Buy Me a Coffee and Constants both start free and both let fans pay a creator directly for tips, memberships, and one-off digital products — but Buy Me a Coffee is genuinely the cheaper of the two on fees. The gap between them is what each page can actually do once someone wants more than a coffee.

What Buy Me a Coffee Actually Is

Buy Me a Coffee started as a one-tap tip jar — a fan pays a few dollars and leaves a message, no account required — and it's grown into a simple all-in-one page: memberships for recurring support, and "Extras" for selling a single item like an ebook, an art commission, or a 1-on-1 Zoom call. It stays deliberately light: there's no calendar behind that Zoom-call listing (the creator coordinates a time separately after the sale), and no events or ticketing at all.

What Buy Me a Coffee Charges

Every transaction on the free plan — tips, memberships, and Extras alike — carries a flat 5% platform fee, plus Stripe processing around 2.9% + $0.30, plus a 0.5% payout fee when the balance moves out. A $5/mo Gold membership removes the 5% platform fee entirely, leaving just processing — worth it once monthly sales clear roughly $100.

What Constants Charges

Constants also starts free, with a flat 6% fee on one-time sales and 10% on subscriptions, the same card processing, and no separate fee to withdraw a balance. Current plan details are at https://constants.com/pricing.

The Honest Math

Say $300 comes in from 15 one-off sales averaging $20 each. Buy Me a Coffee's 5% platform fee is $15, processing runs about $13.20 (2.9% plus $0.30 times 15), for $28.20 in costs — $271.80 kept. Constants' 6% fee is $18, the same $13.20 processing, $31.20 in costs — $268.80 kept. Buy Me a Coffee keeps about $3 more this month.

Now say that same $300 is 30 members pledging $10 a month instead. Buy Me a Coffee's 5% fee is still $15, processing on 30 charges runs about $17.70, for $32.70 in costs — $267.30 kept. Constants' 10% subscription fee is $30, the same $17.70 processing, $47.70 in costs — $252.30 kept. On memberships, Buy Me a Coffee's flat 5% pulls well ahead — $15 more this month, and every month after.

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Where Buy Me a Coffee Is Strong

To be fair both ways: Buy Me a Coffee is genuinely cheaper, and the checkout is about as frictionless as it gets — a fan can tip or buy without creating an account first, which lowers the bar for an impulse supporter. For a creator whose whole ask is tips and maybe an ebook, that's hard to beat. The tradeoff shows up the moment the page needs to do more than take a tip, though — there's no calendar-based booking and no event ticketing, so a "book a call" or "buy a ticket" ask still has to happen somewhere else.

Where Constants Is Different

Constants treats a booking as a real calendar slot, not a product listing someone has to schedule by hand afterward, and it can sell an event ticket, run a membership, and sell a one-off download from the same page a Buy Me a Coffee "Extra" can only approximate with a Zoom link and a follow-up email. The extra few points of fee buy a page that doesn't top out once the plan grows past a tip jar.

Pick Constants If, Pick Buy Me a Coffee If

Pick Buy Me a Coffee if the plan really is tips, a membership, and maybe a simple digital extra — the lower fee is real and the checkout friction is lower. Pick Constants if a booking needs an actual calendar, an event needs a ticket, or the page needs room to grow past a tip jar without switching platforms later. Either way, claiming a Constants handle costs nothing, so the cheapest way to decide is to see which page the plan actually needs.

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Selling a real booking for the first time? Here's the setup walkthrough: https://constants.com/u/constants/article/2408/selling_coaching_calls_from_your_link_in_bio_is_the. Running a ticketed event instead? Start here: https://constants.com/u/constants/article/2453/selling_tickets_to_a_workshop_class_or_meetup_straight_from.