ByteSell vs Ko-fi

Ko-fi runs two free tiers and one paid one. Ko-fi Free pays 0% on tips and 5% on shop sales, memberships, monthly payments and commissions. Contributor is also free and applies that same 5% to one-off tips. Ko-fi Gold is $12 a month and takes 0%.

This page compares Ko-fi’s free tier against ByteSell Free, and says where Contributor changes the answer. Both plans cost nothing a month. Ko-fi takes 5% of everything you sell and ByteSell takes none of it. Gold sits in the calculator’s dropdown if you already pay for it.

Ko-fi has a reputation as the platform that takes nothing, and on one thing that reputation is accurate. A tip on the free tier carries no Ko-fi cut. The fee page sets out the rest of it in the same breath.

The 0% is scoped to being tipped. Selling is 5%, and Ko-fi applies it to shop sales, memberships, monthly payments and commissions alike. ByteSell Free charges 0% across all of them, with no separate rate for one kind of income.

The 0% on tips also depends on a setting, and that setting is no longer off when you sign up.

Contributor costs nothing a month and lifts the caps on what you can upload, and it applies 5% to tips as well. A creator who joined recently and never went looking for the toggle is paying 5% on every kind of income Ko-fi handles for them.

Ko-fi Gold is $12 a month and takes 0%. Ko-fi is steering people away from it, and its own Gold page opens with the reason.

Annual Gold plans are no longer sold to new subscribers, so the monthly price is the only way in. ByteSell’s 0% is not a tier you buy. It is the rate on the free plan, on Pro at $29 and on Business at $99, at any volume.

Ko-fi’s fee page documents one quirk that outlives the upgrade.

A membership taken through Stripe keeps whatever rate applied on the day it started. Paying for Gold zeroes what you sell from then on, and the recurring income you built before the upgrade stays at 5% for as long as those members keep paying. On ByteSell a subscription is 0% the day it starts and 0% two years later, on every plan.

A Ko-fi shop lives on your ko-fi.com page. There is no custom domain on any tier, and the free tier holds 600 shop items, 25 GB of storage and 2 GB for the largest file in an item. For an account that costs nothing, that is genuine room to work in.

ByteSell Free is a storefront of its own. It carries embeddable checkout, unlimited products, subscriptions, Discord and Telegram access that revokes when a subscription lapses, license keys, PDF stamping, coupons, upsells, affiliates and full analytics, all at 0%. The ceilings are the trade: 500 MB of storage and 50 MB for the largest file, with a custom domain and 50 GB holding 10 GB files from Pro at $29. If your catalogue is heavy, weigh those numbers before you weigh the fee.

Ko-fi handles money in a way ByteSell has no argument with.

• Nothing to clear before you are paid

  Ko-fi states there is no payout schedule and no minimum balance to earn.

• You stay the merchant of record

  Ko-fi says plainly that the creator is the merchant of record on every transaction.

• More room on the free tier

  Ko-fi Free holds 25 GB against 500 MB on ByteSell Free.

• Your supporter emails are yours

  Ko-fi lets you download your supporter email list whenever you want it.

Ko-fi is the better home for a page that collects tips. The 0% is real there while Contributor is off, and the money reaches your own account with nothing held back on the way.

Once you are selling, the shape changes. Both free tiers take 5% of shop sales, memberships, monthly payments and commissions, and Ko-fi’s own 0% costs $12 a month. ByteSell Free takes 0% of all of it, and that rate holds on Pro and Business too. What ByteSell Free gives up is headroom, at 500 MB of storage against Ko-fi’s 25 GB, which is what the calculator and your catalogue size should settle between them.