Kickstarter fees in 2026: what you actually pay, and what lands in your account

Kickstarter charges a 5% platform fee on the total you raise, plus a payment processing fee of 3% + $0.30 per pledge for US projects. Pledges under $10 drop to a micropledge rate of 5% + $0.08. If the campaign misses its goal, you pay nothing.

In practice the combined deduction lands between 8% and 10% of the money collected, and the higher your average pledge, the closer you sit to 8%.

That fee is also the smallest cost on the campaign. Blazon has run 300+ crowdfunding campaigns and raised $120M+ for founders, and the fee line is the number founders check twice and the one that almost never decides whether a campaign makes money.

The money leaks elsewhere: shipping priced without fees, sales tax nobody priced in, pledges that never collect, and a payout that arrives weeks after the bills do. Every platform figure below comes from Kickstarter's and Indiegogo's own help pages as of October 2026.

Kickstarter fees for US projects in 2026

Kickstarter's fee page sets two charges, both taken from your funding total. The first is Kickstarter's own commission: 5% of total funds raised, a structure it has held since 2009. The second is payment processing, collected by Stripe, which Kickstarter describes as "between 3% and 5%".

For a project based in the United States, the numbers are:

• Kickstarter fee: 5% of the total collected.
• Processing on pledges of $10 or more: 3% + $0.30 per pledge.
• Processing on pledges under $10: 5% + $0.08 per pledge.

Rates and tax rules differ outside the US, so check the fee page for your country if you launch from elsewhere.

Building a project page and launching it costs nothing. Fees only exist if you fund, and they are deducted from the payout rather than invoiced.

When Kickstarter charges backers, and when you get paid

Backers are not charged when they pledge. Kickstarter is all-or-nothing, so cards are charged only when the campaign ends at or above its goal.

Some cards fail. Kickstarter emails those backers every 48 hours for seven days, then tries the charge once more. If that fails, the backer is dropped.

You lose the pledge but pay no fee on it, because Kickstarter only takes fees from pledges it actually collects.

The payout starts 14 calendar days after your deadline, as a single transfer from Kickstarter PBC. Your bank can take another 3 to 14 business days to show it, so a campaign that closes on March 1 lands somewhere between the third week of March and early April.

Two newer features change that timing.

Pledge Over Time lets backers split a pledge of $125 or more into three equal monthly payments, with no extra fee to the creator. Only the first installment arrives in your first payout. The second and third arrive roughly eight and twelve weeks after the campaign ends.

Good for conversion on premium tiers, awkward for cash. If many top-tier backers choose it, a real slice of the raise lands two months after your factory wants its deposit.

Late pledges let people back after the campaign ends. They are charged immediately, carry the same fees as campaign pledges, and are paid out weekly, starting 21 days after the original deadline.

Plan factory deposits against payout dates, never against the total on the last night. This is the opening stretch of what Blazon calls the Dead Zone: the months between a campaign closing and product shipping, when founders go quiet and backers drift.

What a $100,000 Kickstarter actually pays out

The fixed per-pledge charge is what makes fees easy to misjudge, because it punishes a low average pledge. Here is the same $100,000 US raise at three average pledge sizes, assuming every pledge is $10 or more and every pledge collects.

Now add a dropped-pledge allowance. Say 3% of the pledged total fails to collect, as an illustration rather than a benchmark.

On the $100-average campaign, 970 backers pay $97,000. Fees fall to $8,051 because dropped pledges carry none, and the payout is $88,949 against the $100,000 you planned on.

Small tiers deserve a look too. A $1 "say thanks" pledge loses $0.05 to Kickstarter and $0.13 to micropledge processing, so 18% of it disappears. A $5 digital tier loses $0.58, or 11.6%.

Low tiers buy reach. They do not buy margin.

Shipping: the fee you forget to charge yourself

Kickstarter's 5% and the processing fee apply to everything that passes through the platform, and that includes shipping. Shipping charged during the campaign is added to each pledge, counts toward your goal and, as Kickstarter's shipping guidance puts it, is reflected in your funding amount. The fees come off that amount.

Shipping charged later through Kickstarter's Pledge Manager does not count toward your goal, but the pledge manager charges the same fees as the campaign. Either way, at least 8% of every shipping dollar goes to fees.

So price it in. A package that costs $20 to deliver needs a shipping charge of about $21.75 to put $20 back in your account after the 5% and the 3%.

Shipping is also the line most likely to move after launch. Freight, tariffs and carrier rates change between campaign and fulfillment, so for hardware, collecting shipping in the pledge manager once the real numbers are known is usually the safer call.

