Gumroad Fees vs Payhip vs Lemon Squeezy (and Others): Where to Sell Digital Products and Keep More

Every few weeks someone asks me the same question in slightly different words: "Where should I sell my ebook (or template, or preset pack) so the platform doesn't eat my profit?" And almost every time, they've already picked a platform by its headline fee. Then the first payout arrives, it's smaller than they expected, and they start reading the help center. This guide is the help center reading done for you. I start with exactly what Gumroad charges, because that's what most people search for, then put Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Payhip, Stan Store, Podia, Systeme.io, Ko-fi and Etsy side by side, with worked examples at $9, $29, $99 and $299 and the tax and payout details that change the real math.

Gumroad fees: what you pay on each sale

Gumroad charges 10% + $0.50 per sale on direct sales and a flat 30% on sales that come through Gumroad Discover, its marketplace. There is no monthly fee. On direct sales, card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 comes on top of the 10% + $0.50, and PayPal fees come on top too. The 30% Discover fee already includes all processing.

"Direct sales" means sales through your Gumroad profile or links you share yourself: your bio, your newsletter, a YouTube description. "Discover" means a new customer found you through Gumroad's own marketplace on gumroad.com. That difference matters a lot, because you can control which one happens most of the time (more on that in the tricks section).

Here's what that looks like at four example prices, for a buyer paying by card. Example prices, my arithmetic, fees from Gumroad's help center:

Look at the $9 row. The two fixed parts, $0.50 to Gumroad and $0.30 to the card processor, are $0.80 before any percentage is applied, almost 9% of the price on their own. That's why cheap products feel the fees the most, on every platform with a fixed per-sale charge.

A few more Gumroad details that most fee articles skip:

• High-volume discount. Once your paid sales in a calendar month reach $20,000, new direct sales that month cost 5% + $0.50 instead of 10% + $0.50. It applies automatically and resets on the 1st of each month. Discover sales stay at 30%.
• Affiliate sales. Fees on a sale made by an affiliate are split between you and the affiliate in proportion to the commission. Give an affiliate 30% and they carry 30% of the fees.
• Refunds. When you refund a sale, Gumroad returns its own fee on the refunded part and keeps only the payment-processing portion, because processors don't return it.
• Taxes. Gumroad acts as the merchant of record for all sales, so it collects and pays sales tax and VAT worldwide. That's a real reason the fee is higher, and I explain why it matters below.

All eight platforms at a glance

The short version: Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy charge a percentage and handle taxes for you; Payhip charges a smaller percentage that shrinks as you pay a monthly fee and handles EU and UK VAT plus US and Canadian sales tax; Stan Store, Podia's upper plans, Systeme.io and Ko-fi Gold take 0% per sale but leave taxes with you; Etsy brings its own buyers and charges marketplace fees for it.

Two things stand out. First, "no monthly fee" never means "free"; it means you pay per sale instead of per month. Second, the tax column is not a footnote. It's the reason two platforms that look 8 percentage points apart can cost almost the same once you sell to buyers in other countries.

What you keep at $9, $29, $99 and $299

At every price, the 0% platforms leave the most money per sale, Lemon Squeezy and Payhip Plus are in the middle, and Gumroad Discover leaves the least. The ranking shifts once monthly fees come in, which is the next section.

Assumptions for this table, so you can redo it for your case: a US buyer paying by card, card processing at Stripe's standard US rate of 2.9% + $0.30 wherever processing isn't included, no monthly fee counted yet, taxes paid by the buyer on top of the price. These are example prices, and the math was run in a script, not in my head.

What I take from this table:

• Cheap products punish fixed fees. At $9, Gumroad direct takes almost 22% and even the 0% platforms lose about 6% to card processing alone. If most of your catalog is under $10, bundle items or raise the price; the fees won't get kinder.
• At $99 and up, the gaps become dollars, not cents. The difference between Gumroad direct and a 0% platform on a $299 product is about $30 per sale. Ten sales a month and that's a nice dinner every week.
• Lemon Squeezy's surcharges add up. Its 5% + $0.50 looks close to Payhip Plus for US card buyers, but an international buyer paying with PayPal adds 3 percentage points.
• Etsy sits between Payhip and Gumroad. You pay for a marketplace that already has buyers searching. Offsite Ads can add 15% on orders Etsy attributes to its ads (12% once a shop has made $10,000 in the past year), capped at $100 per order.

