Gumroad vs Payhip vs Lemon Squeezy: what you actually keep
Last updated: September 13, 2026
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to Payhip. If you sign up through one of them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change what you pay, and it does not change the arithmetic on this page. Every review states how close we got to the product. Learn more.
How well we know this tool: Not hands-on — published pricing only — every figure here is computed from the three vendors' own pages. A person checked the three pricing pages on September 13, 2026, and the Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy fee pages, Lemon Squeezy's marketplace documentation and its January 2026 update on September 14, 2026. We have not opened a seller account on Gumroad, Payhip or Lemon Squeezy. What this means.
All three sell digital downloads, and each quotes a percentage: 10% on Gumroad, 5% on Lemon Squeezy, and 5% on Payhip's free plan. The three numbers are not measuring the same thing. Gumroad's and Payhip's are charged on top of card processing; Lemon Squeezy's includes it. Put the same $2,000 of sales through all three and the gap between first and last is $170 a month.
The short answer
$2,000 a month in sales, 40 sales at $50, paid by card, seller and buyers in the US, tax left out:
| Platform | You keep | All fees | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lemon Squeezy | $1,880 | $120 | 6% |
| Payhip Plus | $1,861 | $139 | 6.95% |
| Payhip Pro | $1,831 | $169 | 8.45% |
| Payhip Free | $1,830 | $170 | 8.5% |
| Gumroad direct | $1,710 | $290 | 14.5% |
Payhip's card processing rate is our assumption, not Payhip's figure — see below. "All fees" includes Payhip's monthly plan price.
At this revenue Lemon Squeezy keeps the most and Gumroad the least. That order is not fixed. Payhip's paid plans overtake Lemon Squeezy as revenue grows, and the section on crossovers says where.
What each percentage includes
Gumroad's fee help page:
For sales made on Gumroad's website, we charge a 10% + $0.50 fee + sales tax per transaction. This does not include:
- Credit card processing (2.9% + $0.30)
- PayPal fees
A direct sale on Gumroad therefore costs 10% + $0.50 to Gumroad and 2.9% + $0.30 for card processing: 12.9% + $0.80 per sale.
Payhip's pricing page lists three plans:
- FREE FOREVER $0 /mo +5% transaction fee
- PLUS $29 /mo +2% transaction fee
- PRO $99 /mo No transaction fee
and answers the processing question in its FAQ:
Yes, PayPal and Stripe will still charge at their standard rates once they complete a transaction. This applies for all plans.
That answer gives no rate. The figures on this page use 2.9% + $0.30 per sale, the rate Gumroad states for card processing and the rate our course platform comparisons use. If your processor charges you a different rate, every Payhip row moves by the difference.
Lemon Squeezy's fee page:
When you make a sale using Lemon Squeezy, we take a small fee, known as the “platform fee”, to cover the costs of credit card transaction fees, currency conversion fees, taxes (yes, we cover taxes) etc.…
A sale on Lemon Squeezy costs 5% + $0.50, with card processing inside that number. The same page continues:
There are certain times when an additional fee might be added to the platform fee to cover processing fees:
- +1.5% for international (outside of the US) transactions
- +1.5% for PayPal transactions
- +0.5% for subscription payments
Same revenue, three ways to earn it
Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy charge a fixed amount per sale, so the number of sales changes the answer. $2,000 a month, card payments, US seller and buyers. The Payhip column is whichever Payhip plan keeps the most at that revenue:
| Price × sales | Lemon Squeezy | Payhip | Gumroad |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10 × 200 | $1,800 90.0% | $1,813 Plus | $1,582 79.1% |
| $50 × 40 | $1,880 94.0% | $1,861 Plus | $1,710 85.5% |
| $200 × 10 | $1,895 94.8% | $1,870 Plus | $1,734 86.7% |
Gumroad's gap is widest on cheap products. With processing added its fixed charge is $0.80 a sale, which is 8% of a $10 product before any percentage is taken.
The $10 row sits at the edge of Lemon Squeezy's published pricing. Its fee page says: “If you’re a fast-growing or established large-scale business, sell products lower than $10, or have a business model that processes a high volume of transactions, contact our sales team for custom pricing.”
Where the order changes
Payhip's plans differ only in monthly price and percentage, so the points where one overtakes another do not depend on what you sell:
| Move | Pays off above | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Payhip Free to Plus | $967 /mo | $29 vs 3% |
| Payhip Plus to Pro | $3,500 /mo | $70 vs 2% |
Against Lemon Squeezy the answer depends on the product price, because of the per-sale charges. Selling a $50 product to US buyers, Payhip Pro starts to keep more than Lemon Squeezy at about $4,000 a month. At $10,000 a month the three are at $9,400 for Lemon Squeezy, $9,551 for Payhip Pro and $8,550 for Gumroad.
That crossover leaves out Lemon Squeezy's 1.5% surcharge on transactions outside the US, which moves it lower, and whatever your own processor adds for international cards on Payhip, which moves it the other way. We have no figure for the second, so we are not putting a number on the combined effect.
Gumroad above $20,000 a month
Once your paid sales in a calendar month reach $20,000, new direct sales that month are 5% + $0.50 instead of 10% + $0.50.
