The free Patreon alternative
Payly takes no platform fee, no monthly fee and no commission on memberships. Members pay straight into your own PayPal or Stripe account, which charges its standard processing fee.
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Patreon takes 10% of each payment on pages published after August 4, 2025, and older pages may still pay 5%, 8% or 11%. Payly takes no cut.
With 100 members paying $5 a month by card, a creator keeps $455.00 on Payly and $404.75 on Patreon's 10% plan. That counts card processing and Patreon's payout fee.
Patreon charges $0.25 for a US bank payout, or 1% for a PayPal payout. Payly never holds your money, so it has no payout fee. PayPal and Stripe each offer a free standard payout to your bank.
Patreon is a large platform with real strengths, and this is where its costs add up.
Pages published after August 4, 2025 pay Patreon 10%. Older pages keep a legacy rate of 5%, 8% or 11% only while they stay published without a break. Unpublishing, even briefly, moves a page to 10%, so Patreon asks legacy creators to pause instead.
Patreon also takes 2.9% + $0.30 for processing, then $0.25 for each US bank payout, or 1% for a PayPal payout. On Payly the only fee is PayPal's or Stripe's own, charged to your own account.
Payly is not a payment processor. Members pay your own PayPal or Stripe account directly. Your page runs on your own free Cloudflare account, with your own domain if you like, and you can download your members as a CSV.
Patreon has an app, chats, and email and push notifications for new posts. Its posts can hold video and audio. Payly does not email members about new posts, and a Payly post holds text, links and a cover image.
A creator with 100 members paying $5 a month, $500 in all, with every member paying by card.
| Cost | Payly$0/mo | Patreon10% plan, $0/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | $0 | $0 |
| Platform fee | $0.00 | $50.00 (10% of $500) |
| Card processing, 2.9% + $0.30 a payment | $45.00 | $45.00 |
| Payout fee, one US bank payout | $0.00 | $0.25 |
| Total fees, and what you keep from $500 | $45.00, you keep $455.00 | $95.25, you keep $404.75 |
Every member pays by card, with no sales tax, refunds or disputes, and each fee is rounded to the cent per payment. Payly's processing is Stripe's standard US card rate, 2.9% + $0.30, charged to your own Stripe account. Patreon's own rate is also 2.9% + $0.30, and Patreon takes its 10% and its fees from your earnings. The 10% is for pages published after August 4, 2025; on a legacy 8% page you would keep $414.75. If every member paid with US PayPal, you would keep $434.00 on Payly (3.49% + $0.49, charged to your own PayPal account) and $404.75 on Patreon (2.9% + $0.30). Not counted: Apple's 30% on purchases made in Patreon's iPhone app, currency conversion, payments from outside the US, instant payouts, and Cloudflare or domain costs. Stripe also lists a separate fee for recurring billing, which is not counted. Patreon pricing as published November 2026, from its Help Center.
You set the levels and write the posts. PayPal or Stripe collects each payment.
In Your sites, click New and choose Creator memberships. Start from a template or from scratch.
Name each level, set its monthly price and, if you like, a yearly one, and say what members get. Add a free level too.
Your page runs on your own free Cloudflare account, like a store. Then write your first post.
Yes. There is no monthly fee, no transaction fee and no paid tier. PayPal and Stripe charge their standard processing fees, as they would on any platform. How can this possibly be free?
On a page published after August 4, 2025, Patreon takes 10% of each payment. Processing adds 2.9% + $0.30, or 3.9% + $0.30 for PayPal or Venmo from members outside the US. Payouts cost $0.25 by US bank or 1% by PayPal. Patreon also lists a 2.5% fee when a member pays in a currency other than your payout currency, and its articles differ on who bears it. Older pages may still pay 5%, 8% or 11%. There is no monthly fee, and you pay the platform, processing and payout fees out of your earnings.
Yes, for every page published since August 4, 2025, which pays Patreon 10%: that adds $0.50 to a $5 payment. Even with PayPal, whose fee on Payly is higher than Patreon's processing ($0.66 against $0.45 on $5), Payly keeps you more. Only Patreon's oldest legacy plan, Founders (5%), comes out about even on a small PayPal payment, before Patreon's $0.25 payout fee.
Quite a lot. Patreon has an app, chats and group notes, and email and push notifications for new posts. Its posts can hold video, audio and files. Payly does not email members about new posts, and a Payly post holds formatted text, links and a cover image, so video and audio are links. Members who pay with PayPal cannot change their own level on Payly. Payly's pages do not list an app, chats or group messages. If reach and member tools matter more to you than the fee, Patreon may suit you better.
Payly has no importer for creator pages, so moving means setting your page up again. Start a creator page, add your levels and prices, copy over your posts, connect your own PayPal or Stripe account and publish. Then share the new link with your members. They join your new page and pay through your own account, because Payly cannot move their payments from Patreon. Nothing changes on your Patreon page until you change it, so you can run both for a while.
PayPal and Stripe charge their standard processing fees. Your page runs on your own free Cloudflare account. Its free plan holds up to 10 creator pages, and its $5 a month plan holds up to 500, paid to Cloudflare. A domain of your own costs whatever your registrar charges. Payly stays free either way. What the free plan covers
Your page, your payment account, your members. The only thing you pay is normal PayPal and Stripe processing fees.
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