Stan Store pricing and review (2026): Creator vs Creator Pro, and is it worth it?

Stan Store pricing at a glance

Stan Store has two plans and no free plan. Creator costs $29 a month, or $300 a year ($25 a month). Creator Pro costs $99 a month, or $948 a year ($79 a month). Both start with a 14-day free trial. Stan takes 0% of your sales on either plan, but your payment processor still does: Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ on a standard US card sale, and PayPal charges 3.49% plus a fixed fee that depends on the currency. Creator Pro adds the sales and marketing tools: discount codes, upsells and order bumps, funnels, payment plans, Afterpay and Klarna, affiliate management, email broadcasts and flows, and ad pixel tracking.

Stan Store is a link-in-bio storefront. You put one link in your Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or LinkedIn bio, and followers land on a page where they can buy your digital downloads, courses, coaching calls, webinars, memberships and community access, all without leaving the page.

Yearly billing saves $48 on Creator and $240 on Creator Pro. If you subscribe in the iOS app, you can only change or cancel your plan through Apple, so decide whether to sign up in the app or in a browser before you start the trial.

What Stan Store actually costs at three revenue levels

The table assumes an average sale of $100, so $1,000 a month is 10 sales, $5,000 is 50 sales and $20,000 is 200 sales. Each total is the plan price plus Stripe's 2.9% plus 30¢ per sale, for one-time purchases by US customers.

Stan doesn't take a percentage of sales, so Stripe's processing fee is the same on either plan and the only difference between them is the subscription. Creator costs $54 a month less than Creator Pro on yearly billing and $70 a month less on monthly billing, at every revenue level in the table. That $70 weighs much more on a small store than a big one: it's 7% of revenue at $1,000 a month in sales and 0.35% at $20,000.

To decide whether to upgrade, add up what Creator Pro would replace or bring in. If you'd otherwise pay for a separate email marketing tool, that money counts toward the $70. If you sell a $100 product and an order bump at checkout adds a few extra orders a month, that alone can cover it. If you sell one product to people who already follow you and you don't plan to email them, Creator Pro probably won't pay for itself.

Selling memberships instead. Stripe adds 0.5% to recurring payments. With the same $100 average, processing becomes $37 at $1,000 a month, $185 at $5,000 and $740 at $20,000, so Creator on monthly billing costs $66, $214 and $769, and Creator Pro costs $136, $284 and $839.

Cashing out. Stripe also takes 0.25% + 25¢ each time you cash out, with a $1 minimum. Cash out once a month and that's roughly another $2 to $3 at $1,000 in sales and about $50 at $20,000.

Hidden costs and add-ons

Your real monthly cost depends on more than the plan price and Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢. Each item below adds to it, depending on where your customers live, which currency you sell in and how they choose to pay.

• International customers. Stripe adds 1.5% when the customer's card is from another country.
• Currency conversion. Stripe adds 1% when you sell in a currency different from your Stripe account's currency.
• Recurring payments. Stripe adds 0.5% to subscriptions and memberships.
• PayPal. A PayPal sale costs 3.49% plus a fixed fee set by the currency, which is more than Stripe's standard card rate. PayPal fees also don't show in your Stan Income tab, so you have to check them inside PayPal.
• Afterpay and Klarna (Creator Pro only). Stripe charges 6% + 30¢ for Afterpay and 5.99% + 30¢ for Klarna on US sales, roughly double the card rate. Offering buy now, pay later can lift conversions on a high-priced offer, but you pay about twice the card fee on every sale that uses it.
• Refunds. Stripe keeps its fee when you refund. Stan's own example: a $50 sale nets you $48 after $2 in fees, and a full refund takes $50 from your balance, not $48.
• Payouts. 0.25% + 25¢ per cash out, $1 minimum, as above.
• Tools Creator doesn't include. On Creator you have lead magnets and email collection but no broadcasts or flows, so many creators pay for a separate email tool. That cost belongs in the Creator column when you compare plans.
• A second store. Each Stan Store needs its own email address and its own subscription, and Stan offers no bundle or discount for several stores. You can only run one community per store, so a second community means a second subscription.

Fees outside the US differ. In the UK, for example, Stripe's standard rate through Stan is 1.5% + 20p, and in Australia it's 1.75% + A$0.30. Stan's help center lists the rates by country.

Payout timing. Stan doesn't pay you automatically. Sales sit in Stripe until they're processed, then you cash out by hand from the Income tab, and the money reaches your bank in 24 to 48 hours. For US creators, processing takes 2 to 7 business days (usually closer to 2). For international creators it's up to 7 business days. A first sale through a new Stripe account can take 3 to 7 business days while Stripe verifies you. You need at least $10 available to cash out, and you have to cash out the whole balance at once. Sales made through an affiliate wait longer: both you and the affiliate can cash out only after a 7-business-day hold, which gives you time to refund before anyone is paid. The wait doesn't cost anything, but a sale can take more than a week to reach your bank, so if you pay for ads out of recent sales, keep enough cash on hand to cover that gap.

