Whop vs LaunchPass for a paid Discord

On fees, Whop is cheaper than LaunchPass at every volume: 5.7% + $0.30 all in against $29 a month plus 6.4% + $0.30. LaunchPass's case is ownership — your own Stripe account, no platform balance, and Slack and Telegram alongside Discord. Here is the whole comparison, with the figure most write-ups leave out.

Rates verified August 3, 2026

  • Both platforms' rates, sourced
  • The 3% most comparisons omit
  • No claims we can't source
Whop · 5.7% + $0.30, no monthly feeLaunchPass · $29/mo + 6.4% + $0.30The gap · $29 + 0.7% of sales, at every volume

The short answer, computed

One is cheaper. The other leaves the money and the customers in an account you own. Which wins depends on where your community lives.

TL;DR

On fees, Whop is cheaper than LaunchPass at every volume — there is no crossover to find. Whop's all-in base on a Discord-gated sale is 5.7% + $0.30: its 3% automation platform fee plus its own 2.7% + $0.30 card processing. LaunchPass Premium is $29 a month plus 3.5%, and Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 on top, on the seller's own account — about 6.4% + $0.30 all in. Subtract one from the other and what's left is $29 plus 0.7% of sales, which is positive at every volume. On the fee stack itself that gap never closes; what runs the other way is payouts, which LaunchPass doesn't charge for and Whop does — the caveat below. So the reason to pick LaunchPass is not price. It is that the money lands in a Stripe account you already own, with no platform balance in between — and that it gates Slack and Telegram as well as Discord.

One thing is worth flagging before the numbers, because it changes them. Whop’s 3% platform fee applies to any sale gated through one of its automations, and it is on none of Whop’s public pricing pages — so a comparison built from those pages alone puts Whop at 2.7% + $0.30 and gets the answer badly wrong in Whop’s favour. Every published Whop-versus-LaunchPass write-up we could find does exactly that. The rate here rests on a direct confirmation (August 3, 2026) plus four independent 2026 fee breakdowns that document the same figure, and it is carried as such rather than presented as something you can go and read on their site.

Fees, side by side

All-in monthly cost — each platform's fee plus card processing at its own rate.

WhopLaunchPassflatpass
$1,000/mo in sales 29 memberships at $35$66$102$67 Starter
$5,000/mo in sales 143 memberships at $35$328$392$267 Growth
$10,000/mo in sales 286 memberships at $35$656$755$525 Scale

Modelled at a $35/month membership, which is what fixes the transaction count behind each volume — and, for the third column, the paid-member count flatpass's tier is metered on. Whop's $328 at $5,000 against LaunchPass's $392 is the $29 base fee plus 0.7% of sales; at $10,000 it's $656 against $755. The third column is ours, and it is not cheapest everywhere either: up to 15 paid members it is free and no percentage beats that, from your sixteenth paid member to about $1,036/month in sales Whop costs less — at $1,000 flatpass is $67 against Whop's $66 — and only above that does the flat tier overtake the percentage.

Sources · verified August 3, 2026

Whop’s processing and payout fees per whop.com/network/pricing and docs.whop.com/fees, retrieved August 3, 2026. Its 3% platform fee applies to sales gated through its automations (Discord, Telegram, TradingView) and is not listed on those pages as of the same date; independent 2026 fee breakdowns — Ruzuku, Group.app, Dodo Payments, WhatPayment — document the same rate. LaunchPass per help.launchpass.com and launchpass.com: Premium at $29/month plus 3.5% per transaction, billed per community, with LaunchPass’s own help centre putting total fees at roughly “Member Payment × 6.4% + $0.30”. Its Free plan cannot charge members. The Stripe rate is the one on the seller’s own connected account, per stripe.com/pricing — the US figure is used throughout so one basis runs through the table. Every row here is also in the public dataset behind our fee table, with a source per figure.

Who holds the money

The difference that outlasts any rate change.

Whop

Sales accrue to a Whop balance, and moving that balance to your bank is a priced action: about $2.50 for next-day ACH, 4% + $1 instant, 5% + $1 to Venmo, Cash App or crypto, roughly $23 by wire. Your members are Whop customers — they check out on Whop, renew through Whop, and their payment details live there. If you leave, the balance and the customer relationships stay behind, and you rebuild the subscriber list from scratch.

LaunchPass

Payments are Stripe Connect charges on your own Stripe account. There is no platform balance and no withdrawal step — Stripe pays your bank on its normal schedule, at no extra fee — and the customers, cards and subscriptions are objects in an account you already control. If you leave LaunchPass, what stops is the role automation, not the billing. That is a real structural difference, and it is the strongest thing on LaunchPass’s side of this comparison.

flatpass is on the same side of that line as LaunchPass — Connect Standard, the seller’s own account, nothing held — so this section is not a point of difference between the two of us. It is the point of difference between both of us and Whop, and it is worth weighing against Whop’s lower rate rather than instead of it.

Discovery, and what each can gate

Two things each of them does that the other doesn't — and one neither of us does.

Whop has a marketplace, and it is real distribution. Whop Discover puts your community in front of people who were already browsing for one, which is distribution neither of the other two platforms on this page offers in any form. It also sells more than access: courses, software, files, one-off products. If you want a storefront with several things in it, or you want the marketplace traffic, that is a genuine reason to accept the balance and the payout fees — and the 30% marketplace commission that used to sit on Discover sales was removed in May 2025 — per the independent 2026 breakdowns cited under the fee table above, since Whop publishes no notice of it — so those sales now pay the same rates as direct ones.

