What are Buy Me a Coffee's fees?
·Founder, Stakk
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7 October 2026
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7 min read
Buy Me a Coffee charges no monthly fee and takes a 5% platform fee on every payment, whether it is one-time support, a membership or a shop sale. Underneath that sit Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 card fee, a 0.5% payout processing fee, an extra 1% on payments from outside the US and an extra 0.5% on subscription payments. There is one plan, and nothing lowers the 5%. Checked 30 September 2026.
Buy Me a Coffee publishes all of this in its help center, spread across a few articles. What follows is each line in one place, what a $20 payment really costs once they are added up, and two things about payouts that are easy to miss.
What does Buy Me a Coffee charge on each payment?
A flat 5% platform fee per transaction, and no monthly fee. Buy Me a Coffee's fee article puts it as keeping 95% of what comes in, and the same article lists the smaller lines that sit around it.
| Charge | Rate | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | 5% | Every payment: support, memberships, shop |
| Stripe card processing | 2.9% + $0.30 | Every successful card payment |
| Payout processing | 0.5% | Applied by Stripe to payouts |
| International surcharge | +1% | Payments from outside the US |
| Subscription surcharge | +0.5% | Recurring payments, such as memberships |
| Stakk, for comparison | 10% + $0.50 | Every sale, card processing included, no other lines |
The article says the two surcharges exist to cover the payout processing cost that Stripe imposes. There is no paid tier and no setting that reduces the 5%, so every creator on the platform pays the same rate. That simplicity is a real strength: the whole model fits in one sentence.
What does Stripe add on top of the 5%?
Two things: the card fee and the payout fee. Buy Me a Coffee processes payments through Stripe, which charges 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction and a further 0.5% for payout processing. Neither of those is inside the 5%.
The card fee is the one you can move. Buy Me a Coffee lets you choose whether to absorb it yourself or pass it to your supporters, so the person paying covers it. Its overview article describes it as your choice to make, and on small payments it makes a real difference to what reaches you.
Small payments are where the fixed 30 cents hurts most. The default coffee price is $5. On a $5 payment by US card, the 5% is 25 cents, Stripe's card fee is about 45 cents and the payout fee is about 3 cents, so roughly 72 cents goes, about 14% of the payment. Supporters can pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Cash App in supported regions, and one-time support needs no account.
How much does Buy Me a Coffee take from a $20 payment?
About $1.98 on a one-time payment by US card, if you absorb the card fee. That is $1.00 of platform fee, 88 cents of Stripe card processing and about 10 cents of payout processing.
Our own arithmetic on Buy Me a Coffee's published rates, counting the 0.5% payout fee on the full $20. An international supporter adds $0.20; a membership payment adds $0.10.
The surcharges move it up a little. A one-time payment from outside the US comes to about $2.18. A $20 membership payment from a US supporter is about $2.08, and from an international one about $2.28.
Stakk takes $2.50 on a $20 sale, with card processing included. So Buy Me a Coffee is cheaper than Stakk on a $20 payment in every one of those cases, by 22 cents at the closest, and cheaper again if your supporters cover the card fee. I would rather write that down than have you work it out later.
Does Buy Me a Coffee hold your money before paying you?
It depends which of its own help articles you read, and they do not fully agree.
The newer one, on payouts with Stripe Standard Connect, updated in August 2026, says Buy Me a Coffee now uses Stripe Standard Connect to handle some creator payouts, and later says it has moved all creators to it. On that setup your balance appears only in your own Stripe dashboard, you change the payout schedule there, and your page does not go live until a payout method is connected. That is the good version of a Stripe connection: an account you log into and keep.
The older overview article, from March 2026, describes something different. Once an account reaches $10, Buy Me a Coffee reviews it; after approval, payouts go to your Stripe account every Wednesday, and Stripe then takes around 2 to 7 business days to reach your bank. If you are signing up now, the Payouts tab will show which arrangement your account is on.
What happens to money left in an inactive Buy Me a Coffee account?
After 18 months without a login, it leaves the account one way or the other. The dormancy policy sets out the timeline.
After 12 months with no login, Buy Me a Coffee starts sending weekly reminder emails for six months. Log in at any point and the clock resets. If 18 months pass, the remaining balance is paid out to your connected payout method, with standard platform fees applied, or, if no payout method is connected, refunded to the original supporters. Buy Me a Coffee keeps no platform fee on refunded money. Either way the action cannot be undone, and your page is unpublished until you ask support to reactivate it, which can take up to 30 days.
It is a reasonable policy, and easy to avoid: log in once every 18 months. It is worth knowing about if you run a page you check rarely.
When should you stay on Buy Me a Coffee instead of switching?
If your page runs on support rather than sales, stay where you are. Buy Me a Coffee's one-time support needs no account from the supporter, and its memberships come with monthly or yearly billing, unlimited tiers, free trials and supporter-only posts. Stakk has none of that: no tips, no memberships, no subscriptions or recurring billing. It is the wrong choice for a page built on people supporting you. If you are weighing the two tip jars against each other, our Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee comparison is the more useful read. And if the lowest cost on products is all you want, Systeme.io is free at 0% and Whop takes 2.7% + $0.30, and both undercut Stakk too.
Where Buy Me a Coffee stops is the checkout. The shop sells an item and the transaction ends, with no order bump before payment and no upsell after it, as covered in our look at bumps on Buy Me a Coffee. Stakk ships both on every account with nothing behind a tier. The bump rides the same charge as the product, so it carries one fee rather than two, and the upsell is one tap against the card already on file. That layout came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed.
Want a checkout built for selling rather than support?
Stakk is 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included, no monthly fee and one rate for everyone, and the charge is created on your own Stripe account. That is more than Buy Me a Coffee takes on a $20 payment, and what the difference buys is an order bump and a post-purchase upsell on every account. The upsell is a second charge and takes the fee again, which is the honest version of that sentence.