How Much Does Payhip Take? Payhip Fees Explained (2026)
Part of: Digital Products — our full guide on this topic.
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If you’re about to sell a digital product on Payhip, the first practical question is the same one every seller asks: how much of each sale do I actually keep? Payhip’s model is a little different from a single-fee platform like Gumroad, so here’s the honest, plain-English breakdown — plus how to price so the fee never hurts.
Fees change over time and can vary by region and payout method. Always confirm the current numbers on Payhip’s own pricing page before you rely on them. This guide explains how the model works so the exact percentage is easy to plug in.
The short answer
Payhip takes a per-sale platform fee, and how big that fee is depends on which plan you’re on:
- Free plan — no monthly fee, no listing fees. Payhip takes a small per-sale percentage (historically a low single-digit rate). You only pay when you actually sell.
- Mid paid plan — a monthly subscription in exchange for a lower per-sale fee.
- Top paid plan — a higher monthly subscription that drops the per-sale platform fee to 0%.
So Payhip lets you trade a monthly cost for a smaller cut of every sale — the opposite pressure to a flat-percentage platform. On the free plan you pay nothing until money comes in; as volume grows, paying monthly to shrink (or zero out) the per-sale fee can work out cheaper.
The part people miss: payment processing is separate
This is the single most important thing to understand about Payhip’s fees, and it’s where it differs from Gumroad.
On Payhip, you connect your own payment processor — Stripe or PayPal — and they charge their standard fee on each transaction (commonly around 2.9% plus a small fixed fee, though the exact rate varies by country and processor). That fee is on top of Payhip’s platform cut, not folded into it. If you use PayPal, our breakdown of how much PayPal takes covers the extra layers (cross-border, currency conversion) that can raise it.
Compare that with Gumroad, which rolls card processing into one flat percentage. Neither approach is automatically cheaper — it depends on your price point and volume — but you need to count both layers when you work out what you keep on Payhip:
What you keep ≈ price − Payhip’s platform fee − your processor’s fee.
What else comes out of a sale
- Payouts. Because you use your own Stripe or PayPal, the money lands in your processor account on their normal payout schedule — Payhip isn’t a middleman holding your balance. PayPal’s own withdrawal and currency rules can apply on your end.
- VAT / sales tax. For digital sales, Payhip can calculate and handle EU VAT for you. It’s added on top of your price at checkout for the buyer, not taken out of your earnings — a genuine compliance headache removed.
- No listing fees. Unlike a marketplace such as Etsy, you can list as many products as you like without paying per listing. (See how much does Etsy take for that contrast.)
A realistic example
Say you sell a $15 template pack on Payhip’s free plan. Rough numbers, using a low single-digit platform fee and a typical processor rate:
- Buyer pays $15 (plus any VAT, which passes through to the tax authority — not your money either way).
- Payhip’s platform fee — a small percentage — comes out first.
- Your processor (Stripe/PayPal) takes roughly 2.9% + a fixed fee.
- You keep the rest — still the large majority of the $15.
Plug your own current rates into the digital product profit calculator to see the exact figure — enter a price and monthly sales and it shows what you keep per sale, month and year across any platform.
Free plan or paid plan?
The honest rule of thumb:
- Starting out / low volume → free plan. Pay nothing until you sell. Don’t buy a subscription to save on fees you’re not yet paying.
- Selling consistently → do the math. Estimate the per-sale fee you’d save on a paid plan across a month of sales. If that saving is bigger than the plan’s monthly price, upgrade. If not, stay free. It’s pure arithmetic, not a judgment call.
And zoom out: once you’re selling regularly, it’s worth checking whether an all-in-one tool that hosts your funnel, email list and checkout together beats a per-sale storefront for your numbers. We break that trade-off down in Gumroad vs Systeme.io — the same logic applies to Payhip.
How to price so the fee doesn’t hurt
Don’t discover the fees after you’ve set your price — bake them in from the start:
- Decide what you want to net per sale (e.g. “$13 in my pocket”).
- Gross it up for the combined cut. Add Payhip’s platform fee and your processor’s fee together, then divide your target net by (1 − that combined rate). Round up to a clean price.
- Sanity-check the margin with real numbers in the digital product profit calculator, and if you’re still deciding where to sell, the where-to-sell calculator compares platforms side by side.
Because digital products have effectively zero cost per copy, even after both fee layers your margin is enormous compared with physical goods. The fees are a rounding error next to your real challenge, which is getting traffic and your first buyer — not the percentages.
Bottom line
Payhip costs nothing until you sell: a small per-sale platform fee on the free plan, paid plans that lower it toward 0%, your own Stripe/PayPal fee on top, and EU VAT handled for you. It’s a fair, transparent deal for launching a digital product — just remember to count both the platform fee and the processor fee, and to bake them into your price.
Ready to sell? Read how to sell on Payhip, weigh it against the obvious alternative in Gumroad vs Payhip, and get the number right with how to price a digital product. Comparing storefronts? See the best Etsy alternatives for selling digital products — and for the cheapest headline fee of all, how much Ko-fi takes (0% platform fee on its free plan). For the full side-by-side, see digital product platform fees compared.
Some links above are affiliate or product links — they never cost you extra. See our affiliate disclosure. Fee figures are illustrative; confirm current rates on Payhip directly.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Payhip take per sale?
On the free plan, Payhip takes a small per-sale platform fee (historically a low single-digit percentage) and charges no monthly fee — so you only pay when you sell. Its paid monthly plans lower that per-sale fee, and the top tier drops it to 0%. On top of Payhip's cut, your payment processor (Stripe or PayPal) charges its own standard fee. Always confirm the current numbers on Payhip's pricing page, as they can change.
Does Payhip have a free plan?
Yes. You can open a store, list unlimited products and start selling with no monthly fee and no listing fees — Payhip just takes a per-sale percentage instead. That makes it a genuinely zero-upfront-cost way to launch a digital product.
Is payment processing included in Payhip's fee?
No — that's the key difference from a platform like Gumroad. Payhip's platform fee is separate from your payment processor's fee. You connect your own Stripe or PayPal account, and they charge their standard rate (commonly around 2.9% plus a small fixed fee) on top of Payhip's cut.
Does Payhip handle EU VAT?
Yes. Payhip can calculate and handle EU VAT on digital product sales for you. VAT is added on top of your price at checkout for the buyer, not deducted from your earnings — so it removes a real compliance headache without cutting your margin.
Is Payhip's paid plan worth it to cut fees?
It depends on volume. A paid monthly plan only pays off once the per-sale saving beats the subscription cost. Do the math: if the fee you'd save each month is more than the plan price, upgrade; if not, stay on the free plan. When you're just starting, the free plan is almost always the right choice.