Which Patreon creators are making real money now?

Are Patreon creators really making millions of dollars a year now?

Yes. Several Patreon creators currently run membership businesses generating well above $1 million a year, and the biggest private earners appear to be considerably larger.

Graphtreon’s daily earnings ranking gives us the cleanest starting point because it tracks creators who still expose their Patreon revenue. The yard currently brings in about $275,000 a month. Chapo Trap House and TrueAnon are each close to $195,000. Are You Garbage? is around $143,000, while Last Podcast on the Left, Fear& and Cold Ones are all above $100,000 a month.

Annualized, those seven businesses alone sit between roughly $1.3 million and $3.3 million in Patreon revenue.

These are recurring membership payments rather than lifetime crowdfunding totals. The yard has about 44,700 paying members supporting a business running above $3.3 million a year at its current pace. Chapo Trap House has sustained a roughly $2.3 million annual run rate despite launching its Patreon back in 2016.

And these are only the creators whose revenue we can see. Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, currently Patreon’s largest creator by paid members, hides its precise earnings. With about 139,000 paying subscribers, its business is almost certainly larger than several names at the top of the public earnings chart.

So the question has moved well beyond whether Patreon can support a full-time creator. At the high end, we are looking at small media companies with millions of dollars in recurring annual revenue.

Creator	Paid members	Public monthly Patreon revenue	Annualized run rate
the yard	44,656	$275,171	~$3.30M
Chapo Trap House	46,305	$194,691	~$2.34M
TrueAnon	~44,200	~$194,600	~$2.34M
Are You Garbage?	16,967	$143,133	~$1.72M
Last Podcast on the Left	14,707	$110,023	~$1.32M
Fear&	22,534	$108,952	~$1.31M
Cold Ones	26,886	$107,888	~$1.29M

Who is the biggest Patreon creator right now?

Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast is currently the biggest Patreon creator by paying members, with about 139,000 people paying for access.

That puts the podcast far ahead of the rest of Patreon’s visible leaderboard. Peter Boese, who creates the Pure graphics and weather mod for Assetto Corsa, is second at roughly 89,000 paid members. Ilja Jusupov’s x4fab is around 76,000. Fin vs The Internet / Fin vs History has reached almost 54,000, and The Basement Yard sits just above 53,000.

The lead is huge. Matt and Shane has roughly 50,000 more paid subscribers than Patreon’s number-two creator.

It is still growing too. Graphtreon’s latest three-month comparison shows the podcast gaining about 4,100 paying members. The Patreon page launched in 2017, so this growth is happening years into the business rather than during an initial launch rush.

The precise revenue remains private, but Patreon currently shows membership levels at $1, $5, $10 and $50. The $1 “Grandfathered Poors” tier is sold out, while the $5 tier is marked as the most popular option.

Graphtreon consequently estimates Matt and Shane’s monthly Patreon revenue somewhere between roughly $349,000 and $997,000. We should treat that range as an estimate, but even its lower end would imply more than $4 million a year.

That makes Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast the strongest candidate for Patreon’s largest creator business today.

Why is it so hard to know exactly who makes the most money on Patreon?

Patreon’s biggest earners are increasingly difficult to rank because many creators hide their revenue, so paid-member rankings have become much more reliable than exact earnings rankings.

Graphtreon can show precise monthly revenue for the yard, Chapo Trap House or Cold Ones because those figures remain public. For Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, The Basement Yard, Jenny Nicholson, Fin vs The Internet and CreepCast, it has to estimate a range from membership counts and available tiers.

Those ranges can be wide. Matt and Shane’s roughly 139,000 paying members produce an estimated $349,000 to $997,000 a month. Jenny Nicholson’s 43,000-plus paid members translate into an estimated $65,000 to $361,000. Fin vs The Internet sits around $80,000 to $449,000.

A member count alone cannot tell us where inside those ranges the creator actually sits. We would need to know how many subscribers choose each tier, how many people remain on older prices, how annual subscriptions are distributed and whether discounts affect the average payment.

This creates an important distinction throughout the article. Publicly reported revenue can be ranked quite precisely. Private creators can still be identified as very large businesses, but pretending we know their exact revenue would give readers false precision.

