On fees, the Gumroad vs Whop answer is Whop: its published rate takes $0.84 of a $20 US card sale, and Gumroad takes $3.38. Gumroad fits one-off files, with sales tax handled at no separate charge. Whop fits memberships, chat and courses. CartMango fits files and subscriptions paid straight into your own Stripe or PayPal.
The 3 differ on 5 jobs: delivery, fees and tax, finding buyers, payouts and keeping members if you leave. Figures come from each platform’s own pages: Gumroad charges 10% + $0.50 plus card processing, Whop 2.7% + $0.30, and CartMango, which I run, 0% a sale plus Stripe’s card fee, free right now and from $10 a year once paid plans start in November.
You have a product ready and 2 fee pages open. Gumroad says 10% plus $0.50. Whop says 2.7% plus $0.30. Picking wrong costs little on day 1 and a lot once you have paying members to move.
Does Gumroad’s 10% cover card processing? Is Whop’s rate the whole cost? A guide on page 1 for this search gets the first question wrong, and its fee estimate for a $50 ebook comes out $1.75 short.
Fees are 1 of 5 jobs a platform does for you. Below, Gumroad and Whop are judged on all 5: delivering what was bought, taking the money and the tax, finding new buyers, paying you out, and keeping your members if you leave.
Key Takeaways
- Whop costs far less per card sale than Gumroad. Whop’s published rate takes $0.84 of a $20 US sale. A sale from your own Gumroad page costs $3.38.
- Gumroad handles sales tax with no separate charge. Whop is also the legal seller, but its tax collection adds 2% per sale.
- Whop charges nothing extra on marketplace sales. Gumroad Discover takes a flat 30%, and opens only after $100 in sales and a review.
- Whop can hold back part of each sale. A new or risky account can have a share of every sale held, for 90 days in Whop’s own example.
- Neither export includes your members’ cards. CartMango runs subscriptions in your own Stripe or PayPal, so they keep billing if you leave CartMango.
What Gumroad and Whop each deliver to a buyer
Gumroad delivers a product, and Whop delivers access. A Gumroad buyer gets a file, a bundle or a membership that bills on repeat. A Whop buyer joins a space you run, built from apps you switch on.
Worried you will pick a platform, launch, and only then find the mistakes that cost you sales? The Online Selling Mistakes Challenge covers 5 common selling mistakes and how to fix each one.
Gumroad’s extras stay simple. Each product can have a plain-text group chat. Its built-in connections for member access are Discord and Circle, so a sale can open a server or a community there. Gumroad has no learning management system.
Whop’s documentation lists a Courses app with videos, quizzes and progress tracking. Next to it sit Chat, Forums, Events, Files and Calendar Bookings for 1-on-1 calls, paid or free. A Discord app gives buyers access to your server, and memberships can link to a Telegram account too.
An ebook or a template pack works fine on either. A paid group or a course with quizzes is where Whop’s apps do the work.
CartMango, the checkout I built, sits nearer Gumroad here. CartMango sells files and subscriptions with protected download links, and a Mini Page can be your sales page if you have no website. CartMango’s course hosting and community are in development and not live yet, and video files need an outside host like Vimeo or YouTube.
Gumroad vs Whop fees on a $20 and $50 sale
On a $20 US card sale, Whop’s published rate takes $0.84 and CartMango plus Stripe takes $0.88. A sale from your own Gumroad page costs $3.38, and a Gumroad Discover sale costs $6.00.
| Where the sale happens | Fee on $20 | You keep | Fee on $50 | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gumroad, your own page | $3.38 | $16.62 | $7.25 | $42.75 |
| Gumroad Discover | $6.00 | $14.00 | $15.00 | $35.00 |
| Whop, published card rate | $0.84 | $19.16 | $1.65 | $48.35 |
| Whop, tax collection on | $1.24 | $18.76 | $2.65 | $47.35 |
| CartMango + Stripe | $0.88 | $19.12 | $1.75 | $48.25 |
CartMango is my own product, so weigh its row knowing who wrote it: CartMango takes 0% of each sale, and the $0.88 is Stripe’s card fee.
Every row is a US card sale. The Gumroad rows come from Gumroad’s fee help page. It says the 10% plus $0.50 “does not include” card processing of 2.9% plus $0.30. Discover sales pay a flat 30%, with processing included. Once your paid sales reach $20,000 in a calendar month, new direct sales that month drop to 5% plus $0.50.
That help page settles a point page 1 gets wrong. Shopiator’s guide, ranking on the first page, says Gumroad’s fee is “processing included” and puts a $50 ebook at about $5.50 in Gumroad fees. ProcessorVerdict’s comparison reads it the same way. The real split on a $50 sale is $5.50 to Gumroad plus $1.75 in card charges, which comes to $7.25.
A sale from your own Gumroad page. The $1.75 in card charges comes from the same help page as the 10%.
The Whop rows use the rates on Whop’s fee page. A domestic card costs 2.7% plus $0.30. An international card adds 1.5%, and currency conversion adds 1%. A sale through Whop’s own marketplace costs the same rate.
