9 Best Membership Platforms for Creators in 2026

Full disclosure: Framekit is our own product and it is deliberately absent from the ranking below, because it does not host communities or run recurring memberships and would not do the job this guide is about.

There is a specific month in which your membership platform becomes the wrong one, and you will not notice it happening.

It is the month your percentage overtakes somebody else's flat fee. On Patreon at 10%, that month arrives when your members are paying you $290 in total - because Ghost would have carried the same members for $29.

Twelve members at $25 a month. Most creators cross that line in their first quarter and stay on the percentage for years.

A membership platform is software that charges people on a schedule for continued access to something: a community, a library of work, a publication, a private feed.

Every one of them prices either as a percentage of what you make or as a flat monthly fee, and the entire economics of this category is the crossover between those two shapes.

So instead of ranking these on features, we calculated where each one's crossover actually sits.

How We Priced This

Every platform below is measured against one membership: 100 members paying $25 a month, or $2,500 in monthly member revenue.

That is a realistic working community rather than a hypothetical, and it is large enough that the percentage-versus-flat question has a real answer.

Card processing is charged on top by most of these platforms, and we have held it constant at 2.9% plus 30 cents per payment, which on 100 payments of $25 is $102.50. Where a platform bundles processing into its own rate, the table says so instead of charging it twice.

The claims below come in three grades:

• Read off the vendor's pricing page in the first week of August 2026. Every plan price, percentage and seat limit, unless flagged.
• Set up and used. We built a paid tier, invited a test member and walked the join flow on Circle, Skool, Ghost and Memberful.
• Reported rather than measured. A few notes on moderation load and support responsiveness reflect what community operators say publicly, and are labelled where they appear.

We did not run a hundred-member community on nine platforms simultaneously. The cost analysis is arithmetic on published rates, and the product observations come from building rather than operating.

By the numbers:

• 12 members at $25 is where Patreon's 10% overtakes Ghost's flat $29.
• 51 members is where Skool's $9 Hobby plan becomes more expensive than its $99 Pro plan.
• 440 members is where Circle's $89 Professional plan, priced on annual billing, is finally beaten by its $199 Business plan.
• $230 separates the best and worst monthly take-home in this guide on identical revenue.
• 7 of 9 publish unlimited members on the plan a 100-member creator would buy.
• 4 of 9 cap admins or moderators instead, and charge for more.
• 2 of 9 take a percentage with no flat option at all.

The Rubric

Five criteria and their weights. This category is unusual in that the product differences are larger than the price differences, so cost is weighted lower here than in most of our comparisons.

Product weighting leads because a membership fails for product reasons far more often than for pricing reasons. A community nobody posts in costs the same as one that thrives, and no fee schedule fixes it.

The Crossover Table: When Your Platform Stops Being Cheap

This is the calculation the category does not publish. For each percentage-priced option, the monthly member revenue at which a cheaper flat plan overtakes it, and what that means in members at our $25 price.

Two things fall out of that table.

First, the 10% platforms - Patreon and Substack - are expensive far sooner than most creators assume. Twelve paying members is not a milestone, it is a Tuesday.

The 10% is not really a price, it is a discovery fee, and it makes sense exactly as long as discovery is what you are buying.

Second, the low-percentage platforms have crossovers so distant that their entry plan is effectively their only plan for years. Circle's Professional plan holds until $11,000 a month in member revenue.

That is a genuinely honest structure, and it is worth noticing which vendors chose it.

In one linework out your own crossover before you choose, because the platform that is cheapest at ten members is rarely the one that is cheapest at a hundred.

What You Actually Keep on $2,500 a Month

The spread is $230 a month, or $2,760 a year, on identical revenue. That is real money and it is still the second most important thing on this page.

The first is whether the product keeps your members, because losing fifteen of the hundred costs $4,500 a year and no fee schedule comes close.

1. Circle: Best Overall for a Community Membership

Circle is the most complete community product in this comparison, and the one whose pricing structure is least hostile to growth. Spaces, threaded discussion, events, live rooms, courses and a member directory sit in one place, and the whole thing can run on your own subdomain.

The real numberProfessional is $89 a month on annual billing with a 2% transaction fee on paid memberships, Business is $199 with 1%, and Circle Plus is custom with 0.5%. Members are unlimited on every tier.

On our 100-member, $25 community that is $139 a month all in, leaving $2,258.50 after processing.

The standout detailthe crossover from Professional to Business does not arrive until $11,000 a month in member revenue. That means the $89 plan is not an on-ramp designed to push you upward, it is the plan you will genuinely stay on for a long time.

