How to explain Ko-fi to your audience

Ko-fi is a fun, friendly way for your supporters to say thanks and help fund your creative work.

How does Ko-fi work?

Creators set up their personalized Ko-fi page and share it with their lovely fans. When you visit a creator’s page, you can choose to make a donation and also leave a short message of encouragement if you like, and that's it! The money goes directly to the creator, acknowledging their hard work and fueling their passion to keep going.

Freedom for the creator

Creators can use Ko-fi as a simple ‘tip jar’ to receive donations or expand it to offer loads more. They can create membership tiers with rewards, set up stream alerts, sell physical or digital products in their Ko-fi shop or even offer commissions and services. All of this from one place!

Creators keep more of their money

Ko-fi charges just 0-5% platform fees for the service (most other services take between 12% and 30%). That means more of your money goes directly to the creator. You can learn more about our fees here.

Safe and secure payments

We don’t mess with your money. Payments are sent instantly and directly from you to the creators own PayPal or Stripe account. Ko-fi doesn’t process payments, hold on to the money or make creators wait for payouts.

What’s the coffee part?

Lots of creators choose a metaphor for the donation. By default that’s ‘coffee’, but creators can change it to something else if they like. There’s no actual coffee involved, it can just feel a bit friendlier to buy your creator a coffee!

What type of creators use Ko-fi?

We’ve had millions of creators use Ko-fi over the years. From crafters to spiritual healers, cat rescuers to jazz groups. These are just a few creators we love:

🎨 Artists: Mochi Buddies, Tofu, Chris Sale

🦸‍♀️ Cosplayers: Chrissy Plays Dressup, Black Bettie, Vicious Frockery

✍️ Writers: Lou Yardley, Latoya Shauntay Snell, Shannon Ashley

🎙️ Podcasters: Long Cat Media, Squawking Dead, On Second Watch

💻 Developers: Cyber Barbie, Jenny, Justinpinkney

📺 Streamers: Eric Campbell, Shenanjegans, BobDuckNWeave

▶️ Video Creators: The Girl With The Pilates Mat, Tara, Frank James

🎵 Musicians: Victoria Banks, Kutski, Open Collab

Still have questions about Ko-fi? Send us a request here.