Answer
How much do crowdfunding platforms charge?
Short answer
Most take between 5% and 8% of what a campaign raises once the platform fee and the payment processing are added together. CoFunders takes 1.5% on the free plan, down to 0.5%, plus 0.99 per pledge.
The headline number on a crowdfunding site is rarely the number a founder pays. The familiar 5% platform fee is usually quoted before payment processing, which adds roughly 3% plus a fixed amount per transaction, so the real cost of raising lands near 8%. Both numbers are honest on their own and only one of them gets put in the marketing.
Ours: 1.5% of each pledge on the free plan, falling to 0.5% on the highest paid plan, plus a flat 0.99 per pledge. There is no separate payment processor taking a second cut, because the money moves on a public network rather than through a card scheme. The minimum pledge is 10, and looking around costs nothing.
The flat fee is the part worth understanding, because it is what makes a bare percentage misleading at small amounts. On a pledge of 100 the free plan keeps 97.5% for the founder, not the 98.5% you would get by subtracting 1.5% alone. We would rather write that down than let somebody discover it in a payout.
Separately, a creator can choose to pay a share of a pledge to whoever brought it in, up to 18.5%. That is the creator's money and their decision, not a platform charge, and the ceiling is enforced by the contract rather than by a policy page.