Top 9 lowest fee creator monetization platforms to sell videos and more

If you sell premium videos, subscriptions, courses, communities, or digital content, the platform fee is not a footnote. It is a standing deduction from every sale you make, and over a year it is usually the largest line item between your audience and your bank account.

Looking across the major creator monetization platforms available today, the differences are not small. Some take a percentage of everything you earn. Some charge a flat monthly subscription. A few do both. The right answer depends on what you sell and how much of it you sell, so this comparison shows the arithmetic rather than asserting a winner and moving on.

One platform comes out ahead on cost at almost every level of revenue, and it is the one built specifically for selling video.

1. StageTown: best overall, and the lowest fees

Best for:

Premium video, pay per view, and subscriptions

Platform fee:

0%* on Gold up to $2,000 a month, then 1%. 7% on the free Blue plan

StageTown is a creator monetization platform built around selling premium video content, subscriptions, and pay per view experiences. Creators can sell individual videos or build recurring subscription tiers, which means the same audience can be monetized more than one way without running two separate products.

What separates StageTown from the rest of this list is the fee model. On the Gold plan, currently $20 per month on a limited time sale, down from $100, the StageTown platform fee on eligible video sales is 0%* on the first $2,000 of monthly volume, with 1% applying to the excess above that. Payment processing is charged separately, as it is everywhere.

That structure has a property percentage based pricing can never have: the more you sell, the cheaper it gets as a share of your revenue. A percentage fee grows in lockstep with your success. A flat $20 does not move.

The rest of the platform is built to the same standard. The editor, the checkout, and the creator dashboard are designed to be genuinely good to use rather than merely functional, video is hosted natively at high quality, and Gold includes priority white glove concierge support, so questions reach a person rather than a queue. Best design, best platform, best support, and the lowest fees in the category.

The actual math at $20 per month

Headline pricing is easy to compare and easy to misread. What matters is the effective rate: what you end up paying as a percentage of what you sold. Here is StageTown Gold at the sale price against a standard 7% platform fee, at four levels of monthly sales. Gold includes $2,000 of monthly volume at no platform fee and charges 1% on the excess, which is why the Gold column stops being flat at $5,000.

Gold includes $2,000 of payment processing volume each month, and a 1% fee applies to the excess above that, not to the whole month. That is where the $50 and $100 figures come from: at $5,000 of sales you pay $20 plus 1% of the $3,000 above the allowance, and at $10,000 you pay $20 plus 1% of $8,000. Even at ten thousand dollars a month, the effective rate is 1%.

Run it the other way and the break even is early. A 7% fee costs $20 at roughly $286 of monthly sales. Past that point, every additional dollar you sell is cheaper on Gold, and the gap widens the more you grow.

StageTown against a $99 per month platform

Flat monthly pricing is not automatically cheap either, and it is rarely as flat as it looks. Skool, the best known community platform in this category, publishes $99 per month for Pro, and charges 2.9% and $0.30 per checkout on top, stepping up to 3.9% only on an individual sale over $900. On $2,000 across 100 sales that is about $88 of fees on top of the $99 plan.

That is $948 a year of difference on identical revenue, before a single feature is compared. Strip out the card processing both platforms pay and the plan comparison is $20 against $99. For a creator whose product is video rather than a community forum, that is difficult to justify.

2. Skool

Best for:

Communities, courses, coaching, memberships

Platform fee:

Hobby: $9 plus 10% and $0.30 a sale. Pro: $99 plus 2.9% and $0.30, or 3.9% on a sale over $900

Skool combines creator monetization with community management. Creators charge members a recurring subscription for access to private communities, courses, and content, and it is genuinely strong at what it was built for.

It is popular with educators, coaches, and creators whose community is the product itself rather than a benefit attached to one.

Pricing: two plans, and the cheaper one is not the cheaper one. Hobby is $9 per month with a 10% and $0.30 fee on every sale, limited to a single admin and without the advanced plugins or custom URLs. Pro is $99 per month with 2.9% and $0.30 per checkout, stepping up to 3.9% and $0.30 only on an individual transaction over $900 rather than on cumulative monthly spend, and it includes every feature with unlimited members and courses. It is worth being precise here, because Skool is often described as having no fees of its own. On $2,000 across 100 sales of $20, Hobby comes to about $239 a month and Pro to about $187, so the plan that looks ten times cheaper is the more expensive of the two at that volume.

Against StageTown: compare like with like and the gap is wide. The same 100 sales on StageTown Gold come to about $108 all in, against roughly $187 on Skool Pro or $239 on Hobby. Against Pro that is about $948 a year on identical revenue. Skool is the better home for a community. For selling video, you are paying a community platform's price for a job it was not built to do.