Which plan is cheapest at your sales volume?

Under roughly 10 sales a month, no-monthly-fee plans win; somewhere between $250 and $1,000 a month in sales, a cheap monthly plan starts paying for itself; above a few thousand dollars a month, the 0% plans win clearly. Here's the same $29 product at three volumes, monthly fees included (billed-yearly price for Podia):

Before you rush to Systeme.io because it tops every column: it's the cheapest because it does the least on the money side. You're the seller, so taxes are your job, and the free plan gives you one course and three funnels. Fees are one line of the decision, not the whole decision.

The switch points worth remembering (all simple division, all examples):

• Payhip Free to Plus: at about $967 in monthly sales (the $29 fee divided by the 3-point difference). Plus to Pro at $3,500.
• Ko-fi Gold: pays for itself at $240 a month in shop sales ($12 divided by 5%).
• Podia Mover to Shaker: at about $840 a month in sales.
• Stan Store vs Gumroad direct: Stan's $29 a month is cheaper than Gumroad's 10% + $0.50 from the 21st sale of a $9 product, the 9th sale of a $29 product, the 3rd sale of a $99 product and the very first sale of a $299 product. But Stan leaves taxes with you, and Gumroad doesn't.
• Gumroad above $20,000 a month: a $99 direct sale then costs about $8.62 in fees instead of $13.57.

Want to see how many sales your traffic could realistically bring before you pick a plan? Plug your visitors and conversion rate into the earnings calculator; it works the same for your own product as for an affiliate offer.

Merchant of record: why the "expensive" platforms can be cheaper

A merchant of record is the company that legally sells the product to your customer. When the platform is the merchant of record (Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy are), it charges the right tax, files the returns and pays the tax authorities, and you get a payout. When you're the seller (Stan, Podia, Systeme.io, Ko-fi), the tax obligations are yours, even if the software helps calculate them.

This sounds like accountant talk until you sell a $29 ebook to someone in Germany. Digital products sold to EU consumers are taxed at the buyer's country rate, and a seller based outside the EU has to register in one EU country under the EU's non-Union One Stop Shop scheme and file a VAT return every quarter. The UK, the US states with economic-nexus rules, Australia and others have their own versions. One sale doesn't make you a tax department, but a product that sells steadily worldwide eventually does.

I run two SaaS businesses, and the lesson I'd pass on from that side is simple: the processing fee is the cost you see, and tax compliance is the cost you discover later. A merchant of record converts an unknown future cost (registrations, filings, an accountant, the risk of getting it wrong) into a known percentage today. For a small seller with buyers in dozens of countries, paying 5–10 points more for that can be the cheapest option on the table.

Payhip is the middle ground. It acts as your reseller for EU and UK VAT and files those returns quarterly, and its tax page says it also collects and pays US and Canadian sales tax as a marketplace facilitator. For other countries you set the rates and Payhip passes the tax money to you to report yourself. The US part is new: Payhip's help center says it took over collecting and paying US sales tax on July 1, 2026.

Platform by platform: who each one is really for

Each platform wins in one situation and loses in others. Here's where I'd use each one, and what to watch for.

Gumroad: the easiest start, the highest cut at volume

Gumroad is the platform people start on because it takes five minutes and costs nothing until you sell. It handles worldwide taxes as merchant of record, has a built-in affiliate system, memberships and a marketplace. The trade-off is the fee: 10% + $0.50 plus processing is the most expensive option in my tables once you sell regularly, and Discover sales cost 30%.

Gumroad makes the most sense for a first product, for creators with a global audience who don't want tax paperwork, and for sellers above $20,000 a month, where the 5% + $0.50 high-volume rate kicks in. One real warning: buying your own product to "test" or speed up the account review is treated as fraud and can get you banned. Gumroad has a test purchase feature for that.