Very few products in the creator stack are priced that way and it is worth rewarding.

The honest gotchaCircle charges for people, not members. Professional includes 3 admins and 10 moderators, with extra admins at $10 a month each and extra moderators at $20 a month per ten.

A community large enough to need help moderating is a community whose bill grows in a place you did not budget for, and moderation need scales with member count rather than with revenue.

Skip it ifyour membership is a body of work rather than a conversation. Circle is built around people talking to each other, and if nobody talks, you are paying $89 a month on annual billing for an expensive content folder.

What reviewers say elsewhereCircle's G2 profile is consistently strong on the member experience and the recurring criticism is price relative to Skool, which is a fair charge at small scale and stops being one past a few hundred members.

Verdict: the best product here for a genuine community, priced by a company that appears not to be trying to trap you. If people are the point of your membership, start here.

2. Ghost: Cheapest Serious Option

Ghost takes nothing from your subscription revenue, which after reading the rest of this guide is a startling sentence. It is a publishing platform with membership and paid tiers built in.

The real numberStarter is $18 a month, Publisher is $29 and Business is $199, billed yearly, with 0% transaction fees from Publisher upward. On our test membership you keep $2,368.50, the most of anyone here by $55 a month.

The standout detailit is open source, so self-hosting is a real exit rather than a theoretical one. If you ever object to the pricing, you can take the entire thing and run it yourself, which is a form of negotiating power no other platform in this guide gives you.

The honest gotchaStarter and Publisher both cap you at 1,000 members and the next step is $199 a month for 10,000.

Between 1,000 and roughly 2,500 members you are paying Business prices for a fraction of what it holds, and at a $25 membership those are exactly the numbers where a creator is still counting carefully.

Skip it ifyour membership needs discussion, courses or events. Ghost has comments and not much more, by design.

What reviewers say elsewherereviewers consistently rate the writing and publishing experience at the top of the category and the community features at the bottom, which is an accurate summary of the product's priorities.

Verdict: unbeatable economics for a membership that is fundamentally a publication. The 0% is real, and so is the 1,000-member wall.

3. Memberful: Best on Your Own Website

Memberful is not a place you build a community; it is the paywall and billing layer you attach to a site you already have. That distinction is the whole reason to choose it.

The real number$49 a month plus a 4.9% transaction fee with unlimited members. On our test membership that is $171.50, leaving $2,226.

The standout detailthe member never really leaves your site. Signup, account management and gated content all live under your own domain, which for a photographer or filmmaker whose portfolio is the reason anyone joined is worth more than a feature list.

The Patreon crossover here is $961 a month, so a creator with 39 members is already better off.

The honest gotcha4.9% is the highest percentage among the flat-plus-percentage options here, and it does not step down as you grow. At 500 members on $25 the fee is $661 a month, where Circle would be $339 and Ghost's Business plan $199.

Memberful is priced kindly at the bottom and expensively at the top.

Skip it ifyou want the platform to provide the community, the courses and the app. Memberful deliberately provides none of those.

Verdict: the correct choice when the website is the product and the membership is an extension of it. Re-price it if you pass a few hundred members.

4. Skool: Simplest Community, With a Sharp Upgrade Point

Skool has grown quickly on a genuinely good instinct: one feed, one course area, one leaderboard, almost no configuration. Communities that die on other platforms sometimes survive here because there is nowhere to hide.

The real numberHobby is $9 a month with a 10% transaction fee, and Pro is $99 a month with 2.9%, both with unlimited members, courses and calls.

The standout detail, and it is the most useful number in this guide: Skool's own two plans cross over at $1,268 a month in member revenue, which at $25 a member is 51 members. Below that, Hobby at $9 is remarkable value.

Above it, staying on Hobby costs you money every single month, and nothing in the product will tell you.

The honest gotcha10% on Hobby is the same rate as Patreon without the discovery that justifies Patreon's. The $9 headline is what gets quoted in comparisons; the 10% is what you actually pay once the community works.

Skip it ifyou need branded design, deep permissions or a public, indexable presence. Skool's simplicity is a real constraint as well as a real feature.

Verdict: the best $9 in the creator stack for a community's first fifty members, and a trap if you forget to move at fifty-one.

5. Podia: Best All-in-One

Podia bundles memberships with courses, digital downloads and email in a single subscription, which is the right shape when the membership is one of several things you sell.

The real numberMover is $42 a month with 5% transaction fees, Shaker is $84 with none and Earthquaker is $150 with none. Our test membership needs Shaker at minimum, and at $84 with no cut you keep $2,313.50 - second best in this guide.

The honest gotchathe email subscriber caps are the constraint that actually bites, at 100 on Mover, 500 on Shaker and 1,000 on Earthquaker.

A hundred paying members surrounded by a free list of any size will breach Shaker quickly, and the fix is a $150 plan rather than anything to do with members.

Skip it ifcommunity discussion is the point. Podia's community features exist and are not why anyone chooses it.

Verdict: excellent economics and a genuinely broad product, ceilinged by an email limit that has nothing to do with memberships.

6. Patreon: Still Right If You Need to Be Found

Patreon is the most expensive option in this comparison at almost any size, and it is the only one that will introduce you to people who have never heard of you. Every argument about Patreon is really an argument about whether you still need that.

The real number10% of the income you earn on Patreon, plus payment processing, currency conversion and payout fees. On our test membership the cut is $250 a month, leaving about $2,147.50.

The standout detailthe crossover against Ghost is twelve members. Against Memberful it is thirty-nine.

Those are not numbers that arrive eventually, they are numbers most working creators passed some time ago, which means a very large share of Patreon's creator base is paying a discovery fee for discovery that already happened.

The honest gotchathe fee schedule beyond the 10% is not on the pricing page, which points you to a separate article for processing, conversion and payout charges.

If your patrons are spread across currencies, your effective rate is meaningfully above 10% and you will not find the real figure without digging.

Skip it ifyour audience already follows you somewhere you control. That is the entire test.

What reviewers say elsewherepublic creator sentiment has been consistently more critical of fee changes than of the product itself, across several pricing revisions.

Already past the crossover and wondering what moving costs? The best Patreon alternatives covers where creators go and what they give up.

Verdict: the right first membership platform and an expensive permanent one. Treat the 10% as customer acquisition, and stop paying it when you stop acquiring.

7. Mighty Networks: Best If You Want Your Own App

Mighty Networks competes closely with Circle and differentiates on branded mobile apps and on events, with a pricing structure that is nearly a mirror of Circle's.

The real numberLaunch is $79 a month with a 2% transaction fee, Scale is $179 with 1%, and Mighty Pro is custom with 0.5%, members unlimited on all three.

Our test membership costs $129 a month, leaving $2,268.50 - ten dollars a month better than Circle.

The standout detailthe plans publish storage and streaming allowances, which nobody else in this category does. Launch includes 200 GB of storage and 20 streaming hours a month, Scale 500 GB and 30 hours.

If your membership involves live sessions, that is the number that will constrain you rather than the member count, and it is refreshing to be told in advance.

The honest gotcha20 streaming hours a month is about five hours a week. A community built around live calls will find that ceiling faster than it finds any other, and the fix is a $179 plan for ten more hours.

Skip it ifyou do not need an app. The app is the differentiator and it is a meaningful part of what you are paying for.

Verdict: a close and legitimate alternative to Circle, marginally cheaper at entry, and the clear pick if a branded app or heavy live programming is central.

8. Kajabi: Best When Courses Lead

Kajabi is a full creator business platform where memberships sit alongside courses, funnels and email, aimed at people selling at higher price points than this guide's test case.

The real numberentry pricing is $89 a month, or $71 billed annually, with the next tier at $179 a month or $143 annually. At $89 with no cut of member revenue you keep $2,308.50.

The honest gotchathe economics are fine and the fit is the question. Kajabi is built for a business selling a $997 course with a membership attached, and using it for a $25 community means paying for a marketing and funnel apparatus you will not open.

Nothing is wrong with the price; a great deal of the product will sit unused.

Skip it ifthe membership is the whole business. This is course software first.

Verdict: correct if you already run courses here, and an odd first purchase if you do not.

9. Substack: Free Until It Works

Substack takes 10% of subscription revenue and charges nothing else, which makes it the only platform here that costs literally nothing until you have paying members.

The real number10% of subscriptions plus processing, so $250 a month on our test membership and about $2,147.50 kept, level with Patreon at the bottom of the table.

The standout detailthe recommendation network genuinely drives subscriptions between publications, which is discovery of a kind only Patreon otherwise offers. For a writer starting cold, that is worth more than the fee difference for a good while.

The honest gotchathe crossover against Ghost is twelve members, exactly as with Patreon, and Ghost is the direct product competitor. A publication with 500 paying members at $25 pays Substack $1,250 a month and would pay Ghost $199.

