Honest comparison
OAcast vs Patreon
Patreon is a membership audience with a platform attached; OAcast is your platform with your audience on it. Patreon costs nothing up front, brings real discovery, and takes roughly 13–15% of gross all-in while your business lives on their URL. OAcast charges a flat fee, runs under your brand on your Stripe — and brings you no audience at all. That trade is the whole comparison.
Pricing side by side
| Cost | OAcast | Patreon |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | Flat, from €99/mo + small transaction % | 10% of all earnings (creators joining after Aug 2025) |
| Payment processing | Stripe's standard rates, in your own account | 2.9% + 30¢ per charge (5% + 10¢ on micro-payments) |
| Currency conversion | Stripe's standard handling | +2.5% when a member's currency differs from your payout currency |
| Realistic all-in on membership revenue | Platform fee + small % — flat as you grow | Commonly ~13–15% of gross |
| iOS signups | None — OAcast apps are reader apps; people subscribe on your website | Apple in-app purchase: 30% cut; default iOS prices inflated ~43% to compensate |
| Live streaming | Included (Broadcast and up), with chat moderation | Included free for all creators |
Patreon pricing verified July 2026 from official pricing and help pages. Spot something outdated? Tell us and we'll fix it.
Feature by feature
Brand
| Feature | OAcast | Patreon |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domain | Every plan — your site is yourbrand.com | None at any price — you are patreon.com/yourname |
| Design & white-label | Full branding, custom layouts, no OAcast logo on your site | Patreon's page layout, Patreon's branding, at every price |
| SEO | Your domain compounds authority; video pages ship structured data | Authority accrues to patreon.com |
Monetize
| Feature | OAcast | Patreon |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns billing | You — subscriptions run in your own Stripe account | Patreon (merchant of record) — patrons can't be migrated with billing intact |
| Models | Tiered subscriptions, PPV passes, tips, pay-what-you-want subscriptions | Membership tiers, one-time payments, gifts |
| Content gating | Per-video/per-article tier levels, PPV passes, free tiers | Per-post tier gating |
Grow
| Feature | OAcast | Patreon |
|---|---|---|
| Full campaigns to your list — you can export and reach everyone | Member newsletters inside Patreon; email export supported | |
| Apps & push | Your own branded iOS/Android reader apps, your push notifications | The Patreon app, Patreon's notifications, Patreon's rules |
| Discovery | None — you bring the audience | Real: 1M+ new memberships/month driven by their network |
Leaving
| Feature | OAcast | Patreon |
|---|---|---|
| What you take with you | Domain, content, subscriber billing (it's your Stripe), emails | Member emails via CSV — billing and saved cards stay behind |
| What it costs to stay | Flat fee — the same at 100 and 10,000 members | 10% of gross forever; unpublishing your page forfeits legacy rates |
When Patreon is the better choice
A comparison you can't trust in both directions isn't worth reading. Pick Patreon if:
- You're starting from zero — no fixed costs, and fans already have Patreon accounts with saved payment methods.
- Discovery matters more than brand: Patreon's network drives over a million new memberships to creators every month — no white-label platform can offer that.
- Community is the product — their chats, DMs, and member feed are mature and fans already live there.
- You're podcast-first: Patreon's private-feed podcast tooling is best in class.
The structural difference
Patreon’s 10% isn’t the real price. The real price is architectural: your members are Patreon’s customers, on Patreon’s domain, in Patreon’s app, with Patreon’s saved cards. Every growth lever this creates — discovery, frictionless signup, consumer trust — is real, and every one of them belongs to the platform, not to you.
OAcast sells the opposite architecture: your domain, your Stripe account, your apps, your list. Nothing about it is frictionless on day one — you bring the audience — but everything about it compounds in your name. The fee difference (flat vs 10%+ of gross) decides the spreadsheet; the ownership difference decides who’s running a business in five years.
The honest read
If you’re pre-revenue, start on Patreon — we mean it. Save the flat fee until membership income covers it several times over. When your gross makes 13–15% feel like rent, or when “check my Patreon” starts sounding smaller than the work deserves, that’s the moment this page was written for. Book a demo and bring your patron count — the math takes ten minutes.
Questions people ask
Should I leave Patreon for OAcast?
Not necessarily — and not immediately. The common pattern is running both: Patreon keeps its discovery and its existing patrons, while your OAcast site becomes home for video, live events, and new members. Move the center of gravity gradually; shut nothing down until the direct side sustains you.
How do I move my patrons over?
Export your member emails from Patreon (supported, filterable by tier), then invite them with a reason to move — launch pricing, member-only live events, or simply everything in one place. Honesty required: Patreon holds the billing relationship, so each patron re-subscribes on your site. That friction is real, and it's also the last time your audience is anyone's hostage.
Patreon has video and live now. Why isn't that enough?
For many creators it genuinely is. It stops being enough when you need a destination — your domain, your design, seasons and categories, PPV events, apps under your name, campaigns to your full list. That's a platform, not a page, and it's the line where OAcast starts making sense.
What about Apple's 30% on iOS?
New Patreon memberships bought in their iOS app go through Apple's in-app purchases — Apple takes 30%, and Patreon's default setting inflates iOS prices by about 43% to compensate. OAcast sidesteps the problem structurally: our mobile apps are reader apps, and people subscribe on your website, where Apple takes nothing.
See the difference with your content.
Book a demo — bring your library and your subscriber math.