The comparison table
| # | Platform | Monthly | Platform fee | Keeps on $50 | Merchant of record |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Whop | $0 | 3% on gated sales | $46.85 | No |
| 2 | Lemon Squeezy | $0 | 5% + $0.50 | $47.00 | Yes |
| 3 | Payhip | $0 / $29–$99 | 5% free, 0% paid | $45.75 | Partial |
| 4 | Sellfy | $29–$159 | 0% | $48.25 | No |
| 5 | Systeme.io | from $27 | 0% | $48.25 | No |
| 6 | Stan Store | $29 | 0% | $48.25 | No |
| 7 | SendOwl | from $15 | 0% | $48.25 | No |
| 8 | Ko-fi | $0 / ~$6 | 0–5% | $45.75–$48.25 | No |
| 9 | Podia | paid plans | varies by plan | Varies | No |
| — | Gumroad | $0 | 10% + $0.50 | $42.75 | Yes |
Take-home excludes any monthly subscription. A 0% platform on a $29 plan only wins once your revenue clears roughly $400/month against Gumroad. Verify every rate on the platform's own pricing page — these change without notice.
Whop — best for paid access and communities
$0/month, 3% platform fee on sales that use access automations, 2.7% + $0.30 card processing. Effective 6.3% on a $50 gated sale.
Whop is a payment and access layer with a storefront and a marketplace attached. Its distinguishing feature is native gating: a purchase can grant a Discord role, add someone to a Telegram channel, unlock a TradingView script, deliver a licence key, or open a recurring members area — and revoke all of it when the subscription lapses. Gumroad simply does not do this. Whop removed its 30% marketplace commission in May 2025, so appearing in its buyer marketplace no longer costs more than a direct sale, and it reported over $400M paid out to creators in 2025.
Choose it if your product is recurring access, community, signals, coaching or software licences, and your niche is somewhere in trading, crypto, reselling, sports betting, ecommerce or agency work. Skip it if you sell single creative files to a general audience, or you need automatic merchant-of-record tax handling.
Lemon Squeezy — best for software and global tax
$0/month, 5% + $0.50 per transaction, processing included as merchant of record.
A full merchant of record, acquired by Stripe in 2024, built for indie software and subscription products. It handles VAT, GST and US sales tax end to end, manages licence keys and subscription billing, and supports pay-what-you-want and bundles. The 5% is half Gumroad's rate and it never gets cheaper — there is no volume cap, so at high revenue a flat-fee platform beats it.
Choose it if you sell software, apps or licences to international buyers and want tax compliance to disappear. Skip it if you need marketplace traffic or you are doing enough volume that 5% forever looks worse than a subscription.
Payhip — the closest like-for-like replacement
Free plan at 5%, paid plans from $29/month at 0%, plus your own processing.
Payhip does what Gumroad does, at half the commission, with a genuine free tier. Digital downloads, courses, memberships, coupons and an affiliate program. The upgrade path is the appeal: start on the free 5% plan, and once you are past roughly $600/month in sales the $29 plan at 0% is cheaper. Less polished than Gumroad and no marketplace of any kind, so all the traffic has to be yours.
Choose it if you want a straight swap with no relearning and a clear path to 0%. Skip it if you were counting on platform discovery to find buyers.
The flat-fee stores
Sellfy, Systeme.io, Stan Store and SendOwl all work the same way: pay a subscription, keep 100% of the sale minus your own processor's cut. They are the cheapest option at volume and the most expensive at zero.
Sellfy — $29–$159/month, 0%
A complete storefront with built-in marketing, subscriptions, print-on-demand and physical products. Plans carry revenue caps, so read the tier limits against your projections. Break-even against Gumroad lands around $400/month.
Systeme.io — from $27/month, 0%
Funnels, email marketing, courses and a store in one tool. Chosen for the bundle, not for the checkout — if you were about to pay for an email platform anyway, the effective cost is lower than it looks.
Stan Store — $29/month, 0%
Link-in-bio selling built for creators who convert from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Booking and appointment tools included. Deliberately narrow, and very good inside that lane.
SendOwl — from $15/month, 0%
Pure digital delivery and checkout, designed to bolt onto a site you already own. No merchant-of-record support, so international tax is your problem, and plans cap order volume.
One shared constraint worth checking before you commit: Stripe Connect, which most of these platforms rely on for payouts, does not support seller payouts in a number of countries. You can sometimes open an account and take payments while being unable to withdraw. Confirm payout support for your own country first.
Ko-fi and Podia
Ko-fi — $0 or about $6/month
Tips, memberships, commissions and a simple shop. The free tier takes nothing on donations and a small percentage on shop sales; the paid tier removes it. Built for community-funded creators rather than product businesses, and the buyer experience says so — which is either exactly right or exactly wrong for you.
Podia — paid plans
Courses, downloads, community and email under one roof, with a proper student experience. Entry-tier plans carry a transaction fee that disappears higher up the range, so the plan you pick changes the maths substantially. Check the current tier table before budgeting.
Keep reading
Our pick, if your product is access
Whop is free to open, charges 3% on gated sales, and gives you marketplace exposure at no extra commission. Put one product on it and compare a month of payouts.
Start selling on Whop →