Is Patreon or Podia cheaper?

Patreon starts at $0 to start, then 10 percent of earnings plus processing (free plan available). Podia starts at $42 per month billed annually (Mover), or $49 billed monthly (30 days trial).

Patreon vs Podia

An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.

The short answer

Both sides assessed

Patreon compared with Podia

Podia at $84 a month with a 0 percent platform fee hosts a community, courses, a website, a blog, and a checkout on your own domain. Patreon costs nothing until you earn and then takes 10 percent. Crossover is around $1,000 a month in revenue. Above that Podia is dramatically cheaper, and at $50,000 a month it is roughly a quarter of the cost. Patreon's counterargument is discovery and the installed app base, which are real but do not scale in your favour.

Podia compared with Patreon

Patreon costs nothing until you earn and then takes 10 percent forever, with an effective rate of 13 to 20 percent once processing is counted. Podia costs $84 a month flat and takes nothing. Crossover is around $1,000 a month in revenue, and at $50,000 a month Podia costs roughly $1,900 against Patreon's $6,750 or more. Patreon's counterweight is discovery and an installed app base; Podia gives you a website, a blog, courses, and your own domain instead.

Choose Patreon if

Individual creators, podcasters, musicians, artists, and video makers who want to start earning from an audience today with zero fixed cost and zero setup, who value Patreon's installed app base and discovery more than owning the domain, and whose community needs are chats and comments rather than a structured forum.

Choose Podia if

Solo creators, coaches, and very small businesses who want a community, a course, a website, and a checkout on one bill under one brand for well under $100 a month, and who value simplicity and a complete feature set on every plan over depth in any single area.

Side by side

13 attributes

Attribute	Patreon	Podia
Category	Community	Community
Starting price	$0 to start, then 10 percent of earnings plus processing (free plan available)	$42 per month billed annually (Mover), or $49 billed monthly (30 days trial)
Pricing model	No subscription. Patreon charges a percentage of creator earnings, plus payment processing, payout, and currency conversion fees, plus Apple's commission on in app iOS purchases.	Flat monthly subscription across three tiers, all of which include every feature, differing on transaction fee, team seats, and email subscriber allowance.
Free plan	Free to create a page, publish, and build an audience. Fees apply only to earnings, so a creator with no paying members pays nothing.	No
Free trial	Not applicable; the platform is free until you earn	30 days, full feature access, no credit card required
Best for	Individual creators, podcasters, musicians, artists, and video makers who want to start earning from an audience today with zero fixed cost and zero setup, who value Patreon's installed app base and discovery more than owning the domain, and whose community needs are chats and comments rather than a structured forum.	Solo creators, coaches, and very small businesses who want a community, a course, a website, and a checkout on one bill under one brand for well under $100 a month, and who value simplicity and a complete feature set on every plan over depth in any single area.
Setup time	Twenty minutes to a live page taking money. Patreon is by an enormous margin the fastest product in this category to get from nothing to a first paying member, and that speed is a genuine part of what the 10 percent buys.	An afternoon. Podia is deliberately the simplest platform in this category, and a site, a product, a checkout, and a community with several spaces can all be live the same day.
Learning curve	Very low. Tiers, posts, and chats are the only concepts. There is no domain to configure, no entitlement matrix to model, and no payment gateway to connect.	Very low. There are only products, spaces, and plans to understand, with no funnel builder, automation graph, or entitlement matrix to model. This is the main reason people choose it.
Platforms	Web at patreon.com, iOS app, Android app, Private podcast feeds in any podcast app	Web, mobile responsive, No native or branded mobile apps
Compliance	GDPR, PCI DSS handled by Patreon as merchant of record, Sales tax and VAT handled by Patreon	GDPR, PCI DSS via Stripe and PayPal, Sales tax and VAT handling across 230 countries
Founded	2013	2014
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, United States	New York, New York, United States
Ownership	Venture-backed, privately held	Venture-backed but profitable and independent

Strengths and limitations

Patreon

Strengths

Zero fixed cost. No subscription, no trial clock, and no bill until members pay you, which no other product in this category offers.
The largest installed mobile app base in creator memberships, with millions of people who already have Patreon accounts and saved payment details, which removes real checkout friction.
Genuine discovery. Patreon's directory, recommendations, and automated growth tools can bring you members you did not already have, which nothing else here does at all.
Broad publishing for free: native video hosting, livestreaming, private podcast feeds with Spotify integration, email newsletters, and a digital shop.

Limitations

Ten percent forever, on top of processing, payout, and currency conversion, with an effective rate of 13 to 20 percent depending on average pledge size. At scale this is the most expensive model in the category by a wide margin.
Apple takes 30 percent of new memberships bought in the iOS app, and creators outside the United States cannot opt out; the workaround raises prices for iOS members by roughly 43 percent.
No custom domain, no white labelling, and no way to remove Patreon's brand. Your community lives at patreon.com and looks like Patreon.
The community layer is chats, comments, and DMs. There is no forum, no spaces with independent permissions, no useful search across history, and no way to build a knowledge base.

