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Platform Economics

As of 2026-06-03.

What you pay, what it covers, the position we're operating from, and what we commit to.

What You Pay

See Pricing for the current tier prices, the founding-creator rate, and the provisional standard rate.

What It Covers

Your subscription funds three things, at a high level:

Cost to deliver. The infrastructure that hosts your content (application servers, database, object storage, bandwidth) and the payment processing fee Stripe charges on each transaction.

Platform overhead. Ongoing development, day-to-day operations, legal and compliance work, and reserves held against unexpected costs so a bad month doesn't force a price increase or a shutdown.

Returned to creators. Surplus beyond what cost-to-deliver and platform overhead require is earmarked to come back to you as earn-back credit. We've committed to launching that program no later than 2027-01-01.

See the full breakdown on the pricing page — every tier fee broken into Stripe processing, storage, human support time, product engineering, reserves, and earn-back surplus.

No surplus goes to investors, shareholders, dividends, executive bonuses, paid acquisition, or marketing spend. We have none of those things.

Where We Are

Numbers refresh at the close of every two-month sprint, alongside the changelog recap. The paying-creator count is read live from the database at the time you load this page.

  • Paying creators today: 0
  • Break-even at the assumed tier mix: approximately 22.5 paying creators at the standard rate, 46.8 at the founding rate. (Derivation in the build's assumptions.toml.)

Reserve capacity (twelve months of fixed costs plus a legal reserve and a single-incident shock reserve) is approximately $62k, derived from the build's assumptions. Reserves shrink before prices change; a single bad month doesn't move the headline rate.

What We Commit To

The binding commitments live in What We Guarantee. The short version:

  • No surprise raises. Prices only change under conditions stated in writing.
  • At least 90 days notice on any change.
  • Existing creators are grandfathered at their current rate for at least 12 months when standard rates rise.
  • When our cost structure permits, the direction is downward. Cost-favorable changes apply retroactively to active subscriptions.

What We Won't Do

  • Percentage cuts. We will not skim a percentage of what fans pay you.
  • Per-transaction fees on top of Stripe. The only deduction is Stripe's processing fee, which goes to Stripe.
  • Surge pricing. Tier prices do not move based on demand, time of day, or who you are.
  • Quiet plan-gating. Features won't migrate between tiers without notice and grandfathering.
  • Paid acquisition or marketing. We don't fund growth by spending your subscription on ads.

See Also