Memberships for creators without the platform cut: subscriptions, downloads and merch on your own site

This guide is for a UK illustrator, musician, writer, podcaster or coach with supporters on Patreon, Ko-fi, Substack, Gumroad or Buy Me a Coffee, who wants to keep more of what they pay and sell packs, plans and merch from one place. It covers what each platform takes, what 300 supporters at £5 a month leaves you on each, how a membership works on your own shop and how members get the work, the VAT and consumer rules, and who owns your list. We build Orbit Commerce, a UK ecommerce platform, so weigh the Orbit parts with that in mind. Every fee and legal point was checked against its source on 8 November 2026 and is linked.

What do Patreon, Ko-fi, Substack, Gumroad and Buy Me a Coffee take in the UK?

Some platforms take a share of your income and process the payment themselves; others take a share and leave the card fee to your own Stripe account. The table is what each one’s own page said on 8 November 2026, with the page linked in the first column.

The detail behind the table. Patreon’s standard fee page dates the 10% from 4 August 2025, its creator fees overview gives the sterling processing rates, and its pricing page says Patreon handles most applicable tax collection and remittance. Ko-fi’s fee page says memberships started before Gold keep paying 5%; Gold itself is $12 a month for new users. Substack’s cost page names Stripe’s card fee and Billing fee, and Stripe’s UK pricing is 1.5% + 20p for a standard UK card.

Gumroad’s help centre says card processing of 2.9% + 30¢ is charged on top of a direct sale, and since 1 January 2025 Gumroad has handled VAT and sales tax as merchant of record. Buy Me a Coffee’s charges page lists its Stripe rates and says supporters can cover the card fee. Orbit’s card rate is the whole cost of a payment, with nothing added on top: 2% + 25p on Solo, 1.7% + 25p on Team and 1.5% + 25p on Pro. Dollar fees are converted below at the European Central Bank reference rates of 6 November 2026 (€1 = $1.1165 = £0.83415), so £1 is about $1.34 (ECB).

What do you keep from 300 supporters at £5 a month on each platform?

Assumptions: 300 supporters at £5 a month paid with UK cards in sterling, £1,500 in, no conversion or refunds, and VAT on the memberships left out of every row. Where processing runs through your own Stripe account we use Stripe’s standard UK rate, 27.5p on £5, £82.50 a month. Patreon in full: £150 plus 300 × (3.4% of £5 + 35p) = £156, so £306 before its 50p payout fee. Orbit Solo in full: £25 plus 300 × (2% of £5 + 25p) = £105, so £130.

Against Gumroad, Patreon and Substack the saving is £113 to £243 a month and grows with every supporter, because their fee is a percentage and Orbit’s plan is a flat £25. The shop around the membership comes with it. Cards from outside the UK cost more everywhere (on Orbit Solo, 3% + 25p for a European card and 3.65% + 25p beyond Europe), and if you are not VAT registered the plan costs £30 with VAT, leaving £1,365. Our guide to payment processing fees for a UK online shop goes through the arithmetic.

Can you run a membership on your own website?

Yes, as a recurring payment. On Orbit, Subscription is one of six product types. Plans run weekly, monthly, quarterly, six-monthly or yearly, or every two weeks, and a plan sets how often the product’s price is charged, so three monthly tiers at different prices are three products and a yearly option is a product priced for the year. The supporter pays by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay on a Stripe-hosted card step at your plan’s rate, agreeing to recurring billing before the order is placed.

Their account page does the admin: each subscription with its status, current period and quantity, and Pause, Resume and Cancel buttons. Each change emails them; cancelling asks an optional reason and runs to the end of the paid period, and you are told too. Your dashboard lists every supporter, counts cancellation reasons, shows active and new subscriptions and churn, and exports to CSV. The Activated, Paused, Resumed and Cancelled emails are templates you edit in your branding. The subscriptions page and our subscriptions guide have the detail.

A subscription is the recurring charge; the member’s work goes out by email, as a download or through a private link, and the next section sets out the four routes. Each plan charges its price from the first payment, and a product is either a subscription or a one-off, so a yearly tier and a single pack are two products. To move tier a member joins the new one and cancels the old. For people paying to keep the work coming, your own shop is a cheaper way to take the money.