The safest current conclusion is that the yard leads among creators whose exact earnings are public, while Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast appears substantially larger when we look at paying customers and plausible subscription revenue.

Are podcasts really making the most money on Patreon?

Yes. Podcasts currently dominate Patreon’s publicly visible million-dollar businesses by a wide margin.

Look at the top of Graphtreon’s public earnings chart. The yard, Chapo Trap House, TrueAnon, Are You Garbage?, Last Podcast on the Left and Fear& are all podcast-led businesses generating more than $100,000 a month. QAA, 5-4, RedHanded and several others appear further down the same ranking.

Patreon’s own figures point in the same direction at platform scale. The company reported that podcasters earned more than $472 million on Patreon during 2024 from more than 6.7 million paid memberships. That is an enormous direct-to-fan business around one content format.

The fit is unusually good. A podcast already trains listeners to come back every week. Adding another weekly episode, an ad-free feed, an aftershow or archive access creates a simple reason to keep paying every month.

The economics also become attractive once the audience is established. The yard currently generates about $6.16 per paid member each month. Chapo Trap House produces around $4.20. TrueAnon sits close to $4.40.

Podcasting also appears heavily at the top of the member rankings. Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast leads Patreon overall. The Basement Yard has about 53,000 paid members. If Books Could Kill is around 48,000. Chapo, the yard and TrueAnon all exceed 44,000.

There are major successes outside podcasting, but the richest visible cluster today is clearly podcast-led.

Does having the most Patreon members mean making the most money?

No. Current Patreon data shows that two creators with similar member counts can make radically different amounts of money.

Peter Boese is the easiest example. His Assetto Corsa graphics mod has about 89,000 paying members, roughly twice the yard’s 44,700. Yet Graphtreon reports about $63,000 in monthly earnings for Boese versus $275,000 for the yard.

That comes to approximately $0.71 per paid member for Peter Boese and $6.16 for the yard.

Ilja Jusupov’s x4fab follows almost exactly the same low-price model. It has about 76,000 paying members and roughly $54,000 in monthly Patreon revenue, again around $0.71 per member.

Now compare that with Are You Garbage?. The podcast needs fewer than 17,000 paid members to produce around $143,000 a month. That is more than $8 per member.

Smart Money Tracking takes the contrast even further. Graphtreon currently shows roughly $33,000 in monthly revenue from only 517 paying members, or around $64 per member.

So a Patreon with 80,000 subscribers can genuinely make less money than one with 17,000. Price, tier mix and the kind of product being sold can matter almost as much as audience size.

Creator	Paid members	Monthly revenue	Revenue per paid member
Peter Boese	89,187	$63,372	~$0.71
x4fab	~76,000	~$54,000	~$0.71
the yard	44,656	$275,171	~$6.16
Are You Garbage?	16,967	$143,133	~$8.44
Smart Money Tracking	517	$33,089	~$64

Which Patreon creators have the clearest proof that they are making serious money?

The yard, Chapo Trap House and TrueAnon give us the cleanest proof of large Patreon businesses because their current member counts and revenue are both publicly visible.

The yard is the standout. Graphtreon currently records about 44,700 paying members and $275,000 in monthly earnings. Its three-month comparison also shows revenue up by roughly $4,600. At today’s run rate, that is a $3.3 million-a-year Patreon business.

Chapo Trap House is interesting for a different reason: longevity. Its Patreon launched in 2016 and still has more than 46,000 paying members generating roughly $195,000 a month. Plenty of creator businesses spike and disappear. Chapo has kept a multimillion-dollar membership operation running for about a decade.

TrueAnon sits almost beside it at roughly 44,000 paid members and $195,000 a month. Its recent member trend has softened, yet the revenue base remains huge.

Then there is Are You Garbage?, which has only about 17,000 paying members but generates around $143,000 each month. That combination is especially useful because it shows how much a strong average payment can compensate for a smaller audience.

Cold Ones gives us the strongest video example with exact earnings: about 26,900 paid members and $108,000 a month.

Taken together, these creators remove most of the ambiguity from the central question. We do not need speculative creator-economy estimates to prove that Patreon businesses can reach seven figures. The money is visible.

Could Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast already be making more than the yard?

Very likely. Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast would need an unusually low average payment to earn less than the yard despite having more than three times as many paying members.

The yard currently makes about $275,000 from 44,656 paid members.

Matt and Shane has roughly 139,000 paid members. For its monthly revenue to remain below $275,000, the average payment would have to stay under about $1.98 per paying subscriber.

That seems hard to reconcile with its current pricing. Patreon shows a sold-out $1 grandfathered tier, a $5 tier marked “most popular,” plus $10 and $50 options.

We still cannot turn that into an exact revenue figure because the old $1 cohort could be large. Graphtreon therefore gives a broad estimate of $349,000 to $997,000 a month rather than pretending to know the tier distribution.

Still, the basic arithmetic is compelling. Even the bottom of that estimated range is roughly 27% above the yard’s current public revenue.

So while the yard remains the largest Patreon creator whose exact monthly income we can see, Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast is probably making more.

Can newer Patreon creators still become huge today?

Yes. CreepCast and Fin vs The Internet have both reached Patreon’s top ten by paid members after launching far more recently than most established leaders.

CreepCast launched its Patreon in June 2025. It already has about 46,800 paying members, making it Patreon’s seventh-largest creator by that measure. Graphtreon shows roughly 10,500 additional paid members over the latest three-month period.

Fin vs The Internet / Fin vs History launched in early 2024 and is now even larger, with about 53,900 paying members. It has gained close to 11,800 across the latest three-month comparison and climbed into fourth place overall.

Those are unusually fast moves. Fin has built a paying audience larger than Chapo Trap House, the yard and TrueAnon in less than three years. CreepCast has reached a similar scale in little more than a year.

The exact earnings remain private. Graphtreon estimates CreepCast at roughly $59,000 to $422,000 a month and Fin at $80,000 to $449,000.

Their growth also tells us something about Patreon itself. The platform’s largest businesses are not frozen remnants of an earlier creator era. New pages can still enter the very top of the ranking quickly when a creator brings a strong audience and gives people a clear reason to upgrade.

Patreon has also become somewhat better at moving fans around its own platform. The company said in 2025 that its discovery features were driving more than $200 million a year to creators, while roughly 700,000 free Patreon members were converting to paid memberships each month.

External audiences still do most of the heavy lifting, but Patreon today has more internal distribution than the old “payment page behind a link” version of the product.

Can YouTubers make seven figures on Patreon too?

Yes. Cold Ones already generates more than $1 million a year from Patreon at its current pace, and several other video creators have enough paying members to support businesses of similar scale.

Cold Ones gives us the most concrete evidence because its earnings remain visible. Roughly 26,900 people currently pay the video creators about $108,000 a month, equivalent to nearly $1.3 million annualized. Both members and earnings have risen in Graphtreon’s latest three-month comparison.

Jenny Nicholson is harder to measure but much larger by membership. She currently has about 43,300 paying patrons. Graphtreon estimates monthly earnings between roughly $65,000 and $361,000.

Fin vs The Internet has almost 54,000 paid members and an estimated range of $80,000 to $449,000 a month.

Then there is CALLMEARJ, whose original fan manga business currently produces about $55,000 a month from just over 3,300 paid members. That works out to roughly $16 to $17 per patron, far above most large podcast accounts.

The successful video businesses share a fairly obvious trait: viewers are attached to an ongoing creator or series rather than paying for one isolated viral upload. Patreon works much better when free videos create a habit and paid membership extends that habit.

A big YouTube audience therefore helps, but repeated attention is the more valuable ingredient.

Are game modders actually making serious money on Patreon?

Absolutely. Assetto Corsa modders Peter Boese and Ilja Jusupov currently have about 165,000 paid Patreon memberships between them and generate well above $100,000 a month combined.

Peter Boese’s Pure graphics and weather mod has roughly 89,000 paying members and earns around $63,000 monthly. x4fab has about 76,000 paying members and earns around $54,000.

Those customer counts are enormous by Patreon standards. They rank second and third across the whole platform by paid members.

Their revenue per member, however, sits around $0.71. That gives these mod businesses a completely different shape from podcasts charging several dollars per fan every month.

Tabletop gaming creators sit somewhere between those models. Czepeku currently has about 16,600 paid members and earns around $74,000 per map pack. Forgotten Adventures has more than 9,000 paid members and earns about $37,000 per creation. Dynamic Dungeons generates roughly $35,000 a month from only around 3,300 members.

So gaming is producing real Patreon businesses through at least two routes. Modders can sell very cheap access at huge scale, while tabletop creators can make more money from a much smaller group of customers who repeatedly need new maps, modules or assets.

Can writers still make real money on Patreon?

Yes. Serialized fiction can produce seven-figure Patreon businesses with far fewer customers than the biggest podcasts.

Zogarth, the author of The Primal Hunter, currently has about 10,500 paid members and earns roughly $84,000 a month according to Graphtreon. That is a little over $1 million a year at the current pace.

The economics are strong because readers can pay for a simple, recurring benefit: more of the story, earlier.

That format solves one of the hardest Patreon problems naturally. The creator does not have to invent a random bundle of benefits every month. Readers already want the next chapter.

Other fiction creators operate at smaller but still meaningful scale. Sleyca, author of Super Supportive, has generated Patreon revenue in the tens of thousands of dollars per month from only a few thousand paid readers.

The gap versus podcasting is still large. Writing barely appears near the very top of Patreon’s overall member leaderboard. But a writer does not need 50,000 patrons to build a serious business when several thousand readers are willing to pay consistently for early access.

How much does Patreon pricing change what a creator can make?

A lot. Pricing explains some of the biggest gaps we see between Patreon creators with similar-sized audiences.

Peter Boese and x4fab have built two of the largest paid audiences on the platform, yet each earns around $0.71 per paying member. Are You Garbage? generates more than ten times as much revenue per member.

The difference becomes enormous at scale. An extra $1 of average monthly revenue across 20,000 subscribers equals $240,000 a year. Across 50,000 subscribers, it adds $600,000.

This is why tier design matters so much for podcasts and personality-led creators. Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast currently offers $5, $10 and $50 options to new customers, alongside its sold-out legacy $1 tier. The Basement Yard offers multiple pricing levels too.

Higher tiers do not need to attract most subscribers. A smaller number of fans paying $10, $20 or $50 can move the overall average meaningfully higher.

The reverse is also true. Mod creators may deliberately choose a very low monthly price because the addressable customer base is huge and the paid product requires relatively little incremental work per member.

There is no single ideal Patreon price. What matters is the combination of price, retention and the number of people willing to pay it.

How many paying Patreon members do you need to make a real living?

A creator can build a serious Patreon business with a few thousand paying members, and in some categories even a few hundred can produce substantial revenue.

Patreon’s 2025 State of Create research put average annual income at about $110 per paying Patreon member, or a little over $9 per month. The study also found average annual income of $52 per fan across paying and non-paying fans.

Real creator data shows how wide the range can be.

At one extreme, Peter Boese needs almost 90,000 paid accounts to generate around $63,000 a month because his average payment is below $1. At the other, Smart Money Tracking makes about $33,000 monthly with only 517 paying members.

CALLMEARJ currently generates around $55,000 from roughly 3,300 patrons. Stephanie Jarvis brings in about $35,000 from around 5,200. Zogarth earns close to $84,000 from about 10,500.

For a simple benchmark, 1,000 people paying $5 every month means $60,000 in annual gross revenue. Five thousand paying $5 means $300,000. Ten thousand people averaging $8 produces $960,000.

Those are gross figures before fees and costs, but they show why creators do not need internet-scale audiences. Converting a few thousand serious fans can be worth much more than accumulating hundreds of thousands of passive followers.

How much of Patreon revenue does the creator actually keep?

A new Patreon creator keeps considerably less than the headline gross revenue once Patreon fees and payment processing are removed, before we even get to the cost of running the business.

Patreon currently charges creators who published after August 4, 2025 a standard platform fee of 10%. For US payments above $3 by credit card or Apple Pay, the standard processing rate is another 2.9% plus $0.30.

A $5 monthly payment therefore loses $0.50 to Patreon’s platform fee and about $0.445 to standard card processing. Roughly $4.06 remains before any other applicable charges, payout fees, currency conversion, taxes or business expenses.

Older creators may have better economics. Patreon still maintains legacy platform plans at 5%, 8% or 11% for eligible pages that were already published before the pricing change and have remained continuously published.

That distinction is particularly relevant for longstanding leaders such as Chapo Trap House, Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast and the yard. Applying the current 10% platform rate to all of them would be wrong without knowing their individual plans.

Then come the actual operating costs. A major podcast may employ producers, editors, researchers and business staff. Video creators have production expenses. A mod developer may hire collaborators. Taxes still have to be paid.

When we say the yard is running at roughly $3.3 million a year on Patreon, we are describing the scale of the recurring membership business. We are not claiming that $3.3 million becomes personal income for its hosts.

What kinds of Patreon creators are making the most money today?

Right now, the strongest Patreon businesses come from recurring entertainment and recurring utility: podcasts, video personalities, software or mods, serialized fiction and digital assets.

Podcasts clearly occupy the richest visible end. The yard, Chapo Trap House, TrueAnon, Are You Garbage?, Last Podcast on the Left and Fear& all generate more than $100,000 per month from publicly visible Patreon earnings.

Video is more mixed but still produces seven-figure businesses. Cold Ones is already above $100,000 monthly, while Jenny Nicholson and Fin vs The Internet have enough paid members to support very large businesses even though their exact revenue stays private.

Software and mods can reach astonishing membership counts. Peter Boese and x4fab together have around 165,000 paying patrons. Fornax, the creator of file-sharing service pixeldrain, currently generates about $90,000 a month from almost 25,000 patrons.

Fiction works with much smaller audiences when readers pay for early chapters. Zogarth currently brings in roughly $84,000 a month.

Tabletop creators such as Czepeku, Forgotten Adventures and Dynamic Dungeons turn a continuous need for new maps and game assets into recurring payments.

The common thread is straightforward: the customer knows why the subscription should still exist next month. Another episode arrives. Another chapter appears. The software keeps being developed. New maps get released.

Patreon model	Current examples	What keeps the subscription useful
Podcasts	the yard, Chapo Trap House, TrueAnon	Bonus episodes, ad-free feeds, archives
Video creators	Cold Ones, Jenny Nicholson, Fin vs The Internet	Extra videos, early access, creator access
Mods and software	Peter Boese, x4fab, Fornax	Updates, tools, continued development
Serialized fiction	Zogarth, Sleyca	Early chapters, story progression
Tabletop assets	Czepeku, Forgotten Adventures, Dynamic Dungeons	New maps, modules and game assets

Which Patreon creators are actually making real money now?

Yes, the evidence is overwhelming: Patreon currently supports a meaningful group of creators making seven figures a year, with the largest private businesses probably several times bigger than that.

Among creators with public earnings, the yard is currently the clearest leader at about $275,000 a month. Chapo Trap House and TrueAnon sit near $195,000 each. Are You Garbage? earns around $143,000. Last Podcast on the Left, Fear& and Cold Ones are all above $100,000.

Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast is probably larger than any of them. It has about 139,000 paying subscribers, more than triple the yard’s paid audience, and Graphtreon currently estimates $349,000 to $997,000 in monthly Patreon revenue.

The newer growth stories are just as useful. Fin vs The Internet has reached almost 54,000 paid members after launching its Patreon in 2024 and added nearly 11,800 in the latest three-month comparison. CreepCast has reached roughly 46,800 since launching in 2025 and added about 10,500 over the same period.

Podcasts still have the strongest economics at the top, but Patreon money now extends well beyond podcasting. Cold Ones proves video can clear $1 million a year. Zogarth does it with serialized fiction. Peter Boese and x4fab have built enormous low-price mod businesses. Czepeku makes tens of thousands from tabletop maps.

The clearest pattern we found is recurring usefulness. The biggest Patreon businesses give fans an obvious reason to remain subscribed month after month, and they usually arrive with demand already built somewhere else.

That is why the number of followers on YouTube, Spotify, X or Instagram tells us surprisingly little by itself. What separates the creators making real money today is how many people care enough to keep paying, what those people pay on average, and whether the paid product still makes sense when the next billing cycle arrives.

By that standard, Patreon is currently supporting far more than creators earning side income. At the top, it is supporting genuine multimillion-dollar media, software and publishing businesses.