Gumroad vs Ko-fi

Both let someone pay you within minutes of signing up, and both fund themselves from that payment rather than from a subscription. What separates them is how much they take and whether the page is a shop or a tip jar.

The money

Gumroad takes ten per cent plus a fixed charge on a direct sale, rising to thirty through its own marketplace, and nothing about that changes at any volume because there are no plans to move between.

Ko-fi caps its cut at five per cent, charges nothing at all on one-off tips for a creator who never subscribes, and removes the percentage entirely on its single paid tier. It also never holds the money: payments land in your own processor account, so there is nothing to withdraw, no payout fee and no waiting.

That last point is easy to skim past and is the largest structural difference between them.

What the page is

Gumroad is a storefront. It hosts the checkout, supports one-off, subscription and pay-what-you-want pricing, and acts as merchant of record for sales tax — genuine commercial machinery.

Ko-fi is a payment page. The appearance controls are a cover image, one colour, a social preview and the word used for a tip. There is no domain of your own on any plan, no email marketing, and nothing to edit about search settings. Neither of these is winning on appearance; the difference is that Ko-fi is not trying to.

Which should you choose?

Choose Gumroad if you are selling products rather than collecting support, and you want tax handled and a marketplace that might find you buyers.

Pick Ko-fi if an audience wants to pay you directly and you would rather keep almost all of it — accepting that the result is a page at their address that will never look like your business.