How do members get the work?

There are four routes, and you can use more than one.

1. A welcome download on the tier. Files attach to a subscription product as well as a digital one and are delivered when the first payment clears, by email and in the member’s account.
2. Your email list. Every store starts with an Email Subscribers segment of customers who agreed to marketing email. Export it as a CSV for the email tool you use, or sync it with the Mailchimp or Omnisend plugins, priced on their own pages. The monthly piece goes out from that tool.
3. A monthly pack sold as a download. Attach the files, set how many days the link stays live, mark a free sample and keep a version number; buyers are emailed their links when the order is paid. Sell it to everyone and give members a discount code kept to the specific customers you pick, who sign in to use it. You add members to that list yourself as they join.
4. A private link in the welcome email. The Subscription Activated template is yours to edit, visually or in HTML, so it can carry a link to a page hosted elsewhere, a community invite or a feed address. One template serves every tier, so the link is the same for all; change it in the template whenever you want a fresh one.

The rest sits alongside as ordinary products. Prints and t-shirts are physical products with variants, stock and shipping labels bought from the order. A commission is a draft order with a payment link. A gift is a gift card sold in set amounts: the buyer adds the recipient’s email and a message, the code is emailed when the payment clears and is spent at checkout, with any balance carried over. The blog is built in on your own domain, with tags, preview cards and a sitemap. The products, gift cards, blog and customer emails pages have the rest; for bookings, see our guide to selling digital products, subscriptions, services and gift cards.

Do you charge VAT on memberships and downloads?

General information only; the answer turns on what members get, so confirm it with an accountant. You must register when your VAT taxable turnover is more than £90,000, and may register voluntarily below it (gov.uk, checked 8 November 2026); unregistered, you charge no UK VAT. Our guide to UK VAT for online sellers covers registration.

HMRC’s guidance on digital services to private consumers (last updated 28 March 2022) covers e-services delivered automatically with minimal human intervention, listing images and text such as photos, e-books and PDFs, music, films, games, online magazines and software. The place of supply is the consumer’s location: UK VAT for UK consumers if you are registered, and for EU consumers you register for the EU’s non-Union scheme in one member state or for VAT in each state where you sell. The European Commission’s One Stop Shop page explains that scheme: one registration, one quarterly return for all EU consumer sales, and the €10,000 threshold applies only to EU-established businesses, so EU VAT is due from your first EU sale. Live coaching is not a digital service on HMRC’s test; a pre-recorded course with PDFs is.

A tier whose reward is a monthly download or an online magazine looks like a digital service on that list; a tier that is simply support, or one delivered live, is a different question for your accountant. Remember what you leave behind: Patreon says it handles most applicable tax collection, and Gumroad is merchant of record. On your own site that job is yours. Orbit applies the tax zones and rates you set at checkout, and once your VAT number is in Settings a VAT invoice is emailed on payment, with Xero and QuickBooks plugins for the books.

What does UK law require of a subscription?

Today: the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013

Gov.uk’s online selling guidance (checked 8 November 2026) says that before the order you must show the total price, the minimum contract length and any conditions for ending a rolling contract. You must also make it plain that the button means paying, and confirm the contract on a durable medium such as email no later than when a service starts or content is downloaded. Consumers have a 14-day right to cancel, and if you do not tell them it runs for up to 12 months. For downloads, regulation 37 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 says supply must not start inside the cancellation period unless the consumer has given express consent and acknowledged that the right to cancel is lost; miss either and they can cancel and pay nothing. One tick box that says both, and a line in the confirmation email, will do it.

Due on 1 January 2027: the DMCC Act subscription rules

The regime in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 is not yet in force. The government said on 2 April 2026 that it expected it in spring 2027, then on 9 August 2026 that it will start in January 2027. The draft Consumer Subscription Contracts (Cancellation and Information) Regulations 2026, laid before Parliament in October 2026, are due to come into force on 1 January 2027 and apply to contracts entered into from the day the regime starts; on 8 November 2026 they were still a draft awaiting approval.

