# Inkwharf vs Gumroad Canonical page: https://www.inkwharf.com/vs/gumroad Figures verified against Gumroad's published pricing on 2026-08-26. Gumroad is a marketplace for digital products. ## Verdict Gumroad 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. ## Cost - Gumroad charges 10% + 50¢. - On a $9.99 book that is 15% of every sale, once fixed fees are counted. - Inkwharf charges $19 a month and 0% of any sale, with a free tier to $500 of sales a month. - Below $127 a month in sales, 10% + 50¢ is the cheaper deal. The free tier here covers that range at $0. | Monthly sales | Gumroad per year | Inkwharf per year | Difference | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | $500/mo | $900 | $0 | $900 | | $2,000/mo | $3,601 | $228 | $3,373 | | $5,000/mo | $9,003 | $228 | $8,775 | ## Where Gumroad is the better choice - **Nothing beats it for starting this afternoon** — 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. - **Discovery, of a kind** — Gumroad's own audience and its recommendation surface do send buyers. It isn't a bookstore and it won't find you romance readers, but it's more than nothing, which is what a shop of your own starts with. - **It sells anything** — Presets, templates, software, memberships. A mixed catalogue belongs somewhere generic. ## Where Inkwharf is - **It isn't 10%, and it never stops scaling** — The 50¢ per sale is the part that doesn't fit in a headline: on a $9.99 book the real cut is 15%, and on a $4.99 one it's 20%. About $127 a month in sales is where a flat $19 becomes the cheaper option, and every dollar past that widens the gap — at $5,000 a month their cut is roughly $9,000 a year against $228. - **Discover sales cost 30%** — If a buyer finds you through Gumroad's own marketplace rather than your link, the rate triples. That's the trade for discovery and it's a defensible one — but it means the number you're quoted and the number you pay depend on where your readers came from, which isn't true of a subscription. - **The buyer is yours** — Your shop, your domain, your list, and every buyer's email address. A checkout that asks a reader to make an account somewhere is a checkout that loses readers. - **Books, not files** — Spec-checked EPUB uploads, samples cut from real chapters, an in-browser reader, send-to-Kindle, and every copy watermarked to its buyer without a byte of DRM on it. - **No payout to wait for** — There's no payout schedule here because there's no payout. A card charge settles into your own Stripe balance the moment it clears. ## Side by side | | Inkwharf | Gumroad | | --- | --- | --- | | Cut of each sale | Nothing, on every plan including free | 10% + 50¢ — 15% of a $9.99 book | | If the buyer came from their marketplace | There is no marketplace to come from | 30% | | Break-even against $19/mo | — | About $127 a month in sales | | Who holds the money | Your own Stripe account. We never hold a cent | Gumroad collects and pays out on a schedule | | Merchant of record | You are the merchant of record | Gumroad, which takes the tax problem off you | | Time to first sale | About five minutes, after Stripe onboarding | Minutes, with no onboarding at all | | Storefront | A shop on your own domain | A Gumroad profile page | | Discovery | None. Your shop is not listed anywhere on this site | Some, from Gumroad's own audience | | Understands EPUB | Spec-checked uploads, real chapter samples | A file with a price on it | | In-browser reader | In-browser reader and send-to-Kindle on every book | Download only | | Watermarking | DRM-free EPUB, watermarked to the buyer | Stamping on PDFs only | | Bitcoin | Straight to your own wallet | Not offered | ## Questions ### When is Gumroad actually cheaper? Below about $127 a month in sales, where 10% + 50¢ on a $9.99 book comes to less than $19. The free tier here covers you to $500 a month at 0%, so in practice the honest window for Gumroad being cheaper is while you're still finding out whether the book sells — after which the arithmetic reverses permanently. ### Why do you quote 15% when Gumroad says 10%? Because the fee is 10% + 50¢, and the 50¢ is a real cost that a percentage alone hides. On a $9.99 book it works out at 15%; on a $19.99 technical manual, 12.5%; on a $4.99 novella, 20%. Both numbers are on this page — theirs and the one you actually pay — and every figure here is computed at $9.99, which is the most flattering common price for a fixed fee rather than the least. ### Can I move my Gumroad customers? You can export your customer list and mail it yourself, which is the whole point of owning the relationship. What doesn't transfer is their download links: past buyers keep using Gumroad's, and new buyers get yours. ### Do I need my own domain? No. Every shop gets a free address on Inkwharf and works fully without one. A domain of your own works on every plan, Free included, certificate handled. ## Sources Every claim above about Gumroad's pricing, checked 2026-08-26: - 10% + 50¢ per sale, 30% via Discover, no monthly fee —