you.
Compare all platformsWhat this calculator does not cover
- Processing is charged by your own Stripe or PayPal account, not by Ko-fi, and Ko-fi says only that the usual processing fees apply. This calculator uses Stripe's and PayPal's published US standard rates. A creator on negotiated or non-US pricing will see a different processing figure; the Ko-fi fee is unaffected.
- Ko-fi states its fee as a share of the payment and does not say that shipping is excluded, so on shop orders with shipping the 5% is applied to the whole payment.
- Stripe memberships that began while you were on Ko-fi Gold keep their 0% Ko-fi fee if you later cancel Gold. Ko-fi says so explicitly; this calculator prices a new payment.
- Supporters can also pay by Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo and Cash App. Those go through your connected Stripe or PayPal account at that processor's own rate for the method, which may differ from the card or PayPal Checkout rate used here.
Ko-fi fees: common questions
How much are Ko-fi fees on a $50 sale?
$4.25 in fees on a $50 sale ($2.50 to Ko-fi and $1.75 to Stripe), leaving you $45.75 — an effective rate of 8.5%. On $100 it is $8.20, leaving $91.80. The effective rate is higher on the smaller sale because part of the fee is a fixed amount per transaction, which weighs more heavily on smaller orders.
What are Ko-fi's fees, exactly?
On a $50 sale, the fees are Ko-fi service fee of $2.50 (5% of $50.00), Stripe card processing of $1.45 (2.9% of $50.00), Stripe per-transaction fee of $0.30 ($0.30 flat). That comes to $4.25 in total. There is no monthly fee.
Does Ko-fi charge fees on shipping?
Yes. Fees on Ko-fi sales are charged as a share of the whole payment, which includes the shipping you charged the buyer. A $50 item with free shipping costs $4.25 in fees; the same item with $10 shipping costs $5.04 — $0.79 more, on shipping money that mostly goes to the carrier. Raising your shipping price raises your Ko-fi bill.
What should I charge on Ko-fi to keep $50?
Work it backwards rather than guessing: at Ko-fi's rates you have to charge more than $50 to keep $50, because the fee is taken from what the buyer pays. The what-to-charge calculator solves for the exact price, including any flat per-transaction fee, and rounds up to the cent so you are never left short.
What does this Ko-fi calculator not include?
Processing is charged by your own Stripe or PayPal account, not by Ko-fi, and Ko-fi says only that the usual processing fees apply. This calculator uses Stripe's and PayPal's published US standard rates. A creator on negotiated or non-US pricing will see a different processing figure; the Ko-fi fee is unaffected.
Are these Ko-fi fees up to date?
They were read from Ko-fi's own published fee schedule on October 4, 2026, and the source is linked on this page so you can check it yourself. An automated check re-reads every source page weekly and flags any that have changed. Fee schedules do move without notice, so where this page and Ko-fi disagree, Ko-fi is right.
That is what the fees on Ko-fi take. What the unit actually earns is another question again, once shipping, advertising and the orders that come back are in the picture — work out the true margin.
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These calculators are free, and they stay free
There is no account, no email wall and nothing for sale here, which is deliberate — it is what lets the site publish what platforms actually charge and link to where each rate came from. Re-reading ten fee schedules every week is the unglamorous part, and it is what keeps the numbers worth trusting. If that saved you a bad listing decision, you are welcome to put a little toward the domain and the hosting. If it did not, please do not.
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