How much does a crowdfunding campaign cost: fees, VAT, shipping

A crowdfunding campaign can hit its goal and still lose money if you only do the maths afterwards. This guide lists every cost item, with real 2026 figures: platform fees, card fees, rewards, shipping, VAT and taxes. At the end you will find a complete example and the questions to take to your tax adviser before you launch.

The five cost items

1. The platform fee, usually a percentage of what you raise.
2. Card fees, charged by the payment processor on every pledge.
3. The cost of the rewards: production, printing, packaging.
4. Shipping, at home and abroad.
5. Taxes: VAT on the rewards and tax on whatever is left.

The first two are easy to predict. The last three make the difference between a campaign that pays and one that costs you money: work them out reward by reward, before you set your prices.

The platform fee

Every platform keeps a share of what you raise, and what that share covers varies a lot. Kickstarter, for example, takes 5% only if the campaign reaches its goal, plus payment processing of between 3% and 5%.^[1] Platforms built for donations often charge only the transaction cost. When you compare, look at what is included too: who writes the page, who makes the images, who checks it, and which tools you will use to get the word out.

On Campagna Crowdfunding you pay €59 once to activate the campaign and 12% of what you raise, VAT included where due. Card fees are extra. With the “keep it all” model the 12% applies to whatever you raise, even if you fall short of your goal.

It covers the work that usually lands entirely on the project owner:

• an analysis of the audience you should speak to, with the strategy and tactics for the campaign;
• the copy: the page, the story, the FAQs;
• the rewards, suggested from your project;
• the campaign images;
• social media posts, written and published for you, as a social media manager would;
• email sequences to your followers, for each stage of the campaign;
• a review by a real person before the campaign goes live.

Bought separately, these things cost far more: a designer for the images, someone to write the copy, a social media manager, a subscription to an email marketing service. Above all, they take time: learning lots of different tools, each with its own account and its own rules. Campagna Crowdfunding puts everything in one place, and it is designed to be simple and intuitive even if you are not comfortable with the internet: you tell us about your project, then you edit and approve. The details are in How it works.

Card fees

Every card payment has a cost, which depends on the type of card your backer uses. This is the standard price list of Stripe, the payment processor we use.^[2]

Two details people forget: the fixed €0.25 weighs more on small pledges (on €5 it is 5%), and if you refund a backer, the fee on the original payment is not returned.^[2]

A worked example

Take a campaign that raises €2,000 from 50 backers, each choosing a €40 reward: a printed book shipped within the project owner's own country. The project owner is a VAT-registered business and everyone pays with standard European cards.

Now let's look inside a single €40 reward.

Printing, packaging and shipping costs are assumptions: about €6.70 for a domestic parcel is a reasonable working figure, but check your own carrier's prices. Many EU countries apply a reduced VAT rate to books; the example uses 4%, the rate in Italy. If the reward were a T-shirt taxed at the standard rate, for example 22% in Italy, instead of 4%, the margin would drop by another €5.67.

Set the price of a reward after you have done the maths, not before.

Shipping and EU rules

Shipping abroad usually costs 2.5 to 5 times more than shipping within your own country. The simplest approach is to create separate “international” rewards with shipping charged on top.

• Outside the European Union: for a business, goods shipped outside the EU are generally exports, with no VAT charged. Your backer, however, may have to pay duties, local VAT and clearance fees on delivery: say so on the reward page.
• Within the European Union: up to €10,000 a year of distance sales to consumers in other EU countries, you charge the VAT of your own country; above that threshold, you charge the VAT of the customer's country, through the One Stop Shop (OSS).^[3]
• Rewards made outside the Union: from 1 July 2026 parcels worth up to €150 pay a customs duty of €3 per item, and from 1 November 2026 a €2 handling fee.^[4] Import VAT is due from the first euro.

VAT on rewards

The European Commission's VAT Committee has looked at crowdfunding in a working paper. Its reading: a reward is an ordinary supply of goods or services, taxed at the rate that applies to those goods, and the pledge can be treated as a payment on account, so the VAT is due when you receive the money.^[5]

• The rate is the rate of the goods: there is no “crowdfunding rate”. Books often have a reduced rate; most objects, T-shirts and records included, are usually taxed at the standard rate.
• VAT is inside the price: if the reward costs €40, the VAT is taken out of those €40, and it is calculated on what the backer pays, not on what you keep after the fees.
• With “keep it all”, too, the cautious reading is that every pledge with a reward is a payment on account, with VAT due when you receive it.^[5]
• Symbolic rewards, such as a postcard or your name in the thank-yous, are a grey area: the European Commission considers it prudent to treat them as supplies anyway.^[5]
• Invoices and receipts: whether you need to issue an invoice to every backer, or a receipt is enough, depends on your country. Ask your tax adviser.

Free pledges and donations

Money given without receiving anything in return is not a sale: it is outside the scope of VAT.^[5] That does not mean it is always tax-free. Depending on your country and on who you are, a business may have to count donations as income, while associations, charities and other nonprofits often follow different rules, including any tax relief for the people who give. Check with your tax adviser before you open free pledges.

Questions for your tax adviser

Before you launch, take these questions to your tax adviser. Twenty minutes is usually enough.

1. Do I need to register for VAT for this campaign?
2. Which VAT rate applies to my rewards, and when is it due?
3. Do I need to issue an invoice to every backer, or is a receipt enough?
4. How should I treat donations without a reward?
5. I also ship abroad: what changes inside and outside the EU?
6. How do I record the platform and card fees?

With the answers in hand, you can set the prices of your rewards. How to do that is explained in the guide How to choose your rewards.

Frequently asked questions