Buy Me a Coffee and Ko-fi alternatives in 2026
Buy Me a Coffee takes 5% plus processing; Ko-fi takes 0-5%. Tips in Telegram Stars cost more per dollar and skip the trip out of the app.
Start earning from your channel
Connect a channelTL;DR. Buy Me a Coffee charges 5% per transaction with no monthly fee, and Stripe adds 2.9% + $0.30 on top. Ko-fi charges 0% on one-off tips on Ko-fi Free, 5% on everything else, or $12 a month for Gold and 0% across the board — plus your own processor’s fee either way. Tips in Telegram Stars cost more than both: Stars bought at $19.99 per 1,000 as a store pack (or $14.10 at Telegram’s rate) pay out at $13.00. What that buys is the absence of a trip out of the chat. If your supporters live on the open web, both of these are the cheaper answer and this page is telling you to stay.
Two different people search for an alternative to these platforms, and they need opposite answers.
The first is looking at fees. That search usually ends badly here, because on money alone both platforms are hard to beat and the arithmetic below says so plainly.
The second has a different problem: the tip button is a link that leads out of the place where the audience actually is, and the money it collects lands somewhere separate from everything else they sell. That is the person the rest of this page is written for.
What Buy Me a Coffee and Ko-fi are chosen for
They are the same shape with different edges: a public page at a URL, built so a stranger can pay you in under a minute.
- A page anyone can open. No app, no account for the supporter — a browser is enough. It goes in a YouTube description, a bio, an email signature, a README.
- Small payments framed as a gesture. A coffee, a tip, a thank-you. Nobody is committing to anything.
- Cheap by design. Buy Me a Coffee takes 5% and no subscription. Ko-fi takes nothing at all on one-off tips — but only on Ko-fi Free, and Standard, which charges 5% on every payment type in exchange for extra tools, is the default for new creators. Worth checking which one you are actually on.
- Money in your own account. Ko-fi does not process payments at all — you connect your own PayPal or Stripe and it never holds your money. Supporters pay with cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, Cash App or a local method.
- More than a tip jar. Both run recurring memberships — Buy Me a Coffee’s own fee schedule adds 0.5% on subscription payments, and it lets you publish and email supporters at no charge; on Ko-fi, supporter-only posts come with the Standard or Gold tier, not the Free one. Ko-fi goes further: a shop for digital and physical items, art commissions, stream alerts and Discord roles.
That is a complete product, and the 5% ceiling is not the part anyone should be running from.
Where the job stops matching the tool
It goes wrong in one recognisable way, and it is not about the fee.
Your audience reads you in a Telegram channel. Somebody finishes a post, feels the impulse to send you five dollars, and the next thing they meet is a link. Browser opens. Page loads. Card form. Three fields, a confirmation, back to the app — if they came back at all.
Every one of those steps is a place where a five-dollar impulse quietly expires. Not with the supporters who already decided to pay you every month; with the ones who were feeling generous for about forty seconds.
The second half of the mismatch is bookkeeping. Tips arrive on one platform, the paid channel bills somewhere else, the digital downloads sit in a third place, and every one of them pays out on its own schedule into its own account.
What is actually here
A donation goal that lives in the conversation. You set the target, write your own description and label your own button, and supporters see how much is already raised — inside the same chat they were already reading. Nothing opens, nothing loads, no card gets typed. See the channel monetization tools for how it sits alongside ordinary posts.
Paywalled posts for the same impulse. Where a tip is voluntary, a paywalled post is the same size of payment for something specific: one article, one breakdown, one recording, unlocked with a single tap. The two pair naturally: tips fund the free posts, paywalls price the heavy ones.
One balance for everything Stars can buy. Donations, paid channel access, paywalled posts and digital downloads all credit the same bot balance, whether the rest of your business runs through a storefront or a channel — there is no reconciling three dashboards at the end of the month. Physical goods are the exception: those take cards and settle on their own rail.
