KickstArthur
Tools · Kickstarter fees

Kickstarter fees and payout calculator

Enter your goal and pledges to estimate the payout after Kickstarter’s fee, payment processing and failed payments. This version covers US projects in USD.

By Arthur Manukyan · Fees last checked against Kickstarter’s official US page on October 14, 2026

Example numbers are filled in below. Replace them with your estimates, then calculate. All money amounts are in USD.

Failed payments unit

Optional; leave at 0 if you are not modelling failed payments. The estimate spreads failures evenly across both pledge groups.

Your payout estimate

Enter your figures and select Calculate payout to see the amount collected, platform fee, processing fees and estimated payout.

How the calculation works

Three amounts are easy to confuse. Pledged is what backers promised by the deadline. Collected is what was actually charged once the campaign ended. Payout is what Kickstarter transfers to you after fees. None of them is profit.

  1. If total pledged is below your goal, the campaign is unsuccessful: no cards are charged and the payout is $0.
  2. If the goal is met, the estimated collected amount is the total pledged minus estimated failed payments.
  3. Kickstarter’s platform fee is 5% of the collected amount.
  4. Payment processing is 3% + $0.30 per successful pledge of $10 or more, and 5% + $0.08 per successful pledge under $10.
  5. Estimated payout = collected − platform fee − processing fees.

Worked example

A campaign collects $10,000 from 100 pledges, all $10 or more, with no failed payments:

Fees on $10,000 collected from 100 standard pledges
Collected$10,000.00
Kickstarter fee: 5% × $10,000− $500.00
Processing: 3% × $10,000 + 100 × $0.30− $330.00
Estimated payout$9,170.00

The same formula for small pledges: $500 from 100 pledges of $5 costs $25 in platform fees and $33 in processing ($25 + 100 × $0.08), leaving $442.

Assumptions and limits

  • Whether a campaign succeeds depends on the amount pledged by the deadline. If some cards fail afterwards and collections drop below the goal, the campaign still pays out what was collected.
  • Failed payments are spread proportionally across both pledge groups: the same percentage reduces each group’s value and its number of successful payments. A dollar amount is first converted to a percentage of total pledged. The result is an estimate.
  • Fees are estimated for each pledge group, then rounded to cents. The displayed fees add up to the total and payout. Per-payment rounding on the actual statement may differ slightly.
  • Taxes, currency conversion, refunds issued later, bank fees and pledge-manager or late-pledge fees are not included.
  • Projects based outside the US have different currencies and processing rates. This version does not cover them.

Sources

Rates can change. Check Kickstarter’s official fee page before committing to a budget. To report an error, contact Arthur.