3. Patreon

Best for:

Recurring memberships and exclusive content

Platform fee:

10% for creators who joined after August 2025

Patreon is the most established creator membership platform, and its name recognition is an asset in itself. Creators offer several membership tiers, giving subscribers exclusive videos, posts, community access, and other benefits.

The trade off is that the model is built around recurring membership. Selling a single video to a casual fan is not what it was designed for.

Pricing: no monthly fee, and a flat 10% commission on earnings for creators who joined after August 2025. Only grandfathered accounts still sit on the older 5%, 8%, or 12% tiers. Processing is 2.9% and $0.30 on standard card and Apple Pay, and changes to 5% and $0.10 on payments under $3, which matters if your tiers are cheap. One more thing to check before modelling revenue: a purchase made through the iOS app can attract Apple's 30% App Store fee in applicable cases. Patreon treats US membership purchases differently, but an iOS sale should not be assumed to carry the same economics as a web checkout.

Against StageTown: 10% of $2,000 is $200 a month before processing, against $20, and unlike a flat fee it grows every time you do. At $10,000 of monthly sales Patreon's commission alone is $1,000 where Gold is $100, before any App Store consideration.

4. Gumroad

Best for:

Digital products and one off purchases

Platform fee:

10% and $0.50 a sale, 30% through Discover

Gumroad lets creators sell digital products without building an ecommerce store: videos, files, ebooks, courses, and memberships. Setup is fast, which is its real strength.

Because pricing is percentage based, the cost grows with every sale, which is the structure this article is measuring against.

Pricing: no monthly fee, and a flat 10% and $0.50 platform commission per sale, with card processing of about 2.9% and $0.30 stacked on top of that rather than included in it. The fixed components are what make low ticket items expensive: on a $5 sale the platform cut alone is $1.00, an effective 20% before processing, tax, or refunds. Sales that come through the Gumroad Discover marketplace carry 30% instead.

Against StageTown: the widest gap on this list. On $2,000 across 100 sales, Gumroad comes to about $338 all in against $108 on Gold, and a third of that is the platform cut alone. The zero monthly cost is real, but only until you sell roughly $200 a month, and the per sale charge punishes exactly the cheap impulse buys that video sells well.

5. SubscribeStar

Best for:

Subscriptions and exclusive content

Platform fee:

5%

SubscribeStar focuses on recurring creator subscriptions, with exclusive content and perks for subscribers building toward predictable monthly revenue.

Pricing: no monthly fee, and a 5% platform fee on subscriptions, plus payment processing.

Against StageTown: 5% of $2,000 is $100 a month against $20. The two models cross at about $400 of monthly sales, and past that the percentage only widens the gap.

6. Buy Me a Coffee

Best for:

Tips, memberships, simple digital products

Platform fee:

5%

Buy Me a Coffee is built around simple audience support: one time payments, memberships, and straightforward digital products, with no payment infrastructure to assemble yourself.

Pricing: no monthly fee, and a 5% platform fee on supporter income, plus payment processing.

Against StageTown: $100 a month on $2,000 of sales against $20. Excellent for one off support, and the fee structure suits money that arrives in small irregular amounts rather than a catalogue of priced videos.

7. Fourthwall

Best for:

Storefronts, merchandise, memberships

Platform fee:

5% on digital, none on merch

Fourthwall gives creators a branded storefront for merchandise, digital products, and memberships. If physical merchandise is a meaningful part of your revenue, it is a strong specialist choice.

Pricing: no monthly fee. Physical merchandise carries no platform fee, though production, fulfillment, shipping, refunds, and card processing all come out of the margin. Digital products and memberships carry a 5% fee on the free plan, which the paid tier removes, plus payment processing.

Against StageTown: around $100 a month on $2,000 of digital supporter income against $20. Fourthwall earns its place if you sell physical merchandise, which StageTown does not do at all. For digital video revenue, the percentage is the more expensive shape.

8. Kajabi

Best for:

Courses, coaching, established businesses

Platform fee:

0%, or 2% on Basic with a third party processor

Kajabi is a comprehensive platform for knowledge products, bundling courses, memberships, websites, and email marketing together. It is aimed at established businesses that want one system rather than the cheapest possible fee.

Pricing: a monthly subscription, roughly $69 to $319 per month depending on tier, plus payment processing. One detail worth knowing: in markets where Kajabi Payments is available, using a third party processor instead adds a 2% Kajabi fee on top of that processor's own charge on the Basic plan. Using Kajabi Payments avoids the extra platform charge.

Against StageTown: $69 a month at the entry tier against $20, and $319 at the top, before the 2% third party surcharge applies. You are buying a course business suite, email marketing and websites included. If you want those tools the price is defensible. If you want to sell videos, most of it goes unused.

