How we score creator platforms
Five scores out of 10, one weighted total, and fee math you can check yourself.
The five scores
| Score | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Fees | 30% | For creator-side platforms we calculate it from what you'd pay on $1,000 of monthly sales, on the cheapest plan for that volume. Brand marketplaces publish prices too unevenly to calculate, so their fee score is our judgment of what brands pay and what creators lose to fees. |
| Features | 20% | How much a serious creator in that category can do without bolting on other tools. |
| Ownership | 20% | Whether you can export your audience, use your own domain, connect your own payment account and leave without starting over. |
| Ease | 15% | Time from signup to first sale, and how much there is to learn. |
| Payouts | 15% | How fast money reaches you, which methods work, minimums, and country coverage. |
The total is the weighted average, rounded to one decimal. Ties sort alphabetically.
How we calculate fees
For each plan that lets you sell, we add up four costs for one month:
- The plan's monthly price, billed monthly. Annual discounts are listed on each review but not used in the score.
- The platform's percentage of sales.
- Any fixed fee the platform charges per sale.
- Card processing of 2.9% + 30¢ per payment, the standard US Stripe rate, unless the platform's own fee already includes processing. Where a platform documents a different rate, we use that. Substack, Circle and Buy Me a Coffee list extra charges on recurring payments, and Kajabi's rate falls on higher plans.
We assume $1,000 of sales at $10 each, so 100 payments. The plan with the lowest total is the one we score, because that's the plan a sensible creator at that volume would pick.
Worked example: Substack
On the Paid subscriptions plan: 10% of $1,000 is $100, plus card processing of 3.6% = $36 and 100 × 30¢ = $30. Total: about $166, or 16.6% of sales. Substack's own cut is $100 and the rest goes to card processing. You keep $834.
The fee score is then 10 − (cost % − 4) ÷ 2, capped between 0 and 10. A platform costing 4% or less scores 10. Every two extra points of cost lose one point. At 24% or more the score is 0.
What the fee estimate leaves out
- Sales tax and VAT, which depend on where your buyers live.
- Currency conversion and international card surcharges.
- Apple and Google in-app purchase fees, which can take 15 to 30% of app sales.
- Payout fees, chargebacks and refunds.
- Volume discounts, surcharges on very large payments, plans priced by list size and referral commissions. The fees page lists each case we know of.
These can matter a lot, so each review mentions them where the platform has its own rules.
Where the facts come from
We take prices, fees, payout rules and eligibility from each platform's own pricing page and help center, and use news coverage only for history and dates. Every review lists its sources and the date we checked them. When we couldn't confirm a fact, we left it out.
What the scores can't tell you
Fee scores for creator-side platforms are math. The other four scores, and the fee score for brand marketplaces, are our judgment, applied with the same rubric to every platform in a category. They are best used to compare platforms within one category; a 7 for a newsletter tool and a 7 for a brand marketplace measure different jobs.