Patreon alternatives for food creators: nine options and what each costs

The baseline: what Patreon costs a food creator

Patreon is the easiest way to start charging fans, and plenty of food creators begin there. Molly Baz ran her recipe club on Patreon before moving it to her own site, according to Memberful’s customer story.

Here’s what it costs, from Patreon’s own pages as of October 2026:

• Platform fee: 10% of membership and one-time purchase income for creators who launched after 4 August 2025. Creators who launched earlier keep their existing plan while their page stays published.
• Payment processing: 2.9% plus 30¢ for a US card, on top of the platform fee.
• Apple’s cut on iPhone sign-ups: MacRumors reported in January 2026 that Apple takes its commission (30%, falling to 15% once a subscription passes a year) on new memberships bought inside Patreon’s iOS app, and that Apple set 1 November 2026 as the deadline for all Patreon creators to move from Patreon’s older billing system to Apple’s in-app purchases. Fans who join through Patreon’s website avoid that commission.

On 500 members at US$6 a month, that’s US$300 a month in platform fees and about US$237 in processing: roughly US$537 of every US$3,000.

The bigger issue for food creators is the product. Patreon has no recipe tools, so recipes go up as posts, with no serving scaling, shopping lists or meal plans, and members read them inside Patreon’s app rather than one under your name.

What you’d lose by leaving Patreon

• Easy sign-up. Many fans already have a Patreon account and a saved card. Joining you there takes seconds.
• Your paying members, unless they rejoin. Patreon manages subscriptions on your behalf, so Ghost’s migration guide says there’s no direct way to move paid subscriptions to another platform. You can export your members as a file with their emails, but each paying member has to sign up again.
• Patreon’s community features, such as posts, comments and chats, which you would rebuild elsewhere.

That second point shapes how you move. A good switch plan:

1. Export your member list from Patreon.
2. Launch the new membership and offer patrons a reason to move, such as a lower founding price or a free first month.
3. Keep Patreon running for a few weeks so nobody loses access mid-month. Ghost, for example, lets you import patrons as complimentary members while they still pay through Patreon.
4. Close new Patreon sign-ups and tell the remaining patrons when the old page closes.

Expect to lose some members in the move. Plan the launch like a new one, not a quiet switch.

The alternatives at a glance

Figures in US dollars from each platform’s own website. Ghost was checked on 13 October 2026; the rest come from our comparison pages, checked on 8 October 2026. Card fees apply on every platform.

Platform	Monthly fee	Fees on sales	Recipe tools	Best for
Patreon (baseline)	None	10% for new creators	No	The quickest way to take fan support
Memberful	US$49	4.9%	No	Membership on your own WordPress site
Ghost	From US$29 (yearly) or US$35 for paid memberships	0%	No	A newsletter-style site with no cut
Substack	None	10%	Recipe embeds, in beta	Writers who want network discovery
Mighty Networks	US$79 to US$354, billed yearly	0.5% to 2%	No	Community-led memberships with events
Member Kitchens	US$49 to US$199, plus a fee per active member	None listed	Yes, with nutrition data	Deep recipe and nutrition tooling
Clubb	None	10% of revenue	Yes, with meal plans	A branded recipe app you run yourself
GRO	None for memberships	15% of membership transactions	No, gates WordPress posts	WordPress blogs charging for ad-free access
Kajabi	US$179 to US$499	None to Kajabi	No	Cooking courses you build and market
Launch with Voyage (us)	None	A share of sales, from 10%	Yes, with meal plans	A partner to build and grow it with you

Your own site, your own Stripe

These move the membership onto a website you control, with payments into your own Stripe account. That’s the change that makes any future move easier.

Memberful

Memberful is Patreon’s own tool for creators who want their membership on their own site, usually WordPress. It costs US$49 a month plus 4.9% of sales. Molly Baz’s club runs on WordPress and Memberful today: a new recipe every Friday, a searchable archive, giveaways and discount codes. Memberful has no recipe tools, so scaling and shopping lists depend on your WordPress recipe plugin, and there’s no native app. See Voyage vs Memberful.

Best for: food creators with a WordPress site who want to own the membership and are happy to manage the plugins.

Ghost

Ghost is open-source publishing software with a hosted plan. Paid memberships start on Publisher at US$29 a month billed yearly, or US$35 month to month, for up to 1,000 members, rising as your list grows. Ghost takes 0% of payments, which run through your own Stripe account. It’s built around posts and newsletters, with tiers, tips and comments, and no recipe tools.