The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade’s draft guidance of October 2026 summarises four duties. Give the key information before sign-up. Send reminder notices in writing: once every six months on a rolling weekly or monthly contract, before a 12-month-plus renewal and before a trial ends. Offer an easy exit, online if the sign-up was online. And give 14-day cooling-off periods at the start and again after a trial or a 12-month-plus renewal. Certain cultural and heritage charity memberships are excluded.

A membership on Orbit starts in good shape: consent to recurring billing at checkout, cancellation online from the account with an email to both sides, and the subscription running to the end of the paid period. Keep customer cancelling and pausing switched on in Subscription settings. Orbit’s subscription emails cover starting, pausing, resuming and cancelling, and an upcoming renewal reminder you switch on in Subscription settings, sent the number of days before each charge that you choose; check its wording and timing against the final regulations before January 2027. None of this is legal advice.

Who owns your audience?

On a platform you rent the relationship: the address, the checkout and the fee are theirs, and the fee can change, as Patreon’s did for new creators in 2025. Patreon lists exportable email lists among its features. On your own shop the rest is yours too. Every supporter has a record with orders, addresses, consent and notes; tag them, build segments, export everyone or a segment as a CSV, and export or erase one person’s data for a privacy request. Bring a domain or buy one in the dashboard, so every link in a show note or bio points at an address you control; rename a product, page or post and Orbit adds a 301 redirect itself, and an old site’s redirect map imports from a CSV. Our list of ways to make money online in the UK puts memberships in context.

Where Orbit fits

Everything here runs on the Solo plan at £25 a month, or £19 a month billed yearly, ex VAT. That covers subscription products and the member’s account page, downloads with free samples and licence keys, physical products, gift cards, the blog, the customer list with its exports, customer emails from your own domain, and hosting on AWS in London with SSL. Orbit Payments charges one published card rate per plan, 2% + 25p on Solo, with nothing on top. Read subscriptions, products, gift cards, customer emails and the store blog. The theme store lists free and premium themes by industry; pick one for a creator shop and change its colours, fonts and logo in the dashboard. The 14-day free trial needs no card.

Read next: Patreon and Gumroad fees against your own shop, the new UK rules for selling subscriptions and selling e-books and templates online.

Questions people ask about creator memberships on your own website

Can I run a Patreon-style membership on my own website?

Yes, as a recurring payment. On Orbit each tier is a subscription product, members pause, resume or cancel from their account, and each payment is a card payment at your plan’s published rate with nothing added on top. The work goes out by email, as a download or through a private link, and a welcome download attaches to the tier itself.

How much does Patreon take from a UK creator?

For a page published after 4 August 2025, 10% of earnings plus processing of 3.4% + 35p on each sterling payment, 2.5% for currency conversion where it applies and 50p per payout to a UK bank (Patreon’s pricing and fee pages, checked 8 November 2026). On 300 supporters at £5 a month that is £306 of £1,500 before the payout fee.

Do I charge VAT on a membership or a digital download?

Only once you are VAT registered, which is compulsory above £90,000 of VAT taxable turnover (gov.uk, checked 8 November 2026). Downloads such as PDFs, images, music and software are digital services taxed where the consumer lives: UK VAT for UK buyers, and VAT in the buyer’s country for EU consumers through the EU’s non-Union One Stop Shop. Whether a membership counts depends on what members get, so ask an accountant.

What happens when a member cancels?

They press Cancel on their account page, can say why, and the subscription runs to the end of the period they have paid for. They get a cancellation email, you get one too, and the reason shows in your dashboard. Customer cancelling is a setting you control in Subscription settings; with an online exit due to be required from 1 January 2027, leave it on.

When do the new UK subscription rules start?

The draft Consumer Subscription Contracts (Cancellation and Information) Regulations 2026 are due to come into force on 1 January 2027 and apply to contracts entered into from the start of the regime. The government announced the January date on 9 August 2026, and on 8 November 2026 the draft was still awaiting parliamentary approval. They require key information before sign-up, six-monthly reminder notices on rolling monthly contracts, an online way to cancel, and 14-day cooling-off periods after a trial or a 12-month-plus renewal.

If the sums are close to yours, run them for real: set up one tier, one pack and one print on the 14-day free trial, no card required, place a test order and compare the payout with your last platform statement.