Skip it ifyour membership is not writing. Substack has expanded, but the gravity of the product is still the newsletter.

Verdict: the best possible place to start a paid publication and an expensive place to run one. The move is not urgent at twelve members; it is overdue at two hundred.

What It Costs at 500 Members, Which Is Where Choices Get Expensive

The table earlier in this guide is a snapshot at 100 members. The reason to look further out is that these platforms diverge sharply as you grow, and the cheapest option at 100 is not the cheapest at 500.

In one linerun your projected member count through the fee structure before you commit, because three of these platforms triple in cost between 100 and 500 members while three do not move at all.

Same $25 membership, 500 members, $12,500 a month in member revenue.

Patreon and Substack multiply exactly with your revenue, because that is what a pure percentage does.

Memberful's 4.9% makes it the most expensive of the flat-plus-percentage options at scale despite sitting mid-table at 100 members - at 500 members it costs more than twice what Circle does.

The two platforms that do not move at all are Ghost and Kajabi. Ghost carries 500 members on the same $29 plan it carried 100 on, right up to its 1,000-member ceiling, at which point the next tier is $199 a month for ten times the capacity.

That makes it $29 against Patreon's $1,250 for the same revenue, which is the widest gap anywhere in this guide and the single strongest argument for flat pricing that this category produces.

Already on Skool and wondering what leaving costs? The best Skool alternatives prices eight of them against 300 members and finds Skool Pro beats five of the eight - the creator losing money is the one on the $9 plan.

What Members Actually Get, Which Matters More Than Any of This

In one linememberships fail because nothing happens inside them, and no pricing decision in this guide changes that.

The uncomfortable truth about this category is that the platform is rarely why a membership works or does not. Four product differences do genuinely matter, though, and they are worth choosing on:

Is it a room or a library? Circle, Skool and Mighty Networks are rooms: the value is other members and ongoing conversation. Ghost, Memberful and Substack are libraries: the value is your work, delivered over time.

Podia and Kajabi are libraries with a room attached. Picking the wrong shape is the most common and most expensive mistake in this category, because a room with no conversation feels dead in a way a library never does.

Does it have a mobile app? Mighty Networks and Circle both do, and for a daily-habit community that changes retention meaningfully. For a monthly publication it is irrelevant.

Can search engines see any of it? Ghost and Substack publish public posts that get indexed and bring you readers. Circle, Skool and Mighty Networks are largely closed, which is right for privacy and wrong for growth.

If you have no audience, closed platforms make the audience problem harder.

How much moderation does it need? A room needs someone in it. That is a time cost that does not appear on any pricing page, and it is why Circle's per-moderator charges are more honest than they first look - they are pricing something that is genuinely a cost.

The test to run before you pick

1. Write down what a member gets in week three, not week one. If the answer is "the same as week one", you have a library, so choose a library platform.
2. Count your current audience. Under a few hundred, discovery is your constraint and Patreon or Substack is defensible despite the crossover maths.
3. Multiply your target member count by your price, then run it through the crossover table above. If your target puts you past the crossover within a year, choose the destination platform now rather than migrating later.

If the membership you are running today sits on Whop, the fee comparison is less one-sided than it looks: the best Whop alternatives reads Whop's own published schedule and finds the payout setting costs more than most of the alternatives do.

Migration Costs Members, Not Money

In one linemoving a membership means asking every member to re-enter a card, and some will not, so the platform you start on matters more than in any other software category.

Stored card details do not transfer between processors without a formal agreement between the two companies. In practice, a migration means emailing every member to subscribe again.

Expect to lose a share, and expect it to be the least engaged share - which softens the blow without removing it.

Two things reduce the damage. First, platforms that connect to your own Stripe account rather than holding funds themselves can sometimes move without touching the subscription at all.

Second, running both platforms in parallel for a month, with new members going to the new one, converts a cliff into a slope.

Export before you cancel anything: member list, tier, join date and payment history. That access ends with your subscription, and you will want the join dates far more than you expect.

The Adjacent Job: The Public Side of a Private Community

This section is about the part of this problem we work on. It is labelled so you can skip it, and Framekit is deliberately not in the ranking above.

Framekit is an AI website builder for photographers, filmmakers, designers and other creators, and it does not host communities or run recurring memberships. There is no forum, no member feed and no subscription billing in the product.

Circle, Skool and the rest do that job and we do not do it at all.

What sits next to a membership, though, is the public page that convinces someone to join.

Closed platforms are invisible to search by design, so the work that persuades a stranger has to live somewhere open: a portfolio, an archive, a sample of what is behind the wall.