Best for: food writers whose Patreon is mostly posts and emails, and who want a site of their own with no share of revenue.

Newsletter and community platforms

Substack

Substack keeps 10% of subscriptions plus Stripe’s fees, so it costs about the same as Patreon. What it adds is discovery: in February 2024 Substack said recommendations drove half of all new subscriptions on the platform. Recipe embeds have been in beta since February 2026, without serving scaling, shopping lists or meal plans. Our Substack alternatives for recipe creators guide covers the other direction. See Voyage vs Substack.

Best for: food writers who want new readers from a network more than recipe tools.

Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is a community platform with courses, events and livestreaming, from US$79 to US$354 a month billed yearly, plus 0.5% to 2% of sales. It’s the closest replacement for Patreon’s community side. There are no recipe tools, and members use the shared Mighty app unless you’re on Mighty Pro, from US$17,000 a year. See Voyage vs Mighty Networks.

Best for: memberships where cook-alongs, live sessions and discussion matter more than the recipe library.

Recipe-first platforms

These give members the thing Patreon can’t: recipes they cook from.

Member Kitchens

Member Kitchens is recipe membership software with nutrition data, macros, pantry tools and shopping lists sorted by aisle. It costs US$49 to US$199 a month plus a fee for each active member, which rises as you grow. There’s an installable web app on its Growth plan, and help covers setup and migration. See Voyage vs Member Kitchens.

Best for: nutrition-led recipe memberships you run yourself.

Clubb

Clubb builds recipe memberships with servings controls, cook modes, meal plans and shopping lists, on a website and native iOS and Android app branded as you. It charges 10% of revenue with no upfront cost, the same headline rate as Patreon, and the marketing is yours to run. See Voyage vs Clubb.

Best for: a branded recipe app you set up and market yourself.

GRO

GRO adds paid memberships to an existing WordPress food blog, with no monthly fee for memberships and 15% of each transaction. Members get an ad-free site (on Raptive, Mediavine and Chicory sites) and the posts you gate. Recipes stay in WordPress, without meal plans or an app. GRO’s main product is Instagram and Facebook DM automation, from free to US$250 a month depending on your follower count. See Voyage vs GRO.

Best for: food bloggers whose income is ads and who want to sell an ad-free experience.

Courses

Kajabi

Kajabi costs US$179 to US$499 a month (US$143 to US$399 billed yearly) and takes no share of sales through Kajabi Payments. It’s strong for courses and coaching and has no recipe tools, so recipes become lessons or PDFs. A branded app needs the US$499 Pro plan. See Voyage vs Kajabi.

Best for: cooking classes and courses you’ll build and market yourself.

Comparing the cost at your size

Take the same 500 members at US$6 a month, US$3,000 a month in sales. Platform fees only, before card fees, from the figures above:

Platform	Monthly platform cost
Patreon	US$300
Substack	US$300
Clubb	US$300
Memberful	US$196 (US$49 plus 4.9%)
Ghost Publisher	US$35 to US$75, for up to 5,000 members in total, free ones included
Kajabi	US$179 to US$499
GRO	US$450

At this size the differences are a few hundred dollars a month. The bigger differences are what members get and who does the work. Run your own numbers in the membership revenue calculator.

Launch with Voyage (us)

We’re one of the options, and a different kind: a partner rather than a platform you set up. Launch with Voyage is how Voyage, a product and growth agency in New Zealand, launches and grows memberships for established food creators: a branded website and member area on the Voyage membership platform, with recipes that scale, shopping lists and meal plans, and an optional native iOS and Android app. There’s no monthly fee and no setup fee; we take a share of sales, from 10%, agreed before launch, and Stripe’s card fees apply. Members pay into your own Stripe account and you own the list. Web sign-ups carry no app store commission; members who subscribe inside your app pay through the App Store or Google Play, and Apple and Google take their commission there. We handle the move from Patreon with you, lining up billing dates so nobody pays twice. See Voyage vs Patreon.

Best for: established food creators who want a recipe membership of their own, built and grown with a team. If you just want fans to chip in each month, Patreon already does that well.

How to choose

• You mainly want fan support and posts: stay on Patreon, or move to Ghost or Memberful to own the site.
• You want new readers from a network: Substack.
• Community is the product: Mighty Networks.
• Members should cook from your recipes: Member Kitchens, Clubb or Voyage.
• You run an ad-funded WordPress blog: GRO or Memberful.

Wherever you go, choose a platform where members pay into a Stripe account you own, so the next move, if there is one, doesn’t mean asking everyone to join again. The full field is in our membership platforms for food creators roundup.