# Inkwharf vs Payhip Canonical page: https://www.inkwharf.com/vs/payhip Figures verified against Payhip's published pricing on 2026-08-28. Payhip is a storefront for digital products. ## Verdict Payhip 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. ## Cost - Payhip charges 5%. - On a $9.99 book that is 5% 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 $380 a month in sales, 5% is the cheaper deal. The free tier here covers that range at $0. | Monthly sales | Payhip per year | Inkwharf per year | Difference | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | $500/mo | $300 | $0 | $300 | | $2,000/mo | $1,200 | $228 | $972 | | $5,000/mo | $3,000 | $228 | $2,772 | ## What Payhip sells on top of its cut - **Free** — $0/month: every feature, and a 5% cut of each sale - **Plus** — $29/month: same features, cut reduced to 2% - **Pro** — $99/month: same features, no Payhip cut ## Where Payhip is the better choice - **5% of nothing is nothing** — 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. - **It sells more than books** — Courses, memberships, software licences, coaching, physical goods. If your catalogue is mixed, one Payhip account beats a book shop plus something else. - **Coupons, bundles and affiliates are built in** — Their marketing tooling is broader than ours. If an affiliate programme is central to how you sell, they have one and we don't. - **Ten mailing-list integrations against our five** — Both products drop a consenting buyer into your email tool automatically, and theirs reaches further. Payhip names AWeber, Campaign Monitor, Kit, Drip, Elastic Email, EmailOctopus, GetResponse, MadMimi, Mailchimp and SendFox, with Zapier behind them for the rest. Here it's Kit, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, beehiiv and Ghost. The last two are ours and not theirs, which matters if your audience was built on a newsletter rather than a backlist, but Mailchimp is on their list and not on ours. If the list you've spent ten years building lives somewhere we don't speak to, that's a real reason to stay. Nothing else on this page outweighs an address that never arrives. - **They handle EU and UK VAT for you** — This is their strongest card, and it's worth more than the 5%. Payhip calculates, collects and remits VAT on digital sales to EU and UK consumers under their own registration, so you never register, never file and never think about it. Here you're the merchant of record, which is what keeps the take rate at zero, and it means that obligation is yours from the first EU sale (with no threshold at all if you're outside the EU). Stripe Tax automates the calculating and collecting once you switch it on, but registering where you owe is the part nobody can do for you. If that's the job you most want gone, pay them the 5%. ## Where Inkwharf is - **0% at every tier, including the free one** — Payhip's own pricing makes the argument for us. Their three tiers are the same product at 5%, 2% and 0%, and the price of the last one is $99 a month — authors visibly pay three figures for the thing that's the floor here. Every Payhip tier costs the same to run; what you're buying is permission to keep your own money. - **$99 a month to reach 0% is $1,188 a year** — Which only makes sense above about $2,000 a month in sales, and even then it's five times the $228 that buys 0% here. The middle tier is worse arithmetic still: $29 a month and 2% costs more than $19 and nothing at every volume above zero. - **It knows the file is a book** — Uploads are validated against the EPUB spec, samples are cut out of real chapters, the cover is read from inside the file, and the buyer gets an in-browser reader and send-to-Kindle. To a generic digital-product store an EPUB is a zip with a price on it. - **You're the merchant of record** — Cards are charged on your own Stripe account and the funds land in your balance. That puts the tax obligation on you, which is the honest half of the trade — Stripe Tax is one switch in shop settings, and it collects at checkout. - **Bitcoin, if you want it** — Off by default and optional per shop. Turned on, each order gets a fresh address derived from an extended public key only you hold, and nothing on this site can spend it. ## Side by side | | Inkwharf | Payhip | | --- | --- | --- | | Cut of each sale | Nothing, on every plan including free | 5% free, 2% at $29/mo, 0% at $99/mo | | Cost of reaching 0% | $0 — it is the floor | $99 a month, or $1,188 a year | | Below ~$380/mo in sales | Free tier covers you to $500/mo at 0% | 5% of a small number is a small number | | Who holds the money | Your own Stripe account. We never hold a cent | Payhip collects and pays out | | Sells non-book products | Ebooks only | Courses, memberships, physical goods | | 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 | | Send-to-Kindle | One tap, from the download page | The reader works it out themselves | | Bitcoin | Straight to your own wallet | Not offered | | Affiliates and coupons | Not built | Built in | | Buyers into your mailing list | Kit, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, beehiiv or Ghost, on every plan including free | Ten providers, plus Zapier | | Own domain | Yes, on every plan | Yes | ## Questions ### At what point does $19 beat 5%? $380 a month in sales. Below that the percentage is cheaper and there's no argument to make — which is what the free tier here is for, since it covers you to $500 a month at 0% with no subscription at all. Above $380 the gap only widens: at $2,000 a month, 5% is $1,200 a year against $228. ### What about their $29 Plus plan at 2%? It loses to $19 and 0% at every volume above zero — $29 plus 2% of anything is more than $19 plus nothing. It exists as a step towards the $99 tier rather than as a destination, which is worth noticing about the shape of the pricing: all three tiers are the same product, and the only thing the money buys is a smaller share going somewhere else. ### Is 5% really the whole cost? No, and neither is $19. Card processing is charged on top in both cases, at roughly 2.9% + 30¢. The difference is that here it's billed to your own Stripe account at Stripe's rate rather than marked up on the way through someone else's. ### I sell a course as well as books. Then run both. Payhip for the course, a shop here for the books, and no exclusivity in either direction. Splitting them costs you a second subscription and buys you a checkout that was actually built for the thing you're selling. ## Sources Every claim above about Payhip's pricing, checked 2026-08-28: - Free 5%, Plus $29/mo at 2%, Pro $99/mo at 0% — - Payhip subscribes buyers to a mailing list automatically, Mailchimp among the providers — - Payhip collects and remits EU/UK VAT on digital sales —