Price your tiers with confidence

🧭 This post is part of our Growing your Patreon collection. If you haven't taken the Growth Pathfinder quiz yet, consider starting with How should you grow? to discover your best growth opportunities and build a personalized path through this collection.

Most creators set their prices when they launch their Patreon and then never think about them again.

Meanwhile, everything else grows. The work gets better. The community gets deeper. The benefits list quietly expands. The creator keeps showing up, month after month, year after year.

The prices stay exactly where they were on day one.

If that sounds familiar, welcome to the pricing quest. This one isn't automatically about raising prices. It's about understanding whether your current pricing still reflects where your Patreon is now.

Read the map before you make a move

Repricing isn't the right move for every creator at every stage. Before anything else, it helps to zoom out and look at where you actually are in the game.

A few signals that suggest repricing might be worth exploring:

• Your community is growing and people are consistently showing up for your work.

• Your benefits have expanded since you first set your prices.

• Paid members are joining steadily and your conversion is healthy.

• Your prices haven't moved in a year or more.

There’s also a signal that suggests a different move might come first: if your page traffic is high but conversion into paid tiers is low, the stronger next step is probably improving how your tiers are structured and communicated rather than changing the numbers on them.

Your Patreon Insights can help you figure out which situation you're in. Check which tiers members join most, how long they stay, and how your conversion is trending. That will tell you a lot about your next best move.

⚡ Pro Tip: Think the bigger opportunity might be in how your tiers are structured rather than their price? Start with the Make your tiers work for you post first and come back to pricing when the time is right.

You're probably holding a stronger hand than you think

Creators and their members may see pricing differently.

When pricing your tiers, you might be thinking: "This feels like a lot to ask for."

Meanwhile, a member who shows up every week, shares your work with friends, and has been part of your community might be thinking: "I'd happily pay more. I want this to keep going."

That gap is where a lot of earnings quietly stay on the table.

And here's the data to back it up:

Among several hundred creators who increased tier prices by $1–$3, there was no significant decline in new member signups, and the typical creator earned 10% more over the following six months.

Slay the Pricing Dragon

So why don’t more creators act on that gap? Usually it comes down to a few persistent myths and we’ve given them a name: the Pricing Dragon. (You might have met them in the video for this post.)

The Pricing Dragon is very persuasive and breathes myths instead of fire. Here are the three you'll most likely encounter:

"Raising prices will betray the members who already pay."

Not necessarily. Patreon's default setting lets you update prices for new members only, keeping existing members locked in at their original rate. That kind of transparency can actually strengthen trust. Members who get to keep the original price tend to feel recognized and valued, not betrayed.

"I'll lose everyone if I change my prices."

Many creators adjust pricing without seeing significant drops in support, especially when they communicate clearly about why the change is happening and what members are getting. Some creators even turn a pricing update into a membership-driving moment by giving people time to join or upgrade before the new price takes effect.

"There's never a good time to do this."

There may never be one perfect signal, but signals do exist: a growing community, strong engagement, offerings that have evolved, prices that haven't moved in a year. When several of those are true at the same time, it's worth paying attention.

Dragon: slain.

Communication is part of the quest

Look back at those three myths and you'll notice something. Communication is the secret weapon hiding inside every single one of them. Being upfront about what's changing, why it's changing, and what members stand to gain not only makes the update land better, it makes the whole thing feel less like a big scary move and more like an invitation.

Watercolor artist and wedding stationer Harriet de Winton of de Winton Paper Co. defied every one of those myths. And then she took it a step further with how she brought her community along for the ride.

Harriet hadn't updated her pricing in six years. When she finally did, she used Patreon's default setting to keep existing members at their original rate while updating pricing for new signups only. She announced the change 30 days in advance so her community had time to understand what was happening and lock in the lower rate if they wanted to.

Her existing members were grateful. As Harriet put it: "They were, across the board, really happy to know that if they maintained their membership, the price would stay the same. I think that has helped people cherish what they are getting."

Before the update, her average monthly earnings were around £5,380. After? They stabilized above £7,600. A 40% increase. Her paid member count grew from 991 to 1,220 over the same period. Want the full story? The Thinking about updating your prices? Start Here post has all the details.

Giving members advance notice, explaining the reasoning openly, and sharing what's changed in your Patreon since you last set your prices all help members feel respected and included in the journey rather than surprised by it. The more consistently you've shown up for your community, the easier this conversation usually is.

Podcast duo Dumb-Dumbs & Dice showed exactly how this can work and in their own way. When they updated their tiers and launched a new one, they made a video about it. Entertaining, warm, on-brand, and genuinely fun to watch. Their members got to hear about the changes in a way that felt completely true to who Dumb-Dumbs & Dice are. Turns out, good news lands even better when it sounds like you!

The format of your announcement will look different depending on who you are and what your community expects from you. But the spirit is the same: be upfront, be warm, and give your members a reason to feel good about what's coming.

⚡ Pro Tip: The Tier Pricing Readiness Worksheet can help you work through whether the timing is right to reprice and build a communication plan so the update lands well with your community.

Note: The worksheet link will prompt you to make your own copy so you can fill it in (this requires a Google account). You can also download a PDF version at the bottom of this post.

Pricing isn't set-and-forget

The best thing about completing this quest is that you can come back to it.

As your work evolves and your community grows, what members value will shift too. Checking your Insights after any pricing update can help you see how things are landing and whether the change is doing what you hoped.

Revisiting your pricing every year, the same way you'd revisit your tier structure or your posting cadence, keeps your Patreon aligned with the value you're actually delivering.

🧭 Your next steps

As you continue your pricing quest:

• Review which tiers people join and engage with most often.

• Decide whether repricing or optimizing your tiers makes more sense right now.

• Reflect on whether your pricing still feels aligned with the value you offer.

• Use the Tier Pricing Readiness Worksheet to assess whether you're ready to reprice and build your communication plan.

• Revisit your pricing as your Patreon continues evolving.

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