LaunchPass gates Slack and Telegram. It is the only one of the three that does Slack at all, and for a community that lives there the comparison ends before the fees start. Whop’s automations cover Discord, Telegram and TradingView.

flatpass does neither. Discord only, and no marketplace — you bring the audience, and the invite page is where you send them. Conceded plainly, because it is the trade: what you get for it is a flat monthly fee instead of a percentage, and 0% of your sales at any rung.

What your members actually see

Both checkouts were observed on live pages. Described, never reproduced.

On Whop

  • Whop's wordmark and nav across the top — For enterprise, API, Discover, Start a business, Sign in.
  • A Whop sidebar alongside it, with tabs for Chats, Apps, Products and About.
  • Your banner, icon and name are all there — as content inside Whop's frame.
  • The Join button is Whop's blue, not your server's colour.

On LaunchPass

  • You pick one of LaunchPass's page themes and fill in its template — the look is chosen from their set, not taken from your server.
  • The theme observed put the server's icon and name in a slim bar, with no banner anywhere on the page.
  • The signup card carries LaunchPass's purple, its “Powered by LaunchPass” mark, and a link to LaunchPass's terms.

The difference is whose look you are choosing from. A Whop page renders inside Whop’s app shell, with its nav, its sidebar and its blue Join button around your banner and name. A LaunchPass page is one of LaunchPass’s themes with your details filled into its template — more room to sell, and a starting draft to sell with. Neither is a criticism: a frame you didn’t design is the price of not designing one.

How both checkouts were observed · verified August 3, 2026

Competitor chrome described from a live Whop community page viewed August 3, 2026, not reproduced. Layouts change; re-check before citing this later. Competitor chrome described from a live LaunchPass signup page viewed August 3, 2026, not reproduced. Layouts change; re-check before citing this later. The LaunchPass page observed was a test community of our own, so its account-specific state is not cited as a property of the platform.

Who should pick which

Three cases, and only one of them is ours.

  • Pick Whop if you are starting out and want no monthly cost, if you want the marketplace to send you people, or if you sell more than Discord access — courses, files, several products in one storefront. It is also the cheaper of the two on fees at every volume, and the platform balance is what you accept for that.
  • Pick LaunchPass if your community is on Slack, or if you want the payments in your own Stripe account from day one and are willing to pay $29 a month plus 0.7% more per sale for it — Premium runs a 14-day trial, which is its answer to Whop’s $0 entry. Its themed pages also give you a real page to sell on, which matters if the pitch does the work.
  • Pick flatpass if you are on Discord, already selling, and the percentage is what you object to. It is the same own-Stripe ownership as LaunchPass, with a flat monthly tier instead of a cut. Below your sixteenth paid member we’re free and cheaper; between there and about $1,036/month at a $35 membership, Whop costs you less — the fee table above prints it — and above that the flat fee wins and keeps winning.

The head-to-heads, if you have narrowed it to one: flatpass vs Whop, flatpass vs LaunchPass, and Whop’s fees fee by fee.

Common questions

Is Whop or LaunchPass cheaper?

Whop, at every volume. All in, Whop is 5.7% + $0.30 per Discord-gated sale — 3% platform fee plus its own 2.7% + $0.30 processing — with no monthly fee. LaunchPass Premium is $29/month plus 3.5%, with Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 charged separately on your own account, so about 6.4% + $0.30. The gap is $29 plus 0.7% of your sales and on the fee stack itself it never closes: at $1,000/month that's $66 against $102, at $10,000 it's $656 against $755. Whop's payout fees are the one thing running the other way — LaunchPass has none, and Whop's instant payout at 4% + $1 costs more than the whole gap at any volume above about $850/month. (Rates as of August 3, 2026.)

Does Whop really have no monthly fee?

Yes — Whop is pay-as-you-go, with no monthly cost and no setup fee. The figure its pricing page doesn't carry is the 3% platform fee on sales that run through one of its automations: Discord, Telegram or TradingView gating. For a Discord seller that is every sale, which is why the honest base is 5.7% + $0.30 rather than the 2.7% + $0.30 advertised. It is absent from Whop's public pricing pages as of August 3, 2026; independent 2026 fee breakdowns document the same rate, and it is the reason most published Whop-versus-LaunchPass comparisons understate Whop's cost.

Does LaunchPass hold your money?

No. LaunchPass runs on Stripe Connect against the seller's own Stripe account, so members pay into that account and Stripe pays out to the bank on its usual schedule with no withdrawal step and no payout fee. Whop works the other way: sales accrue to a Whop balance, and moving that balance out is priced — about $2.50 for next-day ACH, 4% + $1 instant, 5% + $1 to Venmo, Cash App or crypto, and roughly $23 by wire.

Which one works with Slack or Telegram?

LaunchPass gates Discord, Slack and Telegram, and it is the only one of the three platforms on this page that does Slack at all. Whop's automations cover Discord, Telegram and TradingView. flatpass is Discord only. If your community lives in Slack, that decides it before any fee does.

Can you move existing subscriptions from one to the other?

Not as subscriptions. A card on file can't be handed between platforms, so members re-subscribe wherever you land — which is true in every direction here, including onto flatpass. What differs is what you keep. LaunchPass and flatpass subscriptions are Stripe subscriptions on your own account, so leaving the tool stops the role automation rather than the billing. Whop subscriptions live in Whop's system, so leaving means starting the customer list again.

Or keep the whole percentage. A flat fee, 0% of sales.

Free up to 15 paid members · Your own Stripe account · Discord only