Kickstarter added a Tariff Manager to its pledge manager for exactly this. The full cost of getting product into backers' hands is in Blazon's crowdfunding fulfillment guide.

Pledge manager fees

Kickstarter markets its Pledge Manager as "no additional fees". Read the help center and it means no setup cost.

Payments taken through it carry the same fees as the campaign: Kickstarter takes 5% of everything except the taxes it collects, and Stripe takes processing on the full payment, taxes included. Funds are paid out every 14 days, starting 21 days after it opens.

Third-party tools price differently. BackerKit, the best known, charges Kickstarter creators a campaign fee of 2% or less on the original raise, banded by funds and backer numbers and capped at $5 per backer when the average pledge is over $250. On top of that comes a 3.5% transaction fee on money collected in its pledge manager, plus Stripe processing (BackerKit pricing).

On a $100,000 Kickstarter, the campaign fee alone can reach $2,000 before a single add-on sells.

Indiegogo's pledge manager has no setup or subscription fee and charges 5% of each collected payment plus 3% and a $0.20 fixed fee per transaction.

The pledge manager is where add-ons, upgrades, shipping and taxes get collected. Choose it on what it does to your tax position and your backers' experience, and treat the headline fee as the tiebreaker.

Kickstarter fees and taxes: income tax, the 1099-K and sales tax

Fees are predictable. Taxes are bigger, and the platform only handles them if you let it.

Income tax. Kickstarter's tax guide says campaign funds are generally treated as income, which you can offset with project expenses in the same tax year. A campaign that closes in December and spends its money in January can land the income and the costs in different tax years, so time the deadline with your accountant.

The 1099-K. Stripe issues a Form 1099-K once you pass $20,000 in gross volume and 200 charges in a year, with lower thresholds in Massachusetts, Mississippi, Vermont and Missouri. A campaign that collects $20,000 from 200 or more backers crosses both lines in one go.

Sales tax. Sales tax may be due in the states where your backers live. Kickstarter's Pledge Manager operates as a marketplace facilitator and calculates, collects and remits sales tax for all 50 US states and Canada, which takes most of that problem off your desk if you use it. If you run the pledge manager stage elsewhere, the sales tax on your pledges is yours to handle.

There is a quiet saving in that structure. Tax collected through the Pledge Manager is excluded from Kickstarter's 5%. Tax built into a campaign pledge price is not.

For a hardware campaign shipping to backers in dozens of states, the pledge manager decision is a tax decision. Make it with an accountant before launch, because your reward prices depend on the answer.

Currency and international backers

A US project runs in US dollars, and every pledge, including those from backers abroad, is collected in that currency. Kickstarter uses Open Exchange Rates to fix the final amount, and any foreign transaction charge on the backer's side is between them and their bank.

So an international backer costs you nothing extra in fees. What they do cost is shipping, which is one more reason to price it in the pledge manager once the real rates are known.

Kickstarter vs Indiegogo fees

Indiegogo moved onto Gamefound's technology on October 16, 2025, and simplified its pricing to a flat 5% platform fee plus processing of 3% + $0.20 per transaction. Its own worked example: a $10,000 raise from 100 transactions pays $500 plus $320 and lands $9,180 in the bank.

The same platform upgrade ended flexible funding for new campaigns, so both platforms are now all-or-nothing. Indiegogo backers are charged only after a successful campaign unless they pick an instant payment method, and InDemand is now called Late Pledge.

On the $100,000, 1,000-backer campaign above, Indiegogo's fees come to $8,200 against Kickstarter's $8,300. That is a $100 difference.

If fees are deciding your platform, you are deciding on the wrong number. Audience, category fit and how your backers like to pay matter far more, and that is the ground Blazon's Kickstarter vs Indiegogo comparison covers.

The costs that dwarf the fees

On a $100,000 raise, platform fees are about $8,300. Here is what usually sits around them.

Pre-launch marketing. The biggest line and the one paid first. Blazon's rule is to plan 15% to 25% of the target raise for crowdfunding marketing, with the largest share going to pre-launch ads that build a deposit-backed list in the 8 to 12 weeks before launch.

On a $100,000 target that budget runs to two to three times the platform fees, spent before Kickstarter collects a cent. The split by channel is in Blazon's crowdfunding marketing budget breakdown.

Those deposits are also the best forecast you will get. Blazon calls it the Deposit Test: if people will not put down a small deposit before launch, they will not pledge on launch day.

The campaign video. Blazon's guidance is $5,000 to $20,000 for the hero film. Beyond that you are paying for polish that does not move conversion, and the short ad cut-downs do more selling than the hero. The production side is covered in the crowdfunding video strategy guide.

Agency fees. If you bring in a Kickstarter marketing agency, its fee sits on top of ad spend and on top of Kickstarter's cut. What should sit inside that money is laid out in how much a crowdfunding agency costs.

Product, freight and fulfillment. Landed unit cost, freight, pick and pack, and last-mile delivery. On hardware this is the largest number on the sheet by a distance, and the one most likely to rise between launch and shipping.

How to budget for Kickstarter fees

Work backwards from the payout, never forwards from the goal.

Start with a realistic pledge total, the number your deposit list supports. Take off 9% for fees, then your allowance for pledges that fail to collect. Take out any sales tax inside your prices that you are collecting yourself.

Then multiply your backer count by landed cost per unit, and add fulfillment and any shipping you have not charged for. What is left has to repay the marketing, video and agency money you spent before launch.

If that number is thin, the fix is almost never the platform. It is the reward pricing, the shipping charge or the goal. Kickstarter takes the same 5% whether your margin is 60% or 6%.

Finally, put dates against it. Marketing is spent in the 8 to 12 weeks before launch, and the payout lands three to five weeks after the campaign closes.

Pledge Over Time installments arrive around weeks eight and twelve. Your factory deposit is due when your factory says it is.

Where Blazon fits

Blazon sets every Kickstarter goal from a deposit-backed list built before launch, then builds the reward tiers, page and paid media around a number that list can support. As a Verified Kickstarter Expert it has run 300+ crowdfunding campaigns, including Filippo Loreti's $5.1M in 30 days.

Blazon's Kickstarter campaign service page sets out how it runs a campaign from pre-launch to the Shopify store that follows it. The crowdfunding agency page covers Indiegogo and the wider program, and hardware founders, for whom shipping, tariffs and sales tax weigh most, should start with crowdfunding for hardware.

The fee is the only cost on a Kickstarter that the platform sets for you. Every other line you set yourself, and that is where a campaign makes or loses its money.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Kickstarter take from a successful campaign?

Kickstarter takes a 5% commission on the total raised, and Stripe takes payment processing of 3% + $0.30 per pledge on US projects. Together that is usually 8% to 10% of the money collected. On a $100,000 campaign with a $100 average pledge, the fees come to $8,300.

Is Kickstarter free to use?

Building a project page and launching it costs nothing. Fees only apply if the campaign reaches its goal, and they are deducted from the funds raised rather than billed to you. A campaign that misses its goal pays no fees at all.

When does Kickstarter charge backers?

Backers are charged when the campaign ends, and only if it reached its goal. Failed payments get seven days to be fixed before the backer is dropped. Late pledges are charged immediately, and Pledge Over Time backers pay in three monthly installments starting at the deadline.

Does Kickstarter take fees on shipping?

Yes. Shipping charged during the campaign is part of your funding total, so the 5% and the processing fee apply to it. Shipping charged later through Kickstarter's Pledge Manager carries the same fees, so build them into the shipping price.

Do I have to collect sales tax on Kickstarter rewards?

Sales tax may be due in the states where your backers live. Kickstarter's Pledge Manager acts as a marketplace facilitator and calculates, collects and remits sales tax for all 50 US states, and tax collected that way is excluded from Kickstarter's 5%. If you handle the post-campaign stage elsewhere, sales tax on your pledges is yours to collect.

When do you get your money from Kickstarter?

The payout starts 14 calendar days after the deadline, and your bank can take a further 3 to 14 business days to show it. Late pledges pay out weekly from day 21, and Pledge Over Time installments arrive roughly eight and twelve weeks after the campaign ends.

Do I pay tax on money raised on Kickstarter?

Kickstarter's guidance is that campaign funds are generally income, offset by project expenses in the same tax year. Stripe issues a Form 1099-K once you pass $20,000 in gross volume and 200 charges in a year, with lower thresholds in some states. Take advice before launch, because your reward pricing depends on it.

What is the downside to Kickstarter?

It is all-or-nothing, so missing the goal means no money at all. Payouts arrive two weeks after the deadline plus bank processing time, fees apply to shipping as well as product, and pledges that fail to collect are simply lost. Each of these belongs in the plan before launch day.

Is Indiegogo cheaper than Kickstarter?

Marginally. Indiegogo charges 5% plus 3% + $0.20 per transaction against Kickstarter's 5% plus 3% + $0.30, so on 1,000 backers the difference is $100. Since October 2025 new Indiegogo campaigns are all-or-nothing too, so audience and category fit should decide the platform.