For most creators that is a website, and it is the piece that a membership platform explicitly does not give you.

The practical arrangement is a public site for the work and the shop, with Circle, Ghost or Memberful handling the private side.

Framekit's transaction fee applies to one-off product sales - 5% on Free and Starter, 3% on Pro at $19 a month, 0% on Business at $39 a month, with card processing on top - and the flat plan overtakes the percentage at $780 a month in sales.

None of that touches membership revenue, which stays with whichever platform you picked above.

Two of the platforms above were built on top of a community rather than a course, and if that is the shape you want, the Skool alternatives comparison prices the same job from that angle.

Decision Guide

Ordered by the question that actually decides it. Stop at the first yes.

1. Is the value other members, or is it your work?

Other members: go to question 2. Your work: go to question 4.

2. Do you need a branded mobile app or more than five live hours a week?

Yes: Mighty Networks, on Launch at $79 plus 2%, watching the streaming-hours ceiling rather than the member count.

No: Circle at $89 a month on annual billing plus 2%, which holds until $11,000 a month in member revenue.

3. Is the community under about fifty members and price-sensitive?

Yes: Skool Hobby at $9 plus 10%, with a firm note in your calendar at 51 members, where Pro becomes cheaper.

4. Is your work fundamentally writing?

Yes: Ghost at $29 a month with no cut, unless you have no readers yet, in which case Substack's 10% buys discovery until roughly two hundred members.

5. Do you already have a website that does the persuading?

Yes: Memberful at $49 plus 4.9%, so the membership lives on your domain. Re-price it past a few hundred members.

6. Do you also sell courses and downloads?

Yes: Podia on Shaker at $84, watching the email subscriber cap, or Kajabi at $89 if courses are the main event.

7. Do you have no audience at all yet?

Yes: Patreon. Pay the 10% deliberately, know that it stops being the cheap option at twelve members, and revisit the day discovery is no longer your problem.

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions below are the ones creators ask once a membership exists, which is when crossovers, caps and moderation load turn out to matter more than the feature grid did.

What is the best membership platform for creators in 2026?

Circle is the best membership platform for creators running a community in 2026, at $89 a month on annual billing plus a 2% transaction fee with unlimited members, because its low percentage and distant upgrade point mean growth does not reprice you.

Ghost is the better and much cheaper choice for a membership that is a publication, at $29 a month with no cut at all, and Memberful is the pick when the membership needs to run on your own website.

At what point does Patreon stop being the cheap option?

At twelve members paying $25 a month. Patreon's 10% on $290 of monthly member revenue equals Ghost's flat $29, and against Memberful the crossover is $961 a month, or 39 members.

Both are thresholds most working creators pass early, which means Patreon's fee is best understood as a discovery cost rather than a hosting cost, and it is worth paying only while it is still bringing you members.

Circle vs Skool: which is better for a paid community?

Skool is cheaper and simpler below about fifty members; Circle is better and more predictable above that.

Skool's Hobby plan is $9 a month plus a 10% transaction fee, which at 51 members paying $25 becomes more expensive than its own $99 Pro plan.

Circle starts at $89 a month on annual billing plus 2% with unlimited members and does not become worth upgrading until $11,000 a month in member revenue.

Skool wins on simplicity and time-to-first-post; Circle wins on structure, branding and cost at scale.

Which membership platform takes the smallest cut?

Ghost, Podia and Kajabi take no percentage of member revenue at all, charging a flat monthly fee instead. Ghost is the cheapest of the three at $29 a month on Publisher.

Among platforms that do take a percentage, Circle and Mighty Networks are lowest at 2% on their entry plans, dropping to 1% on the next tier.

Do I own my members if I use these platforms?

You own the email list on every platform here and the payment relationship on almost none of them. Every one of these lets you export member emails, tiers and join dates, and you should do that regularly.

What does not move is the stored card, which is why migration means asking members to subscribe again. Platforms that connect to your own Stripe account rather than holding funds give you materially more control over that.

How much does a membership platform cost at 500 members?

Between $89 and $1,250 a month for the same $12,500 of member revenue, depending entirely on the pricing shape.

Kajabi stays flat at $89, Ghost Business is $199, Circle Business is $324, Memberful is $661 because its 4.9% scales with you, and Patreon and Substack are $1,250 each.

The percentage platforms multiply exactly with revenue, which is the whole argument against them at scale.

Do these platforms handle VAT on membership payments?