Whop’s own pages do not fully agree with each other. The fee page lists no platform fee. Whop’s creator guide on getting paid says Whop “charges a platform fee on most transactions” and gives no rate. Comparisons online fill that gap with their own numbers: Playto’s, on page 1, says Whop “takes 7.2% of every sale”, and Creator Tools adds a “3% platform fee” on automated sales. Neither figure appears on Whop’s fee page, so this post uses the rate Whop publishes.
The fee page also lists a $0.07 fraud check and $0.03 for 3D Secure per transaction. Whop’s own worked example leaves them out, so the table does too. Count both and a $20 Whop sale costs $0.94. Turn on every optional extra on a domestic card, which means routing at 0.8%, billing tools at 0.5% and tax at 2%, and Whop’s own total is 6% plus $0.30.
On a US card, CartMango’s only per-sale cost is Stripe’s published rate of 2.9% plus $0.30, or PayPal’s rate if the buyer pays that way. CartMango’s plans run $10 to $30 a year once paid plans start in November. Against Gumroad, the $10 plan pays for itself after 4 sales of $20, since Gumroad’s own share of each is $2.50. Against Whop’s published rate, CartMango plus Stripe costs 4 cents more on a $20 sale and 10 cents more on a $50 sale, with the yearly plan on top. Per sale and before the plan, CartMango comes out cheaper only next to Whop with tax collection on, or on a $20 sale once Whop’s fraud and 3D Secure fees are counted.
Sales tax: inside Gumroad’s fee, a 2% switch at Whop
Gumroad has been the merchant of record since January 1, 2025, which means it is the legal seller. Gumroad collects and pays sales tax worldwide, and its fee page lists no separate charge for doing it. Your buyer pays the tax on top of your price.
Whop is also the merchant of record on Whop Payments, per its own payout documentation. Its fee page prices tax collection and payment as a 2% add-on, charged “when enabled and tax is collected”. That 2% row in the table is what Whop charges for a job Gumroad does with no line item of its own.
With CartMango you stay the legal seller, so sales tax is yours to handle, by yourself or with a tax tool. On this job Gumroad’s higher fee buys something CartMango leaves to you and Whop charges 2% extra for.
Finding buyers you do not have yet
Whop charges nothing extra on a sale its marketplace brings you, and Gumroad Discover takes a flat 30%. Whop dropped its own marketplace cut in a changelog post: “Up until now, we’ve charged a 30% fee when someone found your Whop through our Discover marketplace. Now? It’s 0%.” The same post says marketplace approval is now instant.
Gumroad Discover is harder to get into. Its help page lists 3 conditions: payout settings filled in, a balance of at least $100 from genuine sales, and a risk review that “can take on average 3 weeks” after you pass $100. Each product also needs 1 successful sale, a category and ratings switched on. Our Gumroad vs Etsy comparison works through what that gate means for a brand-new store.
Both run affiliate programs. Products listed on Gumroad Discover join Gumroad Affiliates automatically. Whop’s affiliate program defaults to a 30% commission that you can change. CartMango has no marketplace at all, so every buyer is one you bring. CartMango’s affiliate system, up to 250 affiliates, sits on the $30 Platinum plan. If a free marketplace is your main reason to look at Whop, our Whop alternatives guide shows what the other options charge for the same jobs.
Getting your money out of Gumroad and Whop
On its standard payout schedules, Gumroad holds each card sale for at least 7 days and pays out only above $100. Whop can keep back part of each sale in a reserve, and its own docs list a new account with little sales history as 1 of the reasons.
Gumroad publishes its payout rules on its getting-paid help page:
- Minimum: a $100 balance before a bank payout.
- Hold: on weekly, monthly or quarterly payouts, each sale waits at least 7 days, and a payout covers sales through the previous Friday.
- First payout: an account review of 1 to 3 weeks, usually after 3 or 4 sales and a balance over $100.
- Bank transfer: 2 to 7 business days after that.
- Other routes: PayPal payouts cost 2%. Instant payouts cost 3% and are US-only, after 60 days and 1 earlier payout.
- The exception: sales through a connected PayPal account land in your PayPal at the moment of sale, skipping the 7-day hold and the $100 minimum.
Payout trouble is the main complaint in Gumroad’s seller reviews. When we sorted the 118 latest Trustpilot reviews for our Gumroad review, 46 of the 68 written by sellers described a suspended account, a held payout or the $100 minimum.
Whop’s standard payouts take up to 5 business days. Faster ones cost money: $2.50 for next-day ACH, and 4% plus $2.50 for an instant bank deposit. Whop reviews an account at your first sale, your first withdrawal and at revenue marks like $1,000 and $5,000.
The page-1 comparisons for this search that we read never mention Whop’s reserves. Whop’s reserves page describes holding a percentage of each sale for a set number of days. Its example is a 10% reserve on a 90-day hold, where a $1,000 sale on March 1 has $100 held until May 30.
Whop’s creator guide ties bigger reserves to a dispute risk score, from 25% of each sale held for 30 days up to 100% held for 90 days.
