What is Ko-fi and how does it work?
·Founder, Stakk
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10 October 2026
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7 min read
Ko-fi is a page where people pay a creator through tips, memberships, commissions and a shop. It is built for creators whose audience wants to support them directly, and every payment goes into the creator's own PayPal or Stripe account. Ko-fi costs nothing a month: Standard, the default, takes 5% of every payment, Ko-fi Free takes 0% on tips and 5% on the rest, and Gold is $12 a month for 0% on everything, with card processing on top. Checked 30 September 2026.
That is the short version. Below is what a creator actually does on Ko-fi, where the money goes, and the few things it is not built to do.
What is Ko-fi used for?
Ko-fi is used to let an audience pay a creator directly, often in small amounts. Ko-fi's pricing page names four ways money arrives: tips, memberships, shop sales and commissions. A creator shares one link to their Ko-fi page, and a supporter who clicks it can pay in whichever of those ways the page offers.
The page is built around support first and the shop second. Most of what Ko-fi adds sits around that idea: posts that only paying supporters can see, membership tiers, and roles in a Discord server for the people who back you.
That makes Ko-fi a good fit for anyone who makes things in public and has an audience that wants to chip in. It is a weaker fit when the page has turned into a store, which comes up further down.
How does Ko-fi work?
You set up a Ko-fi page, connect your own PayPal or Stripe account, and supporters pay you through the page. Ko-fi does not process payments itself. Ko-fi's pricing page says you get paid directly and that it never holds your money, so each payment goes from the supporter into the account you connected.
Supporters can pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Cash App, PayPal or Venmo. PayPal and Venmo only work if you have connected PayPal.
Two fees come off each payment. One is Ko-fi's service fee, which depends on how your page is set up. The other is the processor's fee, which belongs to Stripe or PayPal, not to Ko-fi. Ko-fi describes its charges as the service fee plus standard payment processor fees, and says there are no buyer fees, no payout fees and no marketing fees on top.
New creators start on Standard, which switches on the advanced tools. Ko-fi Free gives those tools up in exchange for 0% on tips. Gold is a paid subscription that takes the service fee to zero.
What can you sell on Ko-fi?
Digital downloads, physical items, memberships and commissions, as well as tips that buy nothing at all. The shop holds the downloads and the physical items. Memberships are monthly, come in tiers, and can unlock posts that only paying supporters see. Commissions come with slots, so you can cap how many orders you take on at once.
Standard adds scheduled posts and a shorter page name on top of supporter-only content. Ko-fi Free keeps tips at 0% but has none of the advanced features.
What you sell changes what you pay. Tips are the one payment type that Ko-fi Free takes nothing from. Shop sales, memberships and commissions carry 5% on Free and on Standard, and 0% only on Gold. So a page that mostly sells files pays the 5% whichever free setup it is on, and the 0% on tips only helps a page that mostly receives tips.
How much does Ko-fi cost?
Nothing a month unless you choose Gold. Standard takes 5% of every payment, Ko-fi Free takes 0% on tips and 5% on shop sales, memberships and commissions, and Gold is $12 a month for 0% on all of them. Card processing from Stripe or PayPal comes off on top in every case, and Gold does not remove it. The Gold page now opens with the line "You no longer need Ko-fi Gold", and our breakdown of Ko-fi's fees works out what a sale really costs and when Gold pays for itself.
How do you get paid on Ko-fi?
Straight into your own PayPal or Stripe account. Ko-fi's own line is "Supporters pay you, into your own PayPal or Stripe account. We never touch your money." There is no Ko-fi balance to build up, no payout fee and no minimum to clear. From there, Stripe or PayPal pays your bank on its own schedule.
Our own arithmetic on Ko-fi's published 5% and Stripe's published US card rate. On Gold the $1.00 goes away and the $12 a month comes in.
The other side of being paid directly is that you are the seller. Ko-fi says it in its own words: "you are the merchant of record on Ko-fi". Refunds and chargebacks are dealt with in your own PayPal or Stripe account, and when a buyer disputes a charge, the evidence is yours to gather.
That is the same position you are in on every direct-payout platform, Stakk included. Our comparison of platforms that hold your money and platforms that pay you directly explains why that split matters more than a point or two of fees.
What does Ko-fi not do?
Ko-fi does not give you an order bump or a post-purchase upsell, on any setup, Gold included. An order bump is an add-on offered on the checkout before the buyer pays, taken in the same charge. An upsell is a second offer after payment, taken without the buyer typing their card in again. On Ko-fi a sale is one item and one payment, and our look at the missing order bump on Ko-fi covers the nearest workaround.
It does not process payments. You need a PayPal or Stripe account of your own to take money at all, because Ko-fi has no payment system of its own to fall back on.
It does not act as the seller. Because you are the merchant of record, the tax side of each sale sits with you, not with Ko-fi.
And Gold does not make a sale free. It removes Ko-fi's service fee, but the card processor still takes its share of every payment.
Is Ko-fi the same as Buy Me a Coffee?
Close, but not the same. Both are support pages with memberships and a shop attached, both pay out through an account you connect, both headline 5%, and neither has an order bump or an upsell.
The difference is in the fees around the 5%. Buy Me a Coffee has one plan and no way to lower its 5%, and its help center adds a 0.5% payout processing fee, 1% more on payments from outside the US and 0.5% more on subscriptions. Ko-fi has two routes to 0%, tips on Ko-fi Free or everything on Gold, and says it charges no payout fees. Our Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee comparison sets the two side by side.
When would I send you somewhere else?
If your page runs on tips, memberships or commissions, stay on Ko-fi, because Stakk is the wrong choice for it. Stakk has no link-in-bio page builder, no tips, no memberships, no subscriptions, no course hosting and no booking, prices are in US dollars only, and nothing can be priced above $999. Ko-fi Free takes nothing on tips, which is hard to beat, and Ko-fi is cheaper than Stakk on a plain sale too, at 5% plus processing. If the lowest cost per sale is the whole decision, Whop takes 2.7% + $0.30 with no monthly costs and Systeme.io charges 0% on its free plan, and both beat Ko-fi and Stakk.
Want a checkout with a bump next to your Ko-fi page?
You can keep Ko-fi for support and send product buyers to a Stakk checkout instead. Stakk costs nothing a month and takes from 10% + $0.50 a sale, card processing included, and the buyer pays into your own Stripe account, the same way Ko-fi pays you. That is more than Ko-fi's 5%, and what the difference buys is the checkout: the order bump rides the same charge as the product, so it carries one fee rather than two, and the upsell after payment is one tap against the card already on file.