Lemon Squeezy: a merchant of record in transition

Lemon Squeezy charges 5% + $0.50 per sale, all-inclusive of processing and tax handling, with surcharges: +1.5% for buyers outside the US, +1.5% for PayPal payments, +0.5% for subscription payments, +5% on payments recovered by abandoned-cart emails and +3% on sales referred by affiliates. It's popular with software sellers because of license keys and subscription tools.

The status question matters here. Stripe acquired Lemon Squeezy in July 2024. In a January 2026 update, the Lemon Squeezy team said it is now building Stripe Managed Payments, Stripe's own merchant-of-record product, which then supported merchants in 35+ countries and was opening up from a waitlist; the stated goal is an easy migration path for Lemon Squeezy users. The same post admitted slower support responses and less frequent product updates during the transition. Lemon Squeezy is still running, and no shutdown date has been announced.

Stripe Managed Payments itself charges 3.5% per transaction on top of standard Stripe processing (2.9% + $0.30 for US cards), with Stripe, through its Link entity, acting as the merchant of record for digital products and software. My read: Lemon Squeezy is fine to use today, but build on it as if you'll move within a year or two. Keep your customer list exported and your product files somewhere you control.

Payhip: the best default for most solo sellers

Payhip has three plans with identical features and no product or revenue limits: Free Forever ($0, 5% fee), Plus ($29 a month, 2%) and Pro ($99 a month, 0%). PayPal and Stripe charge their standard rates on top, and the money lands in your PayPal or Stripe account right after each sale. Add the EU and UK VAT handling and a built-in affiliate tool, and it's the platform I'd point most beginners to.

The one thing to know about Payhip affiliates: Payhip tracks them (30-day cookie, last touch wins) but doesn't pay them. You pull a monthly affiliate report and pay each affiliate yourself through PayPal, individually or with PayPal's mass payment tool. If you don't have an account yet, set one up with PayPal before you invite your first affiliate.

Stan Store: link-in-bio selling with a flat fee

Stan Store charges a subscription and nothing per sale: Creator is $29 a month or $300 a year, Creator Pro $99 a month or $948 a year, with a 14-day trial instead of a free plan. Stripe or PayPal charge their processing fee on each sale. Creator covers the store, courses, bookings, lead magnets, subscriptions and the AutoDM tool; discount codes, upsells and order bumps, affiliate management, email broadcasts and pixel tracking are on Creator Pro.

Stan fits creators who sell from Instagram or TikTok and need a mobile-first store with calendar booking next to the products. The math works once you sell a handful of products a month (see the break-even list above). Taxes stay with you. If social media is your main channel, I go deeper on that side in making money on Instagram.

Podia: all-in-one with email built in

Podia's plans, billed yearly, are Mover at $42 a month with a 5% fee, Shaker at $84 with no fee and Earthquaker at $150. Mover includes email for 100 subscribers and 50 products; affiliate marketing, upsells, PayPal and Zapier start on Shaker. There's a 14-day trial with no card needed. Payments run through Stripe or PayPal, which charge their own fees.

Podia is worth it when you'll actually use the email, website and community parts. If you only need a checkout, it's expensive. Its course side is covered in my comparison of platforms to sell online courses, so here I'll just say: Mover's 5% plus a monthly fee is the worst combination at low volume in the table above.

Systeme.io: 0% fees and funnels on a free plan

Systeme.io charges 0% transaction fees on every plan, including Free, and connects to your own Stripe, PayPal and several regional gateways. The free plan never expires and includes 2,000 contacts, 3 sales funnels, 1 course, 1 blog, unlimited email sends and, unusually, 1 affiliate program for your products. Paid plans are $17, $47 and $97 a month, with two months free on annual billing.

It's the cheapest way to sell with a proper funnel and email list. The catch: you're the seller for tax purposes, and the interface is a funnel builder, not a simple store, so a single PDF takes longer to set up than on Payhip or Gumroad.

Ko-fi: for audiences that already tip you

Ko-fi takes 5% on shop sales, memberships and commissions on its free tiers and 0% on Ko-fi Gold at $12 a month; PayPal or Stripe fees apply on top, and the money goes straight to your PayPal or Stripe account. One-time tips are 0% unless you've switched on the Standard tier's extra features.

Ko-fi works best for artists, writers and streamers whose fans already support them and who want to add a few downloads. It isn't built for a serious sales funnel, and it doesn't take care of tax for you.

