Buycoffee.to – how much do you actually keep from a donation? Fee calculator
Someone lands on your profile, picks BLIK, and buys you a coffee for 5 zł. A notification pops up in your dashboard about new support – nice. But right after that comes a pretty reasonable question: how much of that 5 zł actually ends up in your pocket?
The short answer: from a one-time donation on buycoffee.to you keep 90% of the amount, and from recurring support – 95%. A 5 zł coffee means 4.50 zł for you, a 10 zł donation leaves you with 9 zł, and from 100 zł you keep an even 90.
The numbers in this article are based on the buycoffee.to fee schedule in effect since February 1, 2025. Current as of July 23, 2026.
How much is the buycoffee.to fee?
The fee depends on whether someone donates once, supports you on a recurring basis, or chips in to a fundraiser.
For a one-time donation, that ten percent is made up of two parts: a 7.5% service fee and a 2.5% transaction cost. For recurring donations the transaction cost stays the same, but the service fee drops to 2.5% – which is where the combined 5% comes from. Fundraisers are billed the same way as regular donations, so 10%.
You don't need to check whether someone paid with BLIK, card, or bank transfer – the rate depends only on the type of support, not the payment method.
Buycoffee.to fee calculator
You don't need to pull out a calculator every time someone buys you a coffee. For one-time donations, just subtract 10% of the amount; for recurring ones, 5%.
The formula is simple: donation amount times 0.90 for a one-time donation, times 0.95 for a recurring one. So on a 10 zł donation the fee is one złoty, and once that same person switches to recurring support, it's just 50 groszy.
Why doesn't the creator get the full amount?
Every online payment has to flow through somewhere. Someone has to process the BLIK, card, or bank transfer, secure the transaction, and make sure the money actually arrives where it should. On top of that there's the cost of running the platform itself – the creator dashboard, donation history, notifications, payouts, user support.
Different services handle this cost in different ways. Some take a flat percentage off everything, others split the fee into a commission plus a payment processor cost, and some advertise themselves as 0% for the creator and make money elsewhere. The slogan "lowest fee" doesn't say much on its own – it's worth checking two things: how much the creator actually receives, and how much the supporter actually pays.
Buycoffee.to vs. other creator platforms
Comparing platforms by a single percentage is a bit like judging a car by its number of wheels. You can do it, but it doesn't tell you much – because buycoffee.to and Suppi focus on simple donations from your community, Patronite is built around subscriptions and support tiers, YouTube Super Thanks operates within YouTube itself, and Tipply revolves around streams and paid messages. Donations on these platforms aren't gifts in the legal sense, so they're subject to regular taxation. The same goes for the foreign platform Buy Me a Coffee – virtual coffee donations there are taxable, and the fine print on fees and commissions isn't always clear.
Still, it's worth seeing what happens to a sample 10 zł donation on each. These figures are approximate – operators' price lists change, and YouTube calculates the creator's share from revenue after taxes and fees are deducted, not always directly from the price the viewer sees. One thing stands out, though: with buycoffee.to you know upfront exactly how much you'll keep. On most other platforms, the final amount depends on the operator, the payment method, and sometimes the fine print.
Patronite: the fee depends on the type of support
In the standard model, Patronite takes 6.5% of the donation plus VAT, so roughly 8% in practice. On top of that comes the payment processor's fee. For a 10 zł donation processed via Imoje, it works out like this: about 80 groszy goes to the platform fee with VAT, about 10 groszy goes to the processor, and you're left with around 9.10 zł.
With PayPal it's worse, because on top of the percentage there's a flat fee of 1.35 zł per transaction. On small amounts that makes a real difference – on that same 10 zł donation, PayPal's cost is about 1.64 zł, and after Patronite's fee you're left with around 7.56 zł.
YouTube Super Thanks: convenient, but with a bigger platform cut
Super Thanks lets a viewer buy a highlighted reaction under a video or Short without leaving YouTube – that's a real convenience, since there's no need to sign up anywhere else. You pay for that convenience with a bigger cut going to the platform.
YouTube states that creators get 70% of Super Thanks revenue recognized by Google – after local taxes and any App Store fees on iOS are deducted. YouTube currently covers the card transaction cost itself. That doesn't mean a 10 zł purchase always nets you exactly 7 zł, though – it's an approximate figure, and in practice it can end up lower.
It's also worth knowing that, legally, Super Thanks is neither a crowdfunding tool nor a donation – YouTube says so itself.
Suppi: 0% commission, but the platform still has to make money somehow
Suppi advertises 0% commission on basic support and covers the payment processor's cost itself – in theory, if someone sends you 10 zł, you get the full 10 zł.
That doesn't mean processing payments is free, though – someone is simply absorbing that cost. Suppi funds itself through voluntary user contributions to the platform, partnerships with businesses, and paid add-on services, such as promoting a profile. A supporter can also choose to add a separate amount for Suppi itself – voluntarily.
So the "0% commission" claim is true in a narrow sense: nothing is deducted from the basic donation. But the platform still has to earn money somehow, just differently than buycoffee.to does. Instead of one clear, upfront rate, there's a system of add-on payments and extra services, which makes it harder to calculate in advance exactly how much the whole thing really costs.
Read more on this topic here: https://buycoffee.to/pl/blog/pulapka-0percent-prowizji-ile-naprawde-kosztuje-darmowosc-platform
Tipply: a tool built for streams
Tipply is primarily a system for paid messages and alerts during streams – a viewer sends a message that appears on the stream, often with an animation or text-to-speech. That's a different model from simply buying someone a coffee.
