I run a small side project selling document template packs — resume templates, cold-email swipe files, pitch deck slides. The same PDFs are listed on both Gumroad and Polar, priced from $5 to $49.
Current revenue: exactly $0.
That sounds like a failure, but it forced me to do the math I should have done before listing anything: what does each platform actually take from a sale? I expected one simple number. The reality is more nuanced — and it ends with an insight that changed where I'll spend my effort.
The fee schedules (from their own pricing pages, September 2026)
Gumroad: 10% + 50¢ per direct sale. If a buyer finds you through their Discover marketplace instead: 30%.
Polar: free Starter plan at 5% + 50¢ per transaction (paid tiers lower the percentage as you scale; international cards add 1.5%, which I'm ignoring below).
Payhip: 5% on the free plan plus payment processing — but it's not a Merchant of Record, so sales tax outside the EU/UK is your problem.
Gumroad and Polar both act as Merchant of Record: they handle global sales tax/VAT for you. As a seller in the EU, that alone is worth real money in avoided paperwork and accountant hours.
The actual math at my price points
I sell packs at $5, $9, $19, and $49. Here's what a sale at each price keeps after platform fees:
| Price | Gumroad fee | Polar fee | You keep (Gumroad) | You keep (Polar) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5 | $1.00 (20.0%) | $0.75 (15.0%) | $4.00 | $4.25 |
| $9 | $1.40 (15.6%) | $0.95 (10.6%) | $7.60 | $8.05 |
| $19 | $2.40 (12.6%) | $1.45 (7.6%) | $16.60 | $17.55 |
| $49 | $5.40 (11.0%) | $2.95 (6.0%) | $43.60 | $46.05 |
Insight 1: Under $10, the flat fee is the real tax
At $5, the flat 50¢ is 10% of the price by itself — before any percentage. Both platforms charge the same flat fee, so the variable gap (10% vs 5%) only adds $0.25. If your product is cheap, the fee schedule barely matters; the flat fee dominates. You can't out-pick platforms at low price points — but you can raise prices, which dilutes the flat fee. A $5 pack pays a 20% effective rate on Gumroad; a $49 bundle pays 11%.
Insight 2: The 30% marketplace fee cuts both ways
Gumroad's Discover marketplace takes 30% — which sounds predatory until you remember it's distribution, the thing small sellers lack most. The catch: when I checked, Discover eligibility required a first sale plus ratings. Chicken-and-egg for a zero-sale store. The marketplace is a growth lever you earn, not one you get on day one.
Insight 3: The fee delta is smaller than one extra sale
At $9, the difference between the cheapest and priciest option here is $0.45 per sale. One extra buyer — from one indexed article, one good Reddit thread, one newsletter mention — is worth more than the entire fee delta. My best-performing article so far has all of 20 views, and that taught me where the real bottleneck is: distribution, not fees. Fee optimization is a problem you get to solve after you have sales. Until then, the cheapest platform and the most expensive one both pay out the same: nothing.
What I'd pick today
- Selling to developers → Polar: dev-native, API-first, the cheapest Merchant of Record I found.
- Non-dev audience, want the built-in network → Gumroad, and treat the 30% Discover fee as a paid acquisition channel once you're eligible.
- EU/UK only, want the lowest fees and instant payouts → Payhip, and budget your own tax compliance elsewhere.
None of these decisions mattered as much as I thought they would when I was setting up the stores. The funnel did.
If you're building the same thing: I wrote a full guide on the pipeline — product, storefronts, content funnel: https://dev.to/yotta_xlybris/the-complete-guide-to-selling-digital-products-without-writing-code-221o
The packs from this post (resume templates, cold email, AI prompts, and a 180+ template bundle): https://xlybris.gumroad.com.
And if you want the AI prompt pack specifically — 30 tested prompts for writing, productivity, and business documents — that article is https://dev.to/yotta_xlybris/the-ai-prompt-library-30-prompts-i-keep-pinned-copy-them-free-below-46jk.
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