Etsy: when you need buyers, not just a checkout

Etsy charges $0.20 per listing (listings run four months, and each extra copy sold from the same listing adds another $0.20), a 6.5% transaction fee and payment processing of 3% + $0.25 for US sellers. What you get for that is search traffic from people already looking for planners, templates and printables. Etsy collects sales tax on US orders and VAT on certain digital sales.

The rules are stricter than on the stores above: digital items must be made or designed by you, and AI-made work has to be disclosed. The full playbook for printables and templates is in my guide to selling digital products on Etsy. A smart setup many sellers use: Etsy for discovery, plus a cheaper own store for repeat buyers you reach by email.

Payouts: when and how the money reaches you

Payhip, Ko-fi, Systeme.io and Podia send money to your own PayPal or Stripe account, so you get it on your processor's schedule. Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy collect the money first and pay you out, which means minimums, holding periods and payout fees.

One sharp edge with platforms that hold your money first: changing your payout country or bank details while a balance is waiting. Read Gumroad's payout article before you touch those settings, and make the change right after a payout, not before, so no unpaid balance gets caught in the switch.

Can other people sell your product for you? Affiliate features compared

Yes, on most of these platforms, and it's one of the cheapest ways to get sales without ads. The differences are in who pays the affiliate and what it costs you.

From the affiliate side, which is where I spent most of my career, here's what makes people promote your product: a commission that's worth their time (digital product creators commonly offer 30–50%, which they can afford because an extra copy costs them nothing), reliable payouts, and a swipe file with ready-made emails and posts. Paying affiliates by hand once a month on Payhip works fine for five partners and becomes a chore at fifty. If you're new to the affiliate side, start with how affiliate commissions and tracking work.

Can you sell PLR products on these platforms?

Not on Gumroad, and not on Lemon Squeezy. Gumroad's prohibited list includes "reselling private label rights products". Lemon Squeezy prohibits PLR and MRR products, meaning anything you have a license to sell but don't hold the original rights to. Etsy requires digital items to be made or designed by you.

The way around it isn't a trick; it's work. A PLR pack you've rewritten, redesigned and rebuilt for a specific audience becomes your own product in practice, though check that your license allows that and the platform's terms accept it. I go through the license types, the "resell it and keep 100%" bundles and how to rebuild a pack properly in PLR and resell-rights courses. And if you're tempted to put an unmodified MRR bundle on Gumroad because you've seen others do it: listings like that disappear, and sometimes the balance goes with them.

The "no monthly fee" trap (and the opposite trap)

Most beginners pick the platform with no monthly fee, even when it will cost them more, and there's a well-known reason for that. In a series of experiments published in Marketing Science, Kristina Shampanier, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely found that when a cheap option became free, far more people chose it over a better option, more than the price difference alone could explain. "Free" feels like a benefit, not just a lower cost.

A $0 plan with a 10% cut is exactly that kind of choice. At ten sales a month it's genuinely cheaper. At fifty sales, Gumroad direct costs about $227 a month on a $29 product, while Stan Store costs $86 and Payhip Plus $115. Nobody sends you a monthly bill for the percentage, so it never feels like a cost. That's the whole trick.

The opposite trap is just as common: spending three weekends comparing fee tables before you've made a single sale. At zero sales, every platform costs the same, or close to it. The fee difference between Systeme.io Free and Gumroad direct on your first ten sales of a $29 ebook is about $34. The difference between launching this week and launching next month is a lot more than that.

So here's what I'd do instead of agonizing:

1. Start on a no-monthly-fee plan (Payhip Free if you want simple, Gumroad if you sell worldwide and hate tax paperwork, Systeme.io if you want a funnel).
2. Write down your switch point from the list above, for example "$967 a month on Payhip".
3. Set a calendar reminder for 90 days from now to look at your real sales and switch only if the numbers say so.

Tricks that cut your fees without breaking any rules

The biggest savings come from controlling where your buyers come from and when your big sales happen, not from switching platforms every month.