0% is our cut, not the whole cost. We take no commission on sales and there is no monthly floor — Pro is optional. But Telegram’s Star economics sit underneath and they are the real rail cost: buyers pay $19.99 per 1,000 Stars as a store pack (Telegram’s own table) or $14.10 at Telegram’s sell rate and Telegram’s developer terms put the payout at $0.013, so about 65 cents of every dollar a supporter spends through a store pack reaches you (92 cents at Telegram’s own rate). Plan on the payout number, and read what withdrawing Stars actually pays for the 1,000-Star minimum and the 21-day hold before you count on a specific month.
What is genuinely missing, stated plainly
- No page on the open web. There is no URL a stranger with a browser can open and pay on. A supporter needs Telegram, full stop. If your traffic comes from search, a video description or a mailing list, this is the row that decides against us.
- No embeddable button or widget. Nothing to drop into a blog, a WordPress site or a newsletter footer.
- No cards for tips, and none of the wallets listed above. Telegram policy puts everything delivered digitally on Stars exclusively. Cards here are for physical goods and for services delivered in the real world.
- Money does not land in your own processor account. Ko-fi pays you directly into your PayPal or Stripe. Stars sit on a bot balance with a withdrawal minimum and a hold before they move.
- No commissions workflow, no stream alerts, no Discord roles. Ko-fi has all three. We have none of them.
- No supporter email addresses. You get Telegram identities, and they stay in Telegram.
Honestly, where Buy Me a Coffee and Ko-fi beat us
- Price, and it is not close. Ko-fi Free takes 0% on one-off tips and Buy Me a Coffee takes 5% plus Stripe’s cut. Both leave you more of the money than a rail with a 35% spread on a store pack between what the buyer pays and what you receive (7.8% at Telegram’s own rate).
- Anyone can pay you. A browser is the only requirement. No Telegram account, no Stars purchase, no explaining what a Star is.
- Payouts you control. Ko-fi never holds the money; Buy Me a Coffee moves it through Stripe to a bank once you clear the first $10.
- The formats around the tip. Ko-fi alone adds a shop, art commissions, stream alerts and Discord roles; both run memberships. That is a kit, not a button.
- Independence. Your page lives at a URL you can point anywhere. Nothing here exists outside one messenger.
Who’s who
| Tips in Telegram (AdminHub) | Buy Me a Coffee | Ko-fi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform fee on tips | 0% from us | 5% per transaction | 0% on Free, 5% on Standard, 0% on Gold |
| Monthly fee | None; Pro is optional | None | None, or $12/mo for Gold |
| What the rail keeps | 35% on a store pack ($19.99 per 1,000 in, $13.00 out); 7.8% at Telegram’s rate | Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30, +0.5% payout, +1% international | Your own PayPal or Stripe fee |
| Supporter needs | A Telegram account | A browser | A browser |
| Payment methods | Stars only, per Telegram policy | Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay via Stripe | Cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, Cash App |
| Where the money lands | Bot balance; 1,000-Star minimum, up to 21-day hold | Stripe, from the first $10 | Directly in your own account |
| Public page on the web | — | Yes | Yes |
| Embeddable widget | — | Yes | Yes |
| Memberships / shop | Paid channel, storefront | Yes | Yes |
| Same balance as the rest of your sales | Yes | — | — |
Ten rows and they take most of them — as they should, for a tip jar that costs less. What is left to you is where the supporter has to go, and whether the money arrives in one place or three.
If… then…
| If | Then |
|---|---|
| You are choosing on cost | Stay. Ko-fi Free at 0% on tips beats a 35% store-pack spread and nothing changes that |
| Your supporters find you through search, video or a newsletter | Stay. They need a page in a browser, and there isn’t one here |
| Your readers are already in your Telegram channel | The link out is costing you impulse tips — a button in the post is not |
| You already sell a paid channel or downloads in Telegram | One balance instead of three is the real win; the fee is the price of it |
| Supporters will not buy Stars | That decides it. There is no card option for tips to switch on |
| You take art commissions or stream on Twitch | Ko-fi is built for that and this is not |
Where to start
Do not move the page. Leave Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi where it is — it costs nothing to keep, and it is the only door your web audience has.