A seller who made a $7 first sale on Whop wrote in a r/whop thread that part of it “isn’t available for withdrawal until January”. Another seller in r/whop reported $1,471.56 held for 120 days after passing a compliance review, with no chargebacks or disputes. Those are 2 accounts, not an average.
CartMango holds no balance. Each payment lands in your own Stripe or PayPal account at the moment of sale, and CartMango never touches the money in between. Stripe and PayPal then pay you out on their own schedules, with their own checks on new accounts.
Keeping your members if you leave Gumroad or Whop
Neither Gumroad’s sales export nor Whop’s member export includes your members’ cards, so moving off either one with only the export means asking each member to enter a card again. Gumroad’s sales export carries each buyer’s email, and its recurring payments stop if you leave. Whop’s Users table exports name, email, membership status, location and total spend, and the billing stays with Whop as the legal seller.
Asset Academy’s guide, on page 1, calls migrating subscribers “real but manageable”. Say you run a group of 100 members at $20 a month. Moving means asking all 100 to re-enter their card details, and $2,000 of monthly income comes back only as fast as they do. Members who never re-enter a card are income gone.
CartMango runs subscriptions through your own Stripe or PayPal account, so if you leave CartMango, those subscriptions keep paying you. Our membership site platform guide checks this question across 8 platforms. What CartMango cannot do today is replace Whop’s chat, forums or course player. If the group itself is your product, Whop or a community tool like Skool or Circle does that job now, and our community platform comparison prices them.
Gumroad vs Whop vs CartMango, job by job
Gumroad handles sales tax with no separate charge. Whop is far cheaper than Gumroad per sale, and it has a marketplace with no extra fee plus the course and chat apps. CartMango differs on 2 jobs: payments go straight to your own Stripe or PayPal, and subscriptions keep billing if you leave.
| Job | Gumroad | Whop | CartMango |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sell files | Yes | Yes, Files app | Yes, protected links |
| Courses and chat | Group chat per product, Discord or Circle access | Courses, Chat and Forums apps, Discord | Not yet, in development |
| Fee on a $20 card sale | $3.38 on your own page | $0.84 at its published rate | $0.88 with Stripe, plus a $10 to $30 yearly plan |
| Sales tax | Handled, no separate charge | Handled with a 2% add-on | Yours to handle |
| Marketplace | Discover, 30%, after $100 and a review | Discover, no extra fee | None |
| Getting paid | $100 minimum, 7-day hold | Up to 5 business days, reserves possible | Straight to your Stripe or PayPal |
| Members if you leave | Recurring payments stop | Export has no card details | Keep paying you |
FAQ
Why is everyone leaving Gumroad?
Not everyone is. Sellers’ complaints on Trustpilot center on payouts: in the 118 latest reviews we sorted, 46 of the 68 from sellers described a suspended account, a held payout or the $100 minimum. The fee is the other cost sellers weigh, since 10% plus $0.50 and card processing come to $3.38 on a $20 sale.
Do people actually make money on Gumroad?
Yes. Gumroad’s homepage shows what all of its sellers earned together in the last week, a 7-figure number. It is a total across every seller, so it says nothing about a typical store. Discover opens only after $100 in sales and a review, so a new seller’s first buyers have to come from their own audience.
What’s the best site to sell digital products?
Payhip’s free plan (5% per sale) or CartMango suit sellers whose buyers already know them, and Etsy suits sellers who need shoppers to find them. Those 2 picks come from our digital product platform guide, which cuts 14 platforms down with 4 checks. For a paid group or a course with community, Whop belongs on that list too.
Is Gumroad worth it in 2026?
Gumroad is worth it for a first product when you want no monthly fee and sales tax handled for you. It gets expensive on cheap items, because the flat $0.50 takes a bigger share of a $5 sale than a $50 one. Above $20,000 a month in paid sales, its direct-sale fee drops to 5% plus $0.50.
Does Whop charge a monthly fee?
No. Whop’s pricing FAQ says it is “100% free to sign up” with “no monthly or SaaS fee”. You pay 2.7% plus $0.30 per domestic card sale at its published rate, plus any optional extras you switch on, such as 2% for tax collection.
Choosing between Gumroad’s 10% and Whop’s reserve rules
The Gumroad vs Whop choice is a trade between 2 kinds of cost. Gumroad charges more per sale and handles your sales tax. On its standard payout schedule it also holds each card sale at least 7 days and pays out only above $100. Whop charges far less per sale, adds no marketplace cut, and can hold a percentage of each sale in reserve while your account builds history.
CartMango takes no percentage of each sale and holds no balance of its own. Each payment lands in your own Stripe or PayPal account, and those 2 run their own payout checks. Subscriptions keep billing if you ever leave CartMango. CartMango has no courses or chat yet, so it suits files and memberships, and it is free right now, from $10 a year once paid plans start in November.
About the Author
👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.
Related Reading
- Gumroad review: 118 recent Trustpilot reviews sorted, and what Gumroad’s payout rules mean in practice
- Whop alternatives: what the other options charge for the jobs Whop does
- Gumroad alternatives: 7 options compared on real fees
- Gumroad vs Etsy: marketplace shoppers against a buyer list you can email
- Membership site platforms: 8 compared, including who keeps your members if you leave