According to Tipply's official FAQ, registering and using the platform are free, and a fee is taken from each message – but the service doesn't state exactly how much. Without that number, there's no honest way to calculate how much you'd keep from a 10 zł message. You could guess, but that would be guessing, not fact. On top of that, you need to keep tax obligations in mind. Tips through Tipply aren't gifts in the legal sense, since the identity of the person paying is anonymous.
Buy Me a Coffee: a foreign platform, Polish tax obligations
Buy Me a Coffee is popular in the West, but it was built with the American market in mind, not Polish creators. The platform charges a 5% fee on every donation, plus a card processing fee (around 2.9% + $0.30) and currency conversion, since settlements are done in dollars.
The biggest trap, though, is taxes. Buy Me a Coffee doesn't require supporters to provide their details, so most support arrives anonymously. Under recent rulings from Polish tax authorities, an anonymous donation doesn't count as a gift under the Polish civil code, since a gift has to be attributable to a specific person. Such funds are treated as income and are subject to personal income tax regardless of the amount, instead of falling under the gift-tax exemption threshold (5,733 zł). If you use a foreign platform with anonymous donations, you're on your own for reporting every złoty.
What about payouts from buycoffee.to?
The fee on a donation is one thing. Withdrawing the money you've collected is a separate matter.
On buycoffee.to, the first payout each month is free, and every subsequent one costs 6.90 zł. Buycoffee.to processes a payout request within one business day at most of receiving it, though when the money actually lands in your account also depends on your bank.
Does recurring support pay off more?
In terms of the fee alone – definitely. A one-time donation costs you 10%, a recurring one just 5%. For a single coffee, the difference is cosmetic.
Say someone supports you with 15 zł. From a one-time donation you keep 13.50 zł, from a recurring one – 14.25 zł. That's a 75-grosz difference. Now multiply that by 100 people: with one-time donations you keep 1,350 zł, with recurring ones – 1,425 zł. That's 75 zł a month, 900 zł a year – from the lower fee alone.
That doesn't mean one-time coffees are a bad idea. For someone who just discovered your profile, it's a quick, no-commitment way to show support. Recurring support fits better for people who keep coming back. On buycoffee.to, both can comfortably run side by side, and that's a genuinely convenient option.
How much do you really keep? Three examples
Theory is one thing, but it's best to see it in actual numbers.
Starting out: 30 coffees at 10 zł. Thirty one-time donations of 10 zł each add up to 300 zł. A 10% fee is 30 zł, so you keep 270 zł.
A growing community. 50 one-time donations of 10 zł and 10 recurring ones of 15 zł, for 650 zł total. The fee on the one-time donations (500 zł) is 50 zł, and on the recurring ones (150 zł) – 7.50 zł. Total fees come to 57.50 zł, leaving you with 592.50 zł.
A large, engaged community. 100 one-time donations of 10 zł and 50 recurring ones of 20 zł, for 2,000 zł total. The fee on the one-time donations (1,000 zł) is 100 zł, and on the recurring ones (1,000 zł) – 50 zł. That's 150 zł in fees total, leaving 1,850 zł for you.
The more recurring support in that mix, the lower the average fee on the total ends up being.
Do you need to go through verification?
You create a buycoffee.to account for free, but receiving and withdrawing money requires identity verification – using mObywatel, an ID card, or a passport, plus a short video confirming the document is yours. Without a verified account you can't withdraw funds, and accepting further donations is limited by a time or amount cap.
So there's no such thing as zero verification – and unlike Patronite, nobody evaluates your project idea or your worth as a creator.
Is the buycoffee.to fee high?
It depends what you're comparing it to. On a one-time donation you give up 10% – there are platforms where, for a particular type of fundraiser, you'd keep more, and others that advertise a declared 0%.
On the other hand, buycoffee.to offers a simple, predictable model. With one-time support you know upfront that you'll keep 90%, with recurring support – 95%, and you don't need to factor in a variable processor fee or wonder whether a small donation gets cut down harder than a large one. That's a real difference compared to platforms where the final amount depends on which payment processor gets used.
For some creators, the lowest possible cost matters most. For others, it's simplicity and knowing the outcome in advance.
Summary: how much do you keep from a donation on buycoffee.to?
The key numbers: from a one-time 5 zł donation you keep 4.50 zł, from 10 zł – 9 zł, from 100 zł – 90 zł. With recurring support, 10 zł leaves you 9.50 zł, and 100 zł leaves you 95 zł. One-time donations and fundraisers cost a 10% fee, recurring support – 5%.
At the start, a difference of a few dozen groszy probably isn't your biggest worry – what matters more is whether people even know they can support you, and whether doing so takes them five seconds. Once donations start coming in regularly, it's worth revisiting these numbers – the lower fee on recurring support and sensible payout planning start to genuinely add up.
Frequently asked questions
How much does buycoffee.to take from a donation?
10% from one-time donations and fundraisers, 5% from recurring payments.
How much do you keep from a 5 zł coffee?
4.50 zł from a one-time donation, 4.75 zł from a recurring one.
How much do you keep from a 10 zł donation?
9 zł from a one-time donation, 9.50 zł from a recurring one.
Does the fee depend on the payment method?
No – what matters is the type of donation, not whether someone paid with BLIK, card, or bank transfer.
Does Suppi really have 0% commission?
On the basic donation – yes, according to Suppi's official FAQ the platform doesn't deduct anything and covers the processor's cost itself. It funds itself, though, through voluntary user contributions, business partnerships, and paid add-on services.
Does YouTube take 30% from Super Thanks?
The creator gets 70% of the revenue recognized by Google, calculated after taxes and fees are deducted – so the actual amount can end up lower than a simple 70% of the price the viewer paid.
Do you have to pay to withdraw from buycoffee.to?
For recurring donations, the first payout each month is free, and every subsequent one costs 6.90 zł.