Add a donation goal to one channel instead, for one month, and read two numbers against each other: what arrived through the link out, and what arrived from the button inside the post. If the second number is smaller after the spread, you have your answer and you have lost nothing but an evening.
If it is larger, the interesting question is no longer about tips at all — it is whether the paid posts and subscriptions belong on the same balance too.
Other Buy Me a Coffee alternatives worth knowing
If the fee is what sent you looking, these are the platforms people actually move to.
- Patreon — the recurring version of the same idea: tiers, member-only posts, group chats and DMs, and a page that costs nothing to start. The difference between a tip jar and a membership is worked through in Ko-fi vs Patreon.
- Tipeee — crowdfunding for content creators in the same page-and-button shape, with its strongest footing in France and among French-speaking audiences.
- Memberful — for a membership that lives on your own site instead of a profile page: $49 a month plus a 4.9% transaction fee, with WordPress, Mailchimp and Discord integrations.
- Liberapay — a non-profit, open-source platform for recurring donations to people making free art, free knowledge and free software. It is funded by donations to itself, which is either the reassurance or the risk.
- GitHub Sponsors — if you maintain open source, the button belongs beside the code: a sponsors page plus buttons on your profile and repositories, in front of the developers already depending on you.
- PayPal.Me — not a creator platform at all, just a personal payment link. No page, no tiers, no member posts, and both sides need a PayPal account — but nothing here is faster to set up.
Where tips sit among the other paid formats — paid content on Telegram. All six ways a channel can earn, sorted by who pays — Telegram channel monetization. The membership-sized version of this same choice — Patreon alternatives in 2026.
Buy Me a Coffee platform fee, processing and payout terms: help.buymeacoffee.com — how charges are calculated and Buy Me a Coffee FAQ, both checked September 2026. Ko-fi fees, plan tiers and Gold: ko-fi.com/pricing and ko-fi.com/gold, checked September 2026. Star payout rate: Telegram’s terms for bot developers, section 6.2.4.
What people usually ask
- What does Buy Me a Coffee charge in 2026?
- A 5% platform fee per transaction, with no monthly fee — creators keep 95% before processing. Payments run through Stripe, which adds 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful transaction and a 0.5% payout processing fee, with an extra 1% on transactions outside the US and an extra 0.5% on subscription payments. Payouts begin once the account reaches its first 10 USD.
- What does Ko-fi charge, and is Ko-fi Gold still worth it?
- Ko-fi Free takes 0% on one-off tips and 5% on memberships, shop sales and commissions. Standard, which is the default for new creators, takes 5% on every payment type and unlocks extra tools. Ko-fi Gold is 12 USD a month for 0% on everything. Ko-fi's own Gold page now opens with the words you no longer need Ko-fi Gold, and in the same breath confirms new creators can still join it for 0% service fees at a fixed monthly cost. Ko-fi never holds the money — payments land in your own PayPal or Stripe account, and that processor's fee applies on top.
- Is collecting tips in Telegram Stars cheaper than Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee?
- No. Our sales cut is 0%, but a buyer pays 19.99 dollars per 1,000 Stars as a store pack or 14.10 at Telegram's sell rate and the payout is 0.013 USD, so about 65 cents of every dollar spent through a store pack reaches you (92 cents at Telegram's own rate). Ko-fi Free on one-off tips and Buy Me a Coffee at 5% plus processing both keep more of the money. On price alone they win.
- Then why collect tips inside Telegram at all?
- Because there is no trip. A supporter reading your channel taps a button in the same chat instead of opening a browser, landing on a page and typing a card. Donations, paywalled posts, channel subscriptions and digital downloads also land on one Stars balance instead of three different accounts.
- Can supporters tip me by card inside Telegram?
- No. Telegram policy puts everything delivered digitally — tips, donations, paywalled posts, channel access — on Stars exclusively. Cards apply to physical goods and to services delivered in the real world. If your supporters will not buy Stars, this rail cannot reach them.
- How do I get tipped Stars out?
- They credit your bot balance along with the rest of your sales, and withdrawal runs through Telegram's own payout route: a minimum of 1,000 Stars, and a hold of up to 21 days counted per payment rather than per balance.