• Send your own audience to direct links on Gumroad. Discover costs 30%, direct costs 10% + $0.50. When you promote, link to your product page or profile, not "search for me on Gumroad". Let Discover bring only buyers you'd never have reached anyway.
• Keep a big Gumroad launch inside one calendar month. The 5% + $0.50 rate starts after $20,000 in paid sales that month and resets on the 1st. A launch that runs from the 28th to the 5th splits your sales across two months and may never hit the threshold. The same launch from the 3rd to the 10th might.
• Raise prices on very cheap products, or bundle them. Fixed per-sale fees ($0.50 + $0.30 on Gumroad, $0.50 on Lemon Squeezy, $0.30 on Stripe) hurt most below $10. Three $5 templates sold as one $12 bundle lose far less to fees than three separate sales.
• Ask Lemon Squeezy for custom pricing if your products are under $10 or your volume is high; its fees page invites exactly that.
• Use trials as a countdown. Stan Store and Podia both give 14 days. Have the product, the sales page and your first promo ready before you click "start trial", so the trial days are spent selling, not setting up.
• Pay yearly once the numbers are proven. Stan Creator is $300 a year instead of $348; Systeme.io gives two months free on annual billing. Not before, though: a yearly plan for a product nobody buys yet is a donation.
• Price in US dollars if your buyers are global. On your own Stripe account, an international card adds 1.5% and currency conversion another 1%. You can't avoid international buyers (you want them!), but you can avoid paying conversion twice.

Mistakes that cost digital sellers the most

The expensive mistakes are rarely about the fee itself. They're about the costs people don't see on the pricing page.

1. Comparing headline fees only. "5% vs 10%" ignores processing, monthly fees, payout fees and taxes. Compare what you keep, like in the tables above, and remember the tax column: finding out about VAT registration a year after choosing a 0% platform for a global audience costs more than choosing right at the start.
2. Building only on a marketplace. Etsy and Gumroad Discover can bring buyers, but the relationship stays with the platform. Collect emails from day one; I explain why in email marketing is your personal ATM.
3. Forgetting the small recurring costs. Payout fees, currency conversion, refunds that keep processing fees. They're small one by one and add up over a year; my breakdown of hidden business costs online shows how.

How to choose your platform in five steps

Pick by where your buyers come from and where they live first, then by fees.

1. Where will buyers find you? Social media points to Stan Store, Gumroad or Ko-fi. Search and a blog point to Payhip or Systeme.io. No audience yet points to Etsy for discovery, plus an email list.
2. Where do they live? Mostly abroad and you don't want tax work: Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy. Mostly EU, UK, US or Canada: Payhip covers those taxes. Mostly your own country: any platform works.
3. What are you selling? Files and simple courses: Payhip, Gumroad, Stan. Software and license keys: Lemon Squeezy or Stripe Managed Payments. Courses with a funnel and email: Systeme.io or Podia. Planners and printables for searchers: Etsy. PLR-based products: not Gumroad, not Lemon Squeezy.
4. Do you want affiliates? Gumroad pays them for you; Payhip makes you pay them by hand; Stan and Podia lock affiliates behind higher plans; Systeme.io gives you one program free.
5. Start free, then follow the switch points. Payhip Free to Plus at about $967 a month, Ko-fi Gold at $240, Podia Mover to Shaker at about $840, Gumroad's lower rate above $20,000.

If you're still deciding what to sell, my guide to starting a business with $100 works through a cheap digital product with real numbers, and passive income strategies compares the setup work behind digital products with other options.

The bottom line

Gumroad's fee is 10% + $0.50 per direct sale plus card processing, and 30% on Discover sales. It's the most expensive option at volume, but it does your taxes worldwide, and so does Lemon Squeezy at 5% + $0.50 plus surcharges, with the caveat that Lemon Squeezy's future now runs through Stripe. Payhip is the best default for most solo sellers. Stan Store, Podia's upper plans, Systeme.io and Ko-fi Gold keep the most per sale once you sell regularly and handle the tax side yourself. Etsy costs a bit more and brings buyers.

My suggestion for this week: put your product on a free plan, send your own audience to direct links, and write your switch point on a sticky note. Then go get your first ten sales. The fees will still be there when you've earned the right to optimize them. I post what I'm testing in my Telegram channel, @affiliatepath, if you want to follow along.