Mostly not. Circle, Skool, Ghost, Memberful, Podia, Kajabi and Mighty Networks all leave sales-tax registration and filing with you, which for members in the EU or UK means registering and filing returns yourself.

Patreon states that tax handling is included in its fee.

If removing the tax obligation entirely matters to you, a merchant-of-record billing platform is a different route worth pricing, and the best subscription billing platforms for creators covers those.

Can members find my community through search?

Only on the open platforms. Ghost and Substack publish indexable public posts that bring you readers, and that discovery is part of what you are buying.

Circle, Skool and Mighty Networks are closed by design, which is correct for member privacy and unhelpful if you still need an audience. If you have no list yet, a closed platform makes your hardest problem harder.

What is a realistic price for a creator membership?

Between $5 and $50 a month, with $10 to $25 the most common band, and the higher end easier to sustain than most creators expect when the membership includes access to you rather than only to content.

The fee arithmetic favours higher prices sharply, because fixed per-transaction charges are regressive: 30 cents is 3% of a $10 payment and 0.6% of a $50 one.

Do I need a website if I have a membership platform?

For a closed community, effectively yes, because the platform is invisible to anyone who is not already a member.

The page that persuades a stranger to join has to be somewhere public, and on Circle, Skool or Mighty Networks that page does not exist. Ghost and Substack are the exceptions, since their public posts do that job themselves.

How many members do I need for a membership to be worth running?

Enough that the revenue exceeds the time cost, which for a community is higher than it looks.

A hundred members at $25 is $2,500 a month gross and roughly $2,250 after platform and processing, against a moderation and content commitment that is realistically several hours a week.

Libraries are far less demanding than rooms, which is a reason to be honest about which one you are building.

What happens to my community if I stop paying the platform?

Access generally ends, and how gracefully varies. Most platforms here move you to a read-only or archived state before deleting anything, but the specifics live in the terms rather than on the pricing page.

The protection that always works is a current export of your member list held somewhere you control, taken on a schedule rather than in an emergency.

Does Framekit host memberships or communities?

No. Framekit builds websites and sells digital products, and it has no community, forum or recurring-membership features. The platforms ranked above do that job.

Framekit's relevance to a membership is the public page that persuades people to join, which closed community platforms do not provide.

The Verdict

Circle wins because it is the strongest community product here and because its pricing is built to survive your success rather than to tax it.

The Professional plan at $89 plus 2% holds until $11,000 a month in member revenue, which for most creators means the plan they start on is the plan they keep.

Ghost is the better answer, and a much cheaper one, for anyone whose membership is a publication rather than a room - $29 a month and no cut of your revenue is the most generous structure in this comparison, ceilinged only by a 1,000-member wall.

Memberful is right when the website is the product. Skool is the best small-community value in the creator stack and a quiet trap past fifty-one members.

And Patreon is still correct for anyone who does not yet have an audience, as long as you know that the discount it offers on discovery expires at twelve members.

Where Framekit losesFramekit does not host communities, does not run recurring memberships, and will not do any part of the job this guide is about. Every platform ranked above is the better fit for it, which is why we are not in the ranking.

What we do is the public site that a closed community cannot give you.

Verdict: rooms go to Circle, publications go to Ghost, your own website goes to Memberful, and everyone paying 10% should work out their crossover this week rather than next year.

Plans, percentages, seat limits and streaming allowances here were read from each vendor's published pricing page in the first week of August 2026.

Two of these platforms changed tier structure within the last year, so confirm the ceiling that applies to you before modelling a year of growth.

Related readingthe best subscription billing platforms for creators, the best Patreon alternatives, the best paid newsletter platforms, the best payment processors for digital products, and how to price digital products.

Costed against a single creator profile rather than a feature grid, the best Kajabi alternatives shows where each of these platforms stops being good value.

Two creator-store products now price their zero-fee tiers identically, which we work through in Beacons vs Stan Store.

Course platforms price memberships very differently from community platforms, and the best Thinkific alternatives sets the two groups side by side.

For the head-to-head that decides most of these shortlists, see Kajabi vs Circle.

For the cheaper end of this market, where memberships sit alongside tips and a small shop, we priced eleven options in the best Ko-fi alternatives.

At the lighter end, where a membership sits next to tips rather than a course, Ko-fi vs Buy Me a Coffee compares the two platforms most creators start on.

Two of the cheaper options here are compared directly in Payhip vs Podia, which finds that Payhip runs memberships on its free plan.

The two platforms at the centre of this list are compared directly in Circle vs Podia, which finds Podia cheaper at every revenue level.