We make Drry, one of the alternatives below, so read accordingly. The best Patreon alternatives for a paid community are Drry, Skool, Circle, Kajabi, Mighty Networks, and Discord, and the core trade is swapping Patreon's percentage of everything for a flat price, or for nothing at all. Most "best alternatives" posts are written by one of the vendors and pretend otherwise; we would rather say it in the first line and then earn your trust with the rest of the page. The Patreon figures below carry the date we checked them and a link to the source. Other numbers on this page do not, and prices and fee structures change, so verify current terms before you commit to anything, including us.
Credit where it is due: Patreon is the lowest-friction way in the world to charge for your work. Fans pledge, you post, the money shows up. For an artist or a podcaster with an existing audience, that is often all you need. But for a coaching community it gets thin fast. Patreon takes a percentage of everything you earn, forever, and that cut compounds as you grow; we put real numbers on exactly how much in our breakdown of Patreon's fees. Courses are limited, there is no true community space beyond posts and comments, your page lives on Patreon with limited branding, and your members are Patreon's users on Patreon's pages, not yours. That trade is the through-line of everything below. For the head-to-head on just the two of us, see Drry vs Patreon.
Skool: the focused-community one
Skool is a tidy, opinionated community platform: one feed, one course area, one calendar, and genuinely strong gamification (leaderboards, levels, points) that keeps members coming back. If Patreon feels too passive and you want members actually talking, Skool is a natural step up.
- Best for: coaches who want a simple, engagement-driven community with courses and do not need funnels or a free tier.
- Pricing structure: a flat monthly subscription with no free plan, plus a transaction fee on every member payment (steepest on the entry plan) on top of the monthly price.
- What you give up: a free plan to start, landing pages and funnels (you bolt on a separate page builder), and full brand control, your community lives on skool.com. See Drry vs Skool for the details.
Circle: the polished premium one
Circle is probably the most refined community product here: clean spaces, events, courses, and a professional feel that suits established brands. It is the closest thing to a default choice for well-funded creator businesses moving off a pledge feed.
- Best for: creators and companies who want a premium, design-forward community and are happy to pay a real subscription for it.
- Pricing structure: paid plans only (after a trial), plus a platform transaction fee on member payments on every plan, smaller on the pricier tiers.
- What you give up:a free plan, and the fee means the platform still grows with your revenue the way Patreon does, just at a lower rate. Seeing each member's activity is reserved for the top tier. See Drry vs Circle.
Kajabi: the marketing-suite one
Kajabi is a different animal: a full course-and-marketing suite with funnels, email sequences, podcasts, and websites. Community exists but is a bolt-on, not the center of gravity; the pitch is replacing your whole marketing stack, not just your Patreon.
- Best for: established course businesses that want funnels, email automation, and courses in one heavyweight tool and can absorb a suite-level bill.
- Pricing structure:notably pricier, plans run from around $89 up to hundreds a month, with no free plan. Payments come with catches: the 0% claim requires Kajabi's own in-house processor, and outside processors pay a platform fee.
- What you give up: community depth (it is a feature, not the heart), the entry price, and payment portability. If you mostly want a home for members rather than a marketing machine, you are paying for a lot of machine. See Drry vs Kajabi.
Mighty Networks: the events-and-cohorts one
Mighty Networks bundles communities, courses, and a notably strong live-events layer, with its own mobile apps and a philosophy built around member connection and cohorts. If your community IS the gatherings, it deserves a serious look.
- Best for: coaches whose model centers on live events, cohorts, and challenges rather than a content library or a post feed.
- Pricing structure: paid plans only (after a trial), with a platform transaction fee on every plan that shrinks on the pricier tiers.
- What you give up: simplicity, mostly. The surface area is large and takes real setup, and deeper analytics and native email sit on higher tiers. See Drry vs Mighty Networks.
Discord: the free chat one
The honest budget answer. Discord is free, real-time, and your audience may already live there. Plenty of thriving paid groups run on it. But Discord is a chat tool, not a membership business, and the difference shows up exactly where the money is.
- Best for: free communities, gaming and dev audiences, and coaches validating an idea before spending anything at all.
- Pricing structure: free, genuinely. Paid cosmetic upgrades exist but nothing you need.
- What you give up:nearly everything a paid membership needs natively. Server Subscriptions do exist and are native, but they are US-only (you need US banking details and ID for Stripe), they need a community-enabled server, an account in good standing and an owner over 18, and Discord takes 10% on top of payment processing rather than instead of it, so 90% is not what reaches you. A subscription bought in the iOS app loses a further 30% to Apple. Outside them you wire up third-party bots and checkout tools yourself. No courses, no landing pages, no member email, and a fast-scrolling chat where yesterday's gold is buried by lunchtime. Great energy, weak structure, and you own the duct tape.
Drry: the flat-price, fee-free one (ours)
Our product, so treat this as a pitch with numbers you can check. Drry is a paid-community platform for coaches: community feed, video courses, audio, member email, and funnels in one branded space, at your own address like grace.drry.com or your own custom domain on paid plans. Where Patreon rents you a corner of its site and skims your revenue, Drry gives you a home and charges a flat monthly fee for the software, or nothing.
- Best for: coaches who have outgrown a post feed and want a real community with courses and email, kept in their own brand, without handing over a slice of every payment.
- Pricing structure: a genuinely free plan (100 members, 5 GB, unlimited courses, one funnel, no card), then flat subscriptions at $29 (Creator) and $99 (Growth) a month. 0% of member payments on every plan; money flows through your own Stripe account and the customer relationship is yours.
- What you give up:Patreon's built-in fan network and discovery, and its name recognition with patrons who already have accounts. Drryis your own space, which means you have to drive the traffic to it rather than borrowing Patreon's.
How to actually choose
If you want the side-by-side version of this with every dimension laid out, our comparison hub covers each of these platforms against Drry in detail, and Drry vs Patreon is the direct head-to-head, same disclosure, same rules: a verification date on the figures that carry one, and verify current terms either way.
Questions coaches ask
How much does Patreon actually take?
Patreon charges a percentage of everything you earn, plus payment processing on top, and the exact percentage depends on the plan tier you are on. The number matters less than the shape: it is a cut of your revenue that recurs forever and grows as you grow, so your thousandth patron costs you more in absolute dollars than your tenth even though the platform does nothing new. Verify the current rates on Patreon's own pricing page before you decide, they change them.
What is the best Patreon alternative for a paid community?
For a post feed with tiers, Patreon is hard to beat on friction. For an actual community, where members talk to each other, take your courses, and live in a space that feels like yours, you want a community platform rather than a content-pledge tool. On this list that means Skool, Circle, Mighty Networks, or Drry (we make Drry, so weigh that). The deciding question is usually the money model: whether you would rather pay a percentage of everything forever or a flat price that does not scale with your success.
Can I move my Patreon members to another platform?
There is no one-click export of paying patrons between platforms, because the subscriptions live in Patreon's billing. In practice a move means standing up your new home, announcing it to your patrons with a clear date, and having them re-subscribe on the new platform (ideally through your own Stripe account so the billing relationship is finally yours). It is friction, but it is a one-time cost that ends the percentage cut forever. Most creators under a few hundred patrons complete the move in a week or two.
Does Drry really take 0% of member payments?
Yes, on every plan including the free one. Member payments run through your own Stripe account, so only Stripe's standard processing fee applies and the customer relationship belongs to you, not us. That is our business model being different rather than us being generous: we charge a flat subscription ($0, $29, or $99 a month) instead of a percentage of your growth, which is the whole point of trading Patreon's cut for a flat price.