9. Podia

Best for:

Courses, memberships, downloads

Platform fee:

0% on Shaker, 5% on Mover

Podia covers digital downloads, courses, memberships, and webinars, with a storefront and customer management in one place. A practical all in one option for a digital product business.

Pricing: tiered, plus payment processing. Mover is around $49 per month and still carries a 5% fee; Shaker is around $99 per month with no fee on top. Which is cheaper flips at $1,000 of monthly revenue, before processing: below it Mover wins, above it Shaker does. At $2,000 Mover costs $49 plus $100, which is $149, against $99 on Shaker.

Against StageTown: $99 a month on the plan that actually removes the fee, against $20. Podia gives you a fuller storefront and customer management, so the extra buys something. It is still five times the cost for the same $2,000 of sales.

Every platform, side by side

Published pricing for all nine, in the order they are ranked above. Every row models the same month: $2,000 of sales across 100 transactions of $20, with card processing included at the standard 2.9% and $0.30 where the platform does not set its own rate. Processing applies everywhere, StageTown included, so leaving it out of one and not another is how these comparisons usually go wrong.

**Effective rate is the total cost divided by the $2,000 modelled above, not a rate any platform quotes. It moves with your own numbers: a different average sale price changes the per transaction charges, a different monthly volume changes where StageTown's allowance and Skool's high ticket step apply, and processing varies by country, card type, and provider. Treat the last two columns as a like for like model rather than a quote.

StageTown Gold is the cheapest row in the table, and most of what it does cost is card processing that every platform on this list pays anyway. Strip that out and the plan comparison is $20 against $99 on Skool Pro, $69 on Kajabi, and percentage cuts of 5% to 10% elsewhere. Nothing here reaches a creator's audience for less.

Platform fee comparison: flat fee versus percentage models

Pricing across this category falls into three shapes, and the shape matters more than the headline number:

• Percentage based. You pay a share of every transaction. Predictable at small scale, and steadily more expensive as you grow.
• Monthly subscription. You pay a fixed amount and keep more of each sale. Cheap at volume, and expensive in a quiet month.
• Hybrid. A monthly fee plus a reduced transaction fee.

StageTown comes out cheapest because it takes the subscription model and sets the number low. At $20 per month on the current sale, it works out below a 7% cut for any creator selling more than about $286 a month, and below a $99 flat plan from the first dollar. The 0%* applies to the first $2,000 of monthly volume and 1% to the rest, so at $10,000 of sales the effective rate is still around 1%, which is where the saving comes from.

Which creator platform has 0% platform fees?

Three on this list reach 0%, and they get there differently. StageTown Gold charges $20 a month and takes nothing from eligible video sales within the included $2,000 of monthly volume, with 1% on the excess. Kajabi charges from $69 a month, and Podia removes its fee on the Shaker plan at about $99. In every case the 0% refers to the platform's own cut, and none of them include payment processing, which the processor charges regardless.

How much do video platforms charge per sale?

On a single $20 sale, the arithmetic is stark. StageTown Gold takes nothing of its own, so processing of about $0.88 is the only deduction. A 5% platform takes $1.00 on top of that. Patreon's 10% takes $2.00. Gumroad takes $2.50 in platform cut alone, before processing. The cheaper the item, the more a fixed per sale charge hurts: on a $5 video, Gumroad's cut is an effective 20% before a card is even charged.

Which platform has the lowest fees?

StageTown, on the Gold plan, for creators selling video. $20 per month on the limited time sale, with a 0%* platform fee on eligible sales up to $2,000 of monthly volume and a 1% platform fee above that cap. At $2,000 a month the platform fee is nothing, so the $20 is all you pay before payment processing.

Is a flat monthly fee cheaper than a percentage?

Above a certain volume, yes, and the crossover is early. A 7% fee costs the same as $20 at roughly $286 of monthly sales. Below that, the free Blue plan at $0 per month and 7% is the better fit, which is why StageTown offers both.

Do payment processing fees still apply?

Yes. Stripe handles processing and charges its own standard fees, separately from the platform fee. That is true of every platform here, since they all sit on top of a payment processor.

What happens above the included volume?

Gold includes $2,000 of monthly processing volume. Above it, a 1% fee applies to the excess only, and the allowance resets at the start of each month.

The bottom line

The right platform depends on what you are selling. If your product is a community, Skool or Patreon are reasonable homes for it. If you sell digital downloads, Gumroad will get you trading quickly. If you are building a course business, Kajabi and Podia are designed for exactly that.

But if your business is premium video, pay per view releases, and subscriptions, StageTown is the strongest choice available: the best designed creator experience, native high quality video hosting, priority support on Gold, and the lowest fees in the category by a clear margin. At $20 per month, with no platform fee on the first $2,000 of monthly volume and 1% above it,* more of what your audience pays reaches you than on any other platform here.

Ready to keep more of what you earn? See what StageTown Gold costs.