What you get for the money

The storefront. Your store lives at stan.store/yourname and works on mobile and desktop. A follower taps the link in your bio, sees your offers and pays on the same page, so you don't need to build or host a website of your own.

Courses. Both plans include unlimited courses, built from modules and lessons with video, descriptions and downloadable files. You can drip modules on a schedule (for example, three days after purchase) and email students when a module opens. Course analytics show completion rate, lessons completed and retention, and each student's status and percentage complete.

Coaching calls and webinars. You can sell one-to-one calls and group webinars from the same store. Stan syncs with Google Calendar (including several calendars) so people can only book when you're free, and it connects to Zoom to host the sessions.

Community. Each store on either plan can run one community where members post, comment and react, see the products they've bought and get access to webinars. Members can join from the Stan Community app on iOS or from a browser.

AutoDM for Instagram. Included on both plans. When someone sends you a keyword you've chosen on Instagram, Stan AutoDM replies with a link to your product. If a post asks followers to DM a word, each of them gets the link even when you're not online to answer.

0% platform fee. Stan makes its money from your subscription and takes nothing from each sale. You notice this most on expensive products: on a $500 coaching package you pay Stripe $14.80 and Stan nothing.

Creator Pro's extra tools. Pro is aimed at stores with steady traffic that want to sell more to each buyer. It adds discount codes, limited-quantity offers, upsells and order bumps, funnels, dynamic pricing and payment plans, Afterpay and Klarna, affiliate management, email broadcasts and automated flows, contact import, and pixel tracking for Meta, Google, Pinterest and TikTok ads.

Where it falls short

No custom domain. Your store stays at stan.store/yourname. You can forward your own domain to it, but you can't host the store on your own domain. If you want people to remember and type in your own brand name, every link you share and every search result for your store still shows Stan's domain.

One community per store. If you want a second community, for a different audience or a premium tier, you need a second Stan Store account and a second subscription.

No Android apps. The Stan creator app and the Stan Community app are only on iPhone and iPad. Members on Android use a mobile browser. The Community app is also for members only: admin actions still happen in the browser, and members have to go to a browser to change their payment details or notification settings. If a large share of your followers use Android phones, they get the browser version while iPhone users get an app.

Courses are simple. Stan's help center documents no quizzes, assignments or completion certificates, and no cohort features for running a group of students through a course on fixed dates. A self-paced mini-course works fine with what's there. If your students need to practise a skill and get feedback on their work, or you want to take a group through the material together on set dates, you'd need another tool for that part.

Fee reporting is split across tools. Stripe fees show in Stan: hover over a payout to see the breakdown, or download the Income tab as a CSV. PayPal fees don't appear in Stan at all, so you have to open each transaction in PayPal. Stan also can't produce a payout receipt; the CSV is the only record. If you sell through both processors and do your own bookkeeping, expect to combine a Stan CSV and a PayPal export every month to work out your real margin.

Moving away later. Every link you post points at your Stan URL, so if you close the store, those links go dead. As one creator, Post2Profit, wrote on Reddit: "if I close Stan Store .. all of the posts and links I shared are dead." If you forward your own domain to Stan from the start and share that domain instead, you can point it at a new platform later and your old posts keep working.

Who Stan Store is for, and who should skip it

Stan Store suits solo creators, coaches and influencers who already have an engaged following on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or LinkedIn and want followers to be able to buy straight from the link in your bio. If you sell a handful of products (a guide, a template pack, a coaching call, a starter course) and your buyers come from your own content, Creator gives you a store, a checkout and a community for $29 a month with no cut of sales. Move to Creator Pro once email marketing, upsells or affiliates would earn you more than the extra $70 a month.

Skip it if your business depends on the community or the course itself rather than the storefront. If you need a branded site on your own domain, more than one community, cohorts, quizzes and certificates, or member apps for both iPhone and Android, Stan's documentation covers none of those, so you'd be working around it from the start. It's also a weaker fit if you want buyers to find you through search rather than through your social posts, since your store is a page on Stan's domain.

Is Stan Store worth it in 2026?

Yes, if you already have a social following and mainly want a place to sell to it. Creator at $29 a month with 0% platform fees gets you selling with very little setup, and the 14-day trial is long enough to build a store and make a first sale. Creator Pro is worth $99 a month only if you'll use its email, upsell and affiliate tools. Stan is a worse deal when what people pay for is the community, or a course they take together. In that case you run into the limits covered above: one community per store, apps only on iOS, and courses without quizzes, certificates or cohorts.

How Heartbeat compares

Stan is mainly a storefront, and its community is one of the things you sell from it. Heartbeat is built around the community itself: members talk in thread, chat and voice channels, meet at events held in the community or on Zoom, and take courses together, including cohort courses where each cohort gets its own dates and its own member group.

A custom domain and a member app for iOS and Android come with every plan, and on Scale the app can be your own branded app in the App Store and Google Play. Checkout handles monthly and annual subscriptions, one-time payments and installment plans. There's a 14-day free trial, and no card is needed to start.

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