Gumroad fee calculator

Gumroad charges no monthly fee, which is most of its appeal. What it charges instead is a percentage of every sale, and the percentage people quote is not the one they pay. Two of the three fees below are easy to miss until they show up in a payout.

The three ways Gumroad prices a sale

A direct sale costs 10% + $0.50. This is the rate on the pricing page, and it applies when a buyer reaches you through your own link, your profile or your email list.

Card processing costs 2.9% + $0.30, charged on top. This is the fee most sellers miss. It is not included in the 10%, and it is the reason a $25 sale costs $4.03 rather than $3.00.

A Gumroad Discover sale costs 30%, flat. When a new customer finds your product through Gumroad's own marketplace rather than through you, Gumroad bills a flat 30% that already includes processing. It replaces the other two fees rather than adding to them, so a Discover sale is not 42.9%. It is 30%, which is still roughly double what the same sale costs you directly.

There is also a volume discount, and it is new enough that most write-ups miss it. Once your paid sales in a calendar month reach $20,000, new direct sales that month drop to 5% + $0.50. It applies automatically, with no application. It is not retroactive, so earlier orders in the month stay at 10%. The count resets on the first of each month, and a refund that drops you back under $20,000 returns new sales to the standard rate. Discover sales stay at 30% throughout.

How the math adds up on a $25 sale

Take the calculator's default: a $25 product, sold direct, 25 times a month.

Gumroad's own fee is 10% of $25 plus $0.50, so $3.00. Card processing is 2.9% of $25 plus $0.30, so $1.03. Together that is $4.03, or 16.1% of the sale. You keep $20.98.

At 25 sales a month that is $101 a month in fees, and $1,209 a year. The same products sold at the same price through a platform with no percentage cut would leave that money with you.

Per-sale figures are small enough to ignore. Annual ones usually are not.

What Gumroad takes at every price point

Direct sales at 10% + $0.50, plus US card processing of 2.9% + $0.30. Figures are rounded to the nearest cent, so a row can read a cent out where the exact amount lands on a half cent.

As a share of the sale that is 20.9% at $10, 16.1% at $25 and 13.3% at $200. The effective rate falls as the price rises. That is the $0.50 and the $0.30 losing significance, not Gumroad getting cheaper. Below about $10 those two fixed fees do more damage than either percentage.

What a Discover sale costs

Discover is Gumroad's marketplace. If a buyer who has never bought from you finds your product there, that sale is billed at 30% instead of the direct rate.

This is the fee behind most of the complaints about Gumroad taking "half" of a payout. It rarely is half, but a seller who assumed 10% and got billed 30% has had their margin cut by two thirds on that order, and the figure in the dashboard looks nothing like the one on the pricing page.

Worth knowing: the rate is tied to how the customer found the product, not to how you promoted it. Switch the calculator between the two to see what the split costs you at your own prices.

When Gumroad is the cheaper option

Often, and it would be dishonest to bury it. Gumroad charges nothing to join and nothing monthly, so at low volume a percentage of very little is less than a subscription.

Card processing costs much the same wherever you sell, so the only figure actually in play is Gumroad's own cut against a flat monthly fee. Sellfy's Starter plan is $22 a month billed annually, or $264 a year, with no transaction fee. Against Gumroad's $3.00 cut on a $25 sale, that pays for itself at 88 sales a year, or around 7 sales a month. Below that, Gumroad costs less.

Sales a year needed before Gumroad's per-sale cut exceeds $264.

One more thing in Gumroad's favour, and it is a real one. Gumroad is the merchant of record. Since January 2025 it collects and remits sales tax and VAT globally at no extra charge, which removes a genuine administrative burden if you sell internationally. Sellfy is not a merchant of record, so that obligation stays with you. If you are selling into the EU at volume and have no appetite for VAT registration, that is worth paying a percentage for.

The calculation changes once your sales are steady and you are the one sending the traffic. At that point you are paying a percentage on buyers you found yourself.

A different way to price the same products

Austin Farwell writes and sells sheet music for wind bands. He had been selling through the MuseScore marketplace and left it for the same reason this page exists: a marketplace was taking a cut of every sale, and it owned the relationship with the people buying. He moved his catalogue to his own Sellfy store and now sends buyers there directly from his YouTube channel, which converts at a 6% click-through rate. The store takes 20,000 to 30,000 visits a month, and 85% to 90% of his income now comes through it. The products did not change. The percentage coming off the top did.

That is the whole trade. A marketplace is worth a cut when it introduces you to buyers you could not reach. It stops being worth one when you are making the introductions.

Selling digital downloads elsewhere works much the way it does on Gumroad, and there is a wider list of Gumroad alternatives worth comparing if you want to see the field. For how Gumroad's payouts work, including the $100 minimum and the seven-day hold, see Gumroad's payout thresholds and holding period.