Sellfy vs Gumroad: Fees, Features & Which Keeps More (2026)

Sellfy and Gumroad are the two platforms new creators compare most often, and they represent opposite bets. Sellfy asks you to pay a fixed monthly subscription and takes nothing per sale. Gumroad asks for nothing upfront and takes a big slice of every transaction. Neither is dishonest about this. But the choice between them quietly determines how much of your revenue you actually keep, and the answer flips depending on how much you sell.

This guide compares the two on the things that change your take-home pay: fee structure, tax and compliance, product types, and the marketing tools bundled in. It also shows the math at a realistic revenue level, because the headline numbers are misleading in both directions.

Disclosure: we build Pocketsflow, a creator commerce platform. We've tried to keep the comparison of Sellfy and Gumroad accurate and verifiable. Check current pricing on their sites before deciding — platforms change terms.

The core difference: subscription vs. revenue share

Sellfy is a subscription product. Plans run roughly $29–$159/month depending on tier, and paid plans charge 0% in platform transaction fees. You still pay your payment processor — Sellfy runs on Stripe and PayPal, so standard processing (commonly around 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction) comes out of your revenue regardless. Each tier also carries an annual revenue cap; exceed it and you're pushed to the next plan.

Gumroad inverted its model years ago and now charges a flat 10% per sale with no monthly fee. Payment processing is included in that 10%, which is the honest advantage of the structure: one number, no stacked costs, no bill when you sell nothing. The problem is that 10% never stops. It is the highest headline rate among mainstream creator platforms, and it scales with your success rather than against it.

So the trade is legible: Sellfy charges you before you earn, Gumroad charges you after. Whichever is cheaper depends entirely on volume — and there's a crossover point.

A worked example: $3,000/month in sales

Say you sell a $30 product and make 100 sales in a month — $3,000 in revenue. Here's roughly what each platform costs. (Figures are illustrative, using each platform's published structure and typical processing rates.)

Two things fall out of this. First, at $3,000/month Sellfy genuinely beats Gumroad — about $104/month cheaper — which is the opposite of what the "no monthly fee" marketing implies. Second, Sellfy's advantage is not as large as "0% transaction fees" suggests, because processing fees never disappear; they just move off the platform's invoice and onto Stripe's.

Where the crossover sits

Run the same math at $500/month and it reverses. Gumroad takes $50. Sellfy takes $29 plus roughly $19 in processing on ~17 sales — call it $48. Effectively a wash, and if you're on a higher Sellfy tier you're losing badly. Below a few hundred dollars a month, paying a subscription to sell almost nothing is the worst outcome in this comparison.

Run it at $20,000/month and Gumroad takes $2,000 while Sellfy takes roughly $159 + $650 processing ≈ $809. At that scale the subscription model wins decisively — and an itemized transaction cost (~$5.00 on $100) platform would take $400. The lesson is that revenue-share models punish exactly the creators who succeed, which is why 10% becomes untenable long before most people switch away from it.

Tax and merchant-of-record: the hidden line item

Fees are the visible cost. Tax compliance is the invisible one, and it's where these platforms diverge most.

Gumroad acts as merchant of record for your sales. It calculates, collects, and remits VAT and sales tax on your behalf, and it is the legal seller on the receipt. For a creator selling to buyers across the EU, UK, and US states, this removes an enormous administrative burden. Part of what that 10% buys is genuinely this.

Sellfy is not a merchant of record. Payments flow to your own Stripe or PayPal account, which means you are the seller of record. Sellfy provides VAT settings and can apply EU VAT rates at checkout, but registering for VAT MOSS, remitting to tax authorities, and handling US economic nexus are your problems. If you sell internationally at any volume, budget for an accountant or a tax automation tool — a real cost that never shows up in a pricing table.

If this distinction is new to you, it's worth reading our explainer on what a merchant of record actually does before you commit to either platform. It's the single most expensive thing creators get wrong when choosing where to sell.

Features: where each platform is actually strong

Fees aside, these products are built for different sellers.

Sellfy is the more complete storefront. You get a customizable, branded shop with your own domain, product categories, cart, coupons, upsells, and — unusually — print-on-demand for physical merch alongside your digital files. It also handles video streaming and subscriptions. Basic email marketing is included, capped by plan tier. If you want something that looks and behaves like a real store rather than a product page, Sellfy is the better foundation.

Gumroad is the more frictionless product page. Setup takes minutes, the checkout is famously simple, and there's a built-in affiliate system plus a discovery marketplace where buyers can stumble onto your work. Gumroad also supports pay-what-you-want pricing, which suits creators who want to test price sensitivity. What you don't get is a real store: customization is thin, and your page will look like every other Gumroad page.

Quick feature comparison

Who should pick which

Choose Gumroad if you're starting from zero, selling sporadically, or testing an idea and cannot justify a subscription. The 10% is expensive but it's honest, and paying nothing in a month with no sales is worth a lot when you're unsure the product works. It's also the easier answer if you sell internationally and want tax handled for you.

Choose Sellfy if you have consistent monthly revenue above roughly $1,500–$2,000, want a genuinely branded storefront, or need print-on-demand alongside digital products. Just go in knowing you own the tax obligation and that processing fees are still coming out of every sale.

Choose neither if the trade-off itself bothers you. Nothing forces a platform to charge either a subscription or a double-digit revenue share. If you want to explore what else exists, we've covered the best Sellfy alternatives and the best Gumroad alternatives in depth.

The third option

The reason this comparison is hard is that both platforms make you pick a losing side. Gumroad's 10% is the highest fee in the category and grows with your revenue. Sellfy's subscription is a fixed bet placed before you earn anything, and it still leaves you paying Stripe and filing your own VAT returns.

Pocketsflow is built to remove the trade-off. Each sale has an itemized transaction cost (~$5.00 on $100) — platform, payment infrastructure, tax handling when required, and dispute prevention, shown on every order. There's no monthly fee, no revenue cap, and no separate processor invoice. Against Gumroad's ~10%, Lemon Squeezy's ~5%+, and Payhip's ~5%, the itemized estimate stays transparent. Payments run through our payment processor, and email marketing, affiliate and partner programs, upsells, custom domains, and link-in-bio are included rather than gated behind tiers.

On the $3,000/month example above, that's about $141.30 to Pocketsflow against $300 to Gumroad — about $1,904/year that stays in your business. If you're still working out what to charge in the first place, start with our guide to pricing digital products, then run the fee math against whichever platform you're leaning toward.

Sellfy and Gumroad are both real, usable products, and the right one depends on whether your revenue is steady enough to absorb a subscription. But if what you actually want is checkout, global tax, merchant of record, and growth tools under one itemized transaction cost (~$5.00 on $100 / 4.7% + $0.30 estimated) — start selling on Pocketsflow for free .