Podia

Strengths

Every feature on every plan. Community, courses, coaching, events, downloads, website, blog, landing pages, and custom domain are not tiered, which removes the usual pricing page archaeology.
Zero platform transaction fee on Shaker and Earthquaker, so at high revenue Podia is cheaper than Circle, Patreon, Memberful, or Podia's own Mover plan by a wide margin.
Unlimited products on every plan, which suits download and template sellers who would immediately breach Teachable's and Kajabi's entry tier caps.
The 2026 community relaunch produced a genuinely complete product: spaces, group chat, direct messaging in both directions, profiles with privacy controls, badges, search, pinned posts, welcome messages, and member controlled notification frequency.

Limitations

Email subscriber allowances of 100, 500, and 1,000 are very small, so email marketing is included in name more than in substance and most creators will keep or pay for something else.
No branded mobile app at any tier and no path to one, which puts Podia behind Teachable at $39 and Kajabi at $179.
The 5 percent fee on Mover makes the headline price misleading for anyone selling more than about $900 a month.
Community permissions and moderation are simpler than Circle's, with less granular roles and no automated spam classification, which will bind on communities beyond a few thousand members.

Pricing compared

Patreon

No subscription. Patreon charges a percentage of creator earnings, plus payment processing, payout, and currency conversion fees, plus Apple's commission on in app iOS purchases.

Standard (all new creators)10 percent
Legacy Lite5 percent
Legacy Pro8 percent
Legacy PremiumApproximately 11 to 12 percent

Patreon is the cheapest option in this category up to roughly $1,000 a month in earnings and the most expensive one above roughly $5,000. Below the threshold, paying nothing until money arrives is genuinely valuable, and no subscription platform can match a zero fixed cost start when you do not know whether anyone will pay. Above it, the arithmetic becomes brutal: a page earning $50,000 a month hands over between $6,750 and $9,450 depending on pledge size, where Podia would charge about $1,900 and throw in a website, courses, and a real community. What you buy with that money is not software, because Patreon's community tooling is worse than everything else here. What you buy is discovery, an installed mobile app base with saved payment details, and the fact that setup takes twenty minutes and requires no decisions. That is worth 10 percent when you are starting and worth very little once you have an audience that would follow you anywhere.

Podia

Flat monthly subscription across three tiers, all of which include every feature, differing on transaction fee, team seats, and email subscriber allowance.

Mover$42
Shaker$84
Earthquaker$150

Shaker at $84 a month with a 0 percent platform fee is the most complete package under $100 in this category. You get a website with a blog, unlimited courses and downloads, coaching, events, a genuine community with spaces, chat, DMs, profiles, badges, and search, a checkout with tax handling in 230 countries, and a custom domain, on one bill. Circle at $89 gives you a better community and takes 2 percent of your sales; Kajabi at $179 gives you far more marketing machinery. The honest limits are three: the email subscriber allowances are so small that email is effectively a trial feature rather than an included one, there is no branded mobile app at any price, and the community, while complete, is simpler than Circle's on permissions and moderation. For a solo operator who wants one subscription and no fee on sales, this is the best value on the page. For a team of five running a large paid community, it will feel thin.

Editorial verdict on each

Patreon

Patreon is the right first move and the wrong long term home. Nothing else lets you go from no infrastructure to a paying audience in twenty minutes at zero fixed cost, with native video, livestreams, private podcast feeds, an email list you can export, automatic Discord role granting, and an app that millions of potential supporters already have installed with a card on file. For a creator who does not yet know whether anyone will pay, that combination is worth 10 percent and there is no honest alternative. The problem is that the 10 percent never stops, processing pushes the effective rate to between 13 and 20 percent, Apple takes 30 percent of iOS signups with no opt out outside the United States, and the community layer is chats and comments rather than anything you could call a platform. At $50,000 a month you are paying Patreon between $6,750 and $9,450 while Podia would charge about $1,900 and include a website, courses, and a better community. Start here, build an email list off platform from day one, and treat the migration to Memberful, Podia, or Circle as a question of when rather than whether.

Read the full Patreon profile

Podia

Best Value

Podia is the best value all in one in this category for a solo operator, and the 2026 community relaunch finally makes it a real community platform rather than a course tool with a comments section. Shaker at $84 a month billed annually gives you a website, a blog, unlimited courses and downloads, coaching, events, spaces with group chat and direct messages, member profiles and badges, search, a checkout with tax handling in 230 countries, and a custom domain, with zero platform fee on your sales. At $50,000 a month in member revenue that fee structure makes it cheaper than Circle by around $1,000 a month. The three things to check before buying are all real: the email subscriber allowance is so small that email is effectively a demo feature, there is no branded mobile app at any price and never will be, and the community is simpler than Circle's on permissions and moderation in ways a large community will feel. Buy Podia if you are one or two people who want one subscription, one domain, and no cut taken. Buy Circle if the community itself is the business, and Kajabi if email marketing at scale is how you sell.

Read the full Podia profile

Patreon profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Podia last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.