Gumroad fees: what you actually keep after every sale

Quick answer

Gumroad charges 10% + $0.50 platform fee plus 2.9% + $0.30 processing — roughly 12.9% + $0.80 all-in on direct sales. Discover marketplace sales cost a flat 30%. On a $25 direct sale, you keep about $20.97.

Gumroad advertises a simple 10% fee. What you actually pay is closer to 13% on every card transaction — and if a customer finds you through Gumroad's own marketplace, that number jumps to 30%.

Here's the full breakdown nobody puts in one place.

The two fee tracks

Every Gumroad sale falls into one of two buckets depending on how the customer found you.

Direct sales — someone clicked your link, found you on social media, or came to your profile directly — cost you 10% of the sale price plus $0.50 per transaction. On top of that, card processing through Stripe adds another 2.9% plus $0.30. So the real cost on a direct sale is roughly 12.9% plus $0.80 per transaction.

Discover sales — someone found your product by browsing Gumroad's marketplace — cost a flat 30%. That rate includes processing. But 30% is steep, and it applies even if you sent the customer there yourself through your own marketing.

What a $25 sale actually nets you

Use the calculator below to see exactly what you keep at any price point.

How fees compound as you scale

The math turns against you fast at higher revenue. At $1,000 a month in direct sales you're paying roughly $130 in Gumroad fees alone. At $5,000 a month that's over $650.

The refund sting

If you refund a customer, Gumroad keeps its fees anyway. The 10% plus $0.50 is gone regardless. So a refund doesn't just cost you the sale — it costs you the sale plus the fees on top of it.

On a $25 refund you lose $4.03 — the transaction fees Gumroad already took. Issue ten refunds a month and you've lost $40 in fees on revenue you never kept.

When does Gumroad pay out?

Gumroad pays out weekly on Fridays. New accounts have a 7-day hold from the first sale before the first payout is released. After that, each week's earnings are batched and sent the following Friday.

There's no instant payout option. If a customer buys on Saturday, that sale sits until the next Friday batch — up to 13 days from sale to bank depending on timing and your bank's processing speed.

Compare that to Buy Me a Coffee (instant payouts on request) or Stripe (2 business days). If cash flow timing matters to you, payout speed is a real cost that doesn't show up in the fee percentage.

Is Gumroad Discover worth the 30% cut?

Discover is Gumroad's built-in marketplace — buyers browsing Gumroad can stumble onto your product without you marketing it. The trade-off is steep: 30% of the sale price, more than double the direct rate.

Whether it's worth it depends on whether those sales would have happened at all. A $25 Discover sale nets you $17.50. If that buyer would never have found you otherwise, it's free money minus the cut. If they would have bought through your direct link anyway, you just lost $7.47 in extra fees for nothing.

The problem is you can't tell the difference. Gumroad doesn't distinguish "this person found you on Discover" from "this person searched your brand name on Discover." There's no way to opt out of Discover on a per-product basis either — it's all or nothing.

The one thing Gumroad actually does well

Since January 2026 Gumroad became a Merchant of Record, meaning they handle all global tax obligations — VAT, GST, sales tax worldwide — at no extra charge. If you sell internationally this is genuinely valuable. Lemon Squeezy offers the same MoR coverage at half the platform fee — see our Gumroad vs Lemon Squeezy comparison for the full math.

When Gumroad stops making sense

At $1,000 a month you're paying roughly $130 in fees. At $5,000 that's $650. At that point subscription-based platforms with lower per-transaction rates start saving you real money every month.

Here's a rough comparison at $1,000/month in $25 sales (40 transactions):

• Gumroad direct: ~$161 in fees — you keep $839
• Lemon Squeezy: ~$70 in fees — you keep $930
• Stripe (no platform fee): ~$41 in fees — you keep $959

The gap between Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy alone is $91/month — over $1,000/year. For the full side-by-side, see best platform for digital products 2026.

What $5,000/month actually looks like on Gumroad

Say you sell a $29 digital product and hit $5,000 in gross revenue this month — about 172 transactions.

• Gross revenue: $5,000
• Platform fee (10% + $0.50 per tx): 172 × $3.40 = $584.80
• Processing: included in Gumroad's rate (MoR)
• Total fees: $584.80
• You keep: $4,415.20
• Effective rate: 11.7%

That's $584 a month — over $7,000 a year — going to fees alone. At this volume, even a 1–2% rate difference against a platform like Lemon Squeezy or Stripe compounds into real money.

If you sell on other platforms too

Most creators using Gumroad also sell somewhere else — Stripe for SaaS, Patreon for memberships, Teachable for courses. Each platform takes its own cut, runs its own dashboard, and shows you its own version of your revenue. None of them show you what you actually kept across everything.

That's what Owelet does. Connect all your platforms and see your real net income, fee breakdown per platform, and monthly burn in one place. Free to start at owelet.app.

See how Gumroad's real effective rate compares to all 9 creator platforms →

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading