Leanpub alternatives
Leanpub is a publishing marketplace for technical books. Here’s everything worth moving to if it isn’t working for you, what each one takes, and (first, since most lists skip it) when the answer is to stay put.
When Leanpub is still the right answer
- The Markdown toolchain is good, and we don't have one. Leanpub turns a folder of Markdown into a formatted PDF and EPUB on every change. That's real engineering, and it's why people put up with the rest. Inkwharf takes an EPUB you have already made — by Vellum, Sigil, pandoc, Atticus, or Leanpub itself — and does nothing whatever to produce one. If writing-to-artefact is the problem you need solved, we don't solve it.
- Publish-while-writing is a real format, not a gimmick. Selling an unfinished book and shipping chapters to existing buyers works, and Leanpub built the whole product around it. Updated files reach past buyers here on the same permanent link, which covers the mechanics — but nothing on this site markets an in-progress book the way their storefront does.
- Their marketplace sends traffic you didn't bring. A DevOps title on Leanpub gets found by DevOps readers browsing Leanpub. That's worth something real, and it's worth precisely nothing to a novelist. If you have no list and your topic sits squarely in their niche, discovery you didn't pay for is the strongest argument there's against going direct.
We make this page and we sell one of the options on it. If the points above describe you, none of the rest is an upgrade.
The alternatives
1. Inkwharf — a shop you own, at 0% of every sale
$0–19/mo, no cutStorefront, checkout and EPUB delivery in one subscription, on your own domain. Cards are charged on your own Stripe account and the money lands in your balance, so there’s no percentage to take: it never passes through here. Readers buy with an email address and no account, and every book comes with a real chapter sample, an in-browser reader and send-to-Kindle.
The catch: ebooks only, no writing toolchain, and no marketplace sending you traffic. You bring the readers; it does everything after that.
2. Gumroad — a marketplace for digital products
15% cutGumroad is the fastest way to put a file behind a payment link and the most expensive way to leave it there. The headline is 10%, but it's 10% + 50¢ — 15% of a $9.99 book — and 30% if the buyer arrived through their marketplace. The crossover against $19 a month arrives at about $127 in monthly sales.
Pick it for: Upload, price, share a link. No Stripe onboarding, no domain, no decisions. If the question is whether anyone will pay for the thing at all, that's a genuine advantage and 10% of a small experiment is a rounding error.
3. Payhip — a storefront for digital products
5% cutPayhip sells anything digital and charges a percentage until you pay enough to stop it — 5% free, 2% at $29 a month, 0% at $99. Inkwharf sells ebooks only, takes nothing at any tier, and knows what an EPUB is. Below roughly $380 a month in sales their free plan is genuinely the cheaper deal, and we say so.
Pick it for: Under about $380 a month in sales, their percentage costs less than $19 — the arithmetic is on this page rather than left for you to discover. Our free tier answers most of it by covering you to $500 a month at 0% with no subscription, but if your catalogue is broader than books, that window is real.
4. BookFunnel — ebook delivery for indie authors
flat feeBookFunnel is delivery without a checkout, so selling direct with it means pairing it with a store and paying two bills. Inkwharf is both halves in one subscription. BookFunnel still wins outright on ARCs and group promos, which aren't selling at all.
Pick it for: A large share of what BookFunnel moves was never sold: advance copies, newsletter magnets, cross-author promo swaps. Their tooling for handing a file to a list of people who didn't pay is better than ours, and it's most of the reason authors keep them.
What staying costs you
Leanpub takes 20% of every sale, or 20% of a $9.99 book once any fixed fee is counted. At $2,000 a month that’s $4,800 a year, against $228 for a subscription that doesn’t grow when you do. Below $95 a month in sales the percentage is cheaper, and the free tier here covers that range at 0% anyway.
Run it on your own numbersSources
Every figure quoted above, and the page it was read from. Each platform carries the date it was last checked. These pages are re-read against those claims rather than trusted. If one of them changes, this comparison is wrong until it’s updated, and you should be able to tell that for yourself.
Leanpub · checked October 6, 2026
- 80% royalty, less 50¢ below $7.99 help.leanpub.com
- Author memberships $9.99–$99/mo billed monthly (quarterly totals $26.97–$269), publishing free without one leanpub.com
- No exclusivity help.leanpub.com
Gumroad · checked August 26, 2026
- 10% + 50¢ per sale, 30% via Discover, no monthly fee gumroad.com
Payhip · checked August 28, 2026
- Free 5%, Plus $29/mo at 2%, Pro $99/mo at 0% help.payhip.com
- Payhip subscribes buyers to a mailing list automatically, Mailchimp among the providers help.payhip.com
- Payhip collects and remits EU/UK VAT on digital sales help.payhip.com
BookFunnel · checked August 28, 2026
- $30/$200/$300 a year; 500/5,000/unlimited downloads; 1/4/6 pen names bookfunnel.com