Gumroad Fee Calculator: What You Keep From Every Digital Sale

How Gumroad's fees work

A Gumroad sale passes through two or three hands before it reaches you: Gumroad's fee, the card company's fee, and on payout day, sometimes a payout fee. Where the buyer came from decides which fee applies.

10% + $0.50 on direct sales

A direct sale is any sale through your Gumroad profile or a link you shared: your newsletter, your website, a social post, a QR code in a printed book. Gumroad's help centre puts it plainly: "we charge a 10% + $0.50 fee + sales tax per transaction". The sales tax part is not a cost to you: Gumroad adds it to the buyer's total and pays it to the tax office.

The $0.50 is what makes cheap products expensive to sell. It is 10% of a $5 file on its own, before the 10% and the card fee. A $3 product keeps only $1.81, 60.3% of the price, while a $27 workbook keeps $22.72, 84.1%. Workbooks and programmes for coaching clients are typical Gumroad products; fitness and mental health digital product ideas has more.

Card processing, on top

The same help article says the 10% + $0.50 "does not include" credit card processing at 2.9% + $0.30, or PayPal fees. So every direct card sale carries two fixed amounts, $0.50 and $0.30. On a $10 ebook the card fee is $0.59, and all the fees together come to $2.09, or 20.9% of the price. Gumroad does not publish a PayPal rate, so the calculator works with card payments.

30% on Discover, all in

Discover is Gumroad's marketplace, where customers browse products by category. When a new customer finds you there and buys, Gumroad charges a flat 30%, "which includes all processing fees". That is three times the direct rate on the percentage, but there is no separate card fee or $0.50, so on a $3 product a Discover sale ($2.10) actually keeps more than a direct one ($1.81). The crossover is around $4.50; above it, direct sales keep more.

5% + $0.50 after $20,000 in a month

Gumroad has a high-volume discount that many fee guides miss. Once your paid sales in a calendar month reach $20,000, new direct sales that month are charged 5% + $0.50 instead of 10% + $0.50. There is nothing to apply for, it resets on the 1st, and a refund that takes you back under $20,000 puts new sales back on the normal rate until you cross again. Discover sales stay at 30%, card processing is unchanged, and a custom fee already agreed on your account still takes precedence.

Affiliates share the fees

If you pay affiliates, Gumroad splits the fees on their sales "proportional to the affiliate's commission": a 30% affiliate carries 30% of the fees. In practice the affiliate gets their percentage of the price after fees. On a $20 direct sale with a 30% affiliate, the fees are $3.38, the affiliate gets $4.99 and you keep $11.63.

Refunds and chargebacks

When you refund a sale, Gumroad gives back its own fee on the refunded part but keeps the payment-processing portion, because card companies do not return it. A refunded $10 direct sale therefore costs you about $0.59, not the whole fee. A chargeback works the same way: you cover the amount and the processing fees, and Gumroad returns its platform fee. The "sales refunded" box in the calculator applies that rule.

Is Gumroad Discover worth 30%?

Discover is on by default for every product with a category. Gumroad lists products there once your account qualifies: payout settings filled in, at least $100 from genuine sales, and a risk review that it says takes about three weeks on average after you pass $100. A product then needs at least one sale, a category and ratings switched on. Products on Discover are also opted into Gumroad's own affiliate programme.

The 30% is only charged when Discover found the buyer. Your own audience still buys at the direct rate. So the real question is whether Discover brings buyers you would not have reached, and for most new sellers it does: $7.00 from a $10 sale you would not otherwise have made is better than nothing. The cost shows up when your own buyers wander into Discover before buying; sharing direct product links rather than "find me on Gumroad" keeps them on the direct rate.

If you would rather not sell through Discover at all, Gumroad says you can remove a product from it by deleting its category on the product's Share tab.

A negative difference means the Discover sale keeps more. That only happens on very cheap products, where the direct sale's two fixed fees outweigh the extra 20 points of percentage.

Gumroad payouts: schedule, minimum and fees

• Bank account: paid in local currency in most countries, weekly, monthly or quarterly, with a $100 minimum and a 7-day hold on each sale. Gumroad mentions no fee for bank payouts.
• PayPal: used where bank payouts are not available, always in US dollars, with a 2% payout fee.
• Instant payouts (US only): up to $10K within minutes for a 3% fee, once you have had at least one payout and 60 days of processing with Gumroad. No $100 minimum.
• Daily payouts (US only): for eligible bank accounts with at least four previous payouts.
• Your own PayPal account: if you connect it, PayPal sales are credited to it at the time of sale instead.

Buyers can pay in their own currency on eligible one-time card purchases, and Gumroad says this changes nothing for you: your earnings and payouts are the same as if they had paid in US dollars. Each payout comes with a CSV that breaks down every fee, which is the easiest way to check the calculator against your real numbers.

Make the products you sell on Gumroad

Fees decide how much of a sale you keep; the product decides whether there is a sale at all. For the ebooks, workbooks and guides most Gumroad creators sell, Inkfluence AI is the best tool for the job: it writes, formats and exports the whole product, and on paid plans it publishes it to your Gumroad account. Disclosure: Inkfluence AI is our product. Here is what it makes, and what it does not do. If you are new to this, start with how to sell ebooks on Gumroad.

• Ebooks, workbooks and journals. Describe the product and Inkfluence AI plans the chapters with you, then drafts every one for you to edit. The workbook generator adds exercises to each chapter and the journal generator builds prompted journals and planner-style workbooks.
• Colouring and picture books. The coloring book generator makes printable colouring pages, and illustrated picture books are made page by page. Illustrations are a paid feature: they use the monthly image allowance on Creator and Premium, and chapter credits otherwise (one credit per picture-book page).
• Formatting done for you. Chapters, contents page, page size and margins are laid out for you. Exports: PDF (including a print-ready KDP interior), EPUB and Word. The free plan exports PDF only, with Inkfluence branding; paid plans and credit packs remove it. Our notes on ebook formats help you choose.
• Covers and audiobooks. AI covers are a paid feature (10 a month on Creator, 30 on Premium, extras by credit). Audiobook narration is included on Creator (15 chapters a month) and Premium (30); the free plan has none.
• Publishing it to Gumroad. On the Creator ($9.99 a month) and Premium ($19.99 a month) plans, Inkfluence AI fills in the title, description and price from your book and publishes it to your Gumroad account as a product, once you have connected Gumroad and set up a payout method there. Gumroad recommends a PDF plus an EPUB where you can; buyers can send both to a Kindle when they are under 15.5 MB. Full steps are in our help article on selling your books.
• What it does not do. It does not take payments, it does not print or ship anything, and Gumroad's fees are the same whichever tool made the file. Paid plans are not unlimited: each has monthly allowances, listed on the pricing page. The course creator and lead magnet generator cover courses and free list-building PDFs.

Gumroad does not publish a rule against AI-assisted products; our store-by-store AI rules cover the platforms that do. For income planning across stores, try the ebook income calculator.