Buy Me a Coffee takes a 5% platform fee on every payment and charges no monthly subscription. That 5% is not the whole story, though. Every payment also goes through Stripe, and Buy Me a Coffee’s own help center lists Stripe’s charges on top: 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction, a 0.5% payout processing fee, an extra 1% when the payment comes from outside the US, and an extra 0.5% when it is a subscription payment.
Put together, a small one-time coffee from a US supporter loses roughly 14% to fees, mostly because the fixed $0.30 card fee weighs heavily on a $5 payment. Larger payments lose a smaller share. The rest of this guide shows where each number comes from, walks through a $5 example line by line, and compares the result with Ko-fi.
The 5% platform fee
This is the part Buy Me a Coffee keeps for itself. Its FAQ says: “We charge a 5% transaction fee, and creators keep 95% of the earnings.” It also says there is no monthly fee and that all features, including publishing and emails, are free for everyone. In other words, the company only earns when you do.
The 5% applies per transaction, whether it is a one-time coffee, a membership payment or a shop sale. There is no paid tier that lowers it, which is different from some competitors that let you pay a monthly fee to drop the platform cut.
Stripe processing fees on top
Buy Me a Coffee’s FAQ says payment processing is handled by Stripe. Its help article “How to calculate charges on your payment” lists the Stripe-side charges a creator should expect: 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction, plus 0.5% for payout processing.
Two surcharges can apply as well. The same article lists +1% for international transactions (outside the US) and +0.5% for subscription payments, such as monthly memberships. So a monthly membership from a supporter in another country can carry both.
A note on the international figure: Stripe’s own public pricing page lists a 1.5% surcharge for international cards and 1% when currency conversion is needed. Those are Stripe’s standard rates for businesses using Stripe directly. Buy Me a Coffee’s help article lists +1% for international payments on its platform. The exact amount you see can depend on your country, your supporter’s card and the currency, so check the breakdown in your own dashboard rather than treating any single number as fixed.
Worked example: a $5 coffee
Example only, rounded to the cent, using the rates published in Buy Me a Coffee’s help center. Assume a US supporter buys one $5 coffee, it is a one-time payment, and you have left the default setting where the card fee comes out of your earnings.
What the supporter pays: $5.00.
Buy Me a Coffee’s 5% platform fee: $0.25. Stripe’s card fee of 2.9% + $0.30: about $0.45 ($0.145 + $0.30). Stripe’s 0.5% payout processing fee: about $0.03. Total fees: about $0.72.
What lands with you: about $4.28, or roughly 86% of the $5. The fixed $0.30 alone is 6% of a $5 payment, which is why small tips lose a bigger share than large ones.
If the same $5 came from a supporter outside the US, the extra 1% adds another $0.05, leaving about $4.23. If it were a $5 monthly membership from that international supporter, the +0.5% subscription surcharge would take roughly another $0.03. Buy Me a Coffee does not publish exactly which amount each percentage is calculated on, so treat these as close estimates and use your payout dashboard for the real figures.
Letting supporters cover the card fee
Buy Me a Coffee lets you push the card fee onto supporters. According to its help article “How to eliminate the credit card fee from your earnings,” the card processing fee is deducted from your earnings by default. You can change this in Settings under “Cover credit card fee,” and then the fee is added at checkout instead.
Buy Me a Coffee’s own example: with supporters covering the fee, a $25 contribution is charged as $26.03, so the card fee does not reduce what you expected to receive. Applying the same 2.9% + $0.30 to our $5 coffee, the supporter would pay about $5.45. The article is about the card fee only; it does not say the 5% platform fee goes away, so expect that to still apply.
Whether to switch it on is a judgment call. Some supporters do not mind an extra 45 cents; others notice the total change at checkout. Small tips are where the setting saves you the most, in percentage terms.
Payout fees, minimums and timing
Beyond the 0.5% payout processing fee in the charges article, Buy Me a Coffee’s payout articles do not list a separate per-withdrawal fee. Its FAQ says you can request a payout once your account reaches $10, and that funds go to your Stripe account and from there to your bank. The homepage FAQ says payouts are available to creators in 44 countries.
Your first payout triggers a one-time account review by Buy Me a Coffee’s moderation team. Its help center says the first payout typically takes 7 to 14 days in total. After that, payouts usually process within one to two business days of reaching your Stripe account, and the bank transfer usually takes 3 to 5 business days.
If you are paid in a currency other than US dollars, Buy Me a Coffee says transactions are shown in the local currency of your connected Stripe Express account, and that Stripe sets a minimum payout threshold by country and currency. It does not publish a currency conversion rate on its own pages, so check Stripe’s cross-border payout terms for your country.
Buy Me a Coffee vs Ko-fi fees
Ko-fi is the most common comparison, and the biggest difference is how each handles one-time tips. Ko-fi’s help center says that on its free plan, one-time tips carry no Ko-fi fee, while a 5% fee applies to everything else: shop items, memberships, monthly tips and commissions. Buy Me a Coffee charges 5% on all of these, including one-time coffees.
Ko-fi also sells a paid tier. Its help center says Ko-fi Gold costs $12 a month for new users and brings the Ko-fi fee to 0% on all payment types. Buy Me a Coffee has no equivalent: the 5% stays no matter what.
On both platforms, the payment processor’s fees still apply. Ko-fi’s help center describes them as typically around 3% + $0.30, paid to your processor rather than to Ko-fi. So the fair comparison is: for a creator who mostly gets one-time tips, Ko-fi’s free plan keeps the platform cut at zero; for a creator selling memberships and products, both take 5% unless you pay for Ko-fi Gold, and the break-even depends on how much you sell each month.
How to keep more of each payment
Encourage larger, less frequent payments. Because $0.30 is fixed, a $15 one-off tip loses a much smaller share than three $5 coffees.
Turn on supporter-paid card fees if your audience is comfortable with it, especially if most of your income comes from small tips.
Watch your international and subscription mix. If most supporters are outside the US or pay monthly, the 1% and 0.5% surcharges add up, so check your dashboard to see what you are actually paying.
Compare total cost, not headline percentage. A 5% platform fee and a 0% platform fee with a monthly subscription can work out the same, or very differently, depending on your volume.
An alternative if you want to keep the 5%
If you sell products, bookings or memberships rather than just tips, a storefront that takes no percentage can be worth comparing. OneSol, for example, gives creators a link-in-bio page, storefront, forms and a digital business card, and takes no cut of sales. Payments go straight to your own Stripe or PayPal account, so you still pay that processor’s normal fees, but nothing on top. Selling requires the Pro plan at $9 a month, so it makes sense once the 5% you would otherwise pay is more than $9 a month, which is around $180 in monthly sales.
Whichever platform you choose, the useful habit is the same: look past the headline fee, add the processor’s cut, and run your own typical payment through the numbers before you commit.