In the arithmetic here, sales up to and including the one that reaches $20,000 in a calendar month are charged 10% + $0.50, and later sales that month 5% + $0.50. At $40,000 a month in $50 sales, Gumroad direct keeps $35,200, Lemon Squeezy $37,600 and Payhip Pro $38,501.
Marketplace sales are priced separately
Gumroad's pricing page lists 30% “Per transaction when new customers find and buy from you through our discover marketplace.” Its fee help page adds:
Sales made through Gumroad's marketplace (discovery sales via Gumroad.com) are subject to a flat 30% fee, which includes all processing fees.
Lemon Squeezy's help documentation describes a marketplace of its own:
When you have listed a product and made a sale on the marketplace, a flat 30% fee will be deducted to cover operating costs and platform fees. This is a flat fee that replaces the standard Lemon Squeezy platform fees.
The same page says a product is listed there only after it meets one of two conditions in your own store:
- It has achieved at least 3 sales in your own Lemon Squeezy store, or
- It has generated a total of at least $50 in sales.
For Lemon Squeezy we have only that documentation to go on; we have not seen the marketplace itself or confirmed that it takes new listings today.
On the $2,000 case, 30% is $600. The same sales from your own links cost $290 on Gumroad and $120 on Lemon Squeezy. Whether the marketplace is worth the difference depends on whether those buyers would have reached you anyway, which a fee table cannot answer.
Lemon Squeezy's own update on where it is heading
Lemon Squeezy's pricing page links to a post by its CEO, JR Farr, dated January 28, 2026 and titled “2026 Update: Lemon Squeezy + Stripe Managed Payments”. Two sentences in it matter to anyone opening a store now:
And honestly, that meant some tradeoffs for the Lemon Squeezy community: slower support responses and less frequent product updates.
Our goal is to provide Lemon Squeezy users an easy way to migrate to Stripe Managed Payments.
The post does not mention fees. We are including it because a store is a longer commitment than a fee table, and the company says this in its own words.
Who each one is wrong for
- Gumroad is wrong for you if you sell low-priced products to an audience you already have. The processing it does not include and the $0.80 fixed charge per sale weigh most on cheap products.
- Payhip's free plan is wrong for you above $967 a month, and Plus is wrong above $3,500. Past those points the monthly price costs less than the percentage it removes.
- Lemon Squeezy is a harder choice if quick support and new features matter to you. In the January 2026 post quoted above, its CEO wrote that building Stripe's new product meant slower support responses and less frequent product updates, and described the goal as helping users move to Stripe Managed Payments.
- This page is wrong for you if you sell courses on a monthly-plan platform. That arithmetic is in our course platform comparison.
What this does not tell you
- Tax. All three say something about it, and none of it is in the figures above. Gumroad's pricing page: “Since January 1, 2025, Gumroad handles ALL your tax obligations. Yes, you read that right – we manage sales tax collection and remittance worldwide.” Payhip's pricing page: “Payhip is fully compliant to collect and remit EU VAT and UK on your behalf automatically.” Lemon Squeezy's fee page describes its platform fee as covering “taxes (yes, we cover taxes)”.
- Payouts. Lemon Squeezy's fee page lists:
- Free for bank accounts in the US
- 1% per payout for bank accounts outside the US
- A flat fee of $0.50 per payout for accounts in the US
- 3% capped at $30 per payout for accounts outside the US
- PayPal. Lemon Squeezy adds 1.5% for PayPal transactions. Gumroad's fee page lists PayPal fees among the costs its rate does not include, and Payhip's FAQ says PayPal charges its standard rates; neither page quoted here gives a PayPal rate.
- Subscriptions. Lemon Squeezy's 0.5% on subscription payments is not in the tables, and we have not priced subscriptions on Gumroad or Payhip.
- Refunds, chargebacks, and volume pricing.
- Whether any of them suits what you sell. This is arithmetic on fees and nothing else.
Check it yourself
Gumroad: pricing page and fees help page. Payhip: pricing page, including the FAQ quoted above. Lemon Squeezy: pricing page, fees page, marketplace page and the January 28, 2026 update. A person checked the three pricing pages on September 13, 2026 and the other pages on September 14, 2026. The formula is one line: fees = revenue × platform rate + sales × fixed charge + the monthly plan price, plus card processing where the vendor says it is not included.
Who pays us, and what that did not change
Payhip pays us 50% of the transaction fees and monthly plan fees that a seller we refer pays Payhip, for as long as that customer keeps paying. It is a share of Payhip's cut, not of your sales. Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy pay us nothing. The short-answer table above still puts Lemon Squeezy ahead of every Payhip plan at $2,000 a month, because the order comes from the fee lines quoted on this page. Payhip Pro moves ahead only at about $4,000 a month on a $50 product, under the assumptions above, which is where the arithmetic puts it and not where we would like it.
- Open a Payhip account — affiliate link
Using it costs you nothing extra and changes no number on this page.
Rates checked September 13, 2026 against each vendor's public pages. If a number here is out of date, tell us at hello@feesandfigures.com and we will fix it and note the change at the top of this article.