The short version: The crossover is much lower than most vendors assume. Annual subscription ÷ percentage rate = the sales figure where flat pricing wins. A $144-a-year flat plan beats a 3% platform at $4,800 in annual sales, and beats a 5% platform at $2,880. Those are small numbers: roughly $400 and $240 a month. So percentage pricing is genuinely cheaper only at the very bottom, and above about $5,000 a year almost every vendor is better off on a flat plan. What percentage models actually buy you is not savings, it is insurance against a bad month, and that is worth something only if your months are genuinely unpredictable.
One division, same shape as the annual-versus-monthly calculation.
Annual subscription ÷ percentage rate = crossover in annual sales.
Worked at real prices:
Below the crossover, the percentage model is cheaper. Above it, the flat plan is, and the gap widens every month because one number grows and the other does not.
Note what the crossover is not. It is not tens of thousands of dollars. A vendor selling $400 a month has already passed the point where a $144 flat plan beats a 3% platform. That is a much smaller business than most people picture when they imagine outgrowing percentage pricing.
The $400-a-month result surprises most people, and the formula that produces it takes one minute with your own numbers. To test it against a live example, the flat side of the comparison runs a 7-day trial with every rate published.
Most percentage models add one, and it pulls the crossover lower still.
A platform charging 5% plus 55¢ on 40 orders of $25 a month takes $50 in percentage and $22 in fixed fees: $72 a month, or $864 a year. Against a $144 flat plan, that is $720 a year worse.
Expressed as a rate, the fixed component is doing a lot of the work. On a $25 order, 55¢ is 2.2% on top of the 5%, giving an effective 7.2%. On a $10 order it is 5.5%, giving 10.5%.
So the true comparison is not 5% against a subscription. It is 7.2% against a subscription at typical food order values, and the crossover moves accordingly: $144 ÷ 0.072 = $2,000 in annual sales.
Which is a strikingly low number. A vendor doing $170 a month has passed it.
All figures from each company's own published pages in July 2026.
| Platform | Subscription | Free trial | Platform fee | Card processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homegrown | $10/mo billed annually · $12.50 monthly | 7-day free trial | $0, 0% commission | 2.9% + $0.30 |
| Big Cartel Platinum | $15/mo · $144/yr | 7-day free trial | $0, no commission | rate not set by Big Cartel: you connect your own processor, commonly 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Hotplate | $0, no subscription | no free trial needed, nothing to subscribe to | 5% + $0.55, added to the customer's total by default | 2.9% + $0.30, paid by you |
| LocallyGrown.net | $0, nothing charged monthly | no free trial needed, free to start | 3% of completed sales after your first $15,000 | 2.9% + $0.30 direct to your own Stripe account |
| Farmigo | 2% of delivery revenue, $150/month minimum, delivery months only | free trial not published | platform fee is the 2% itself, with no setup fee, no per-member charge and no contract | processing rate not published, though Farmigo states there are no hidden processing markups |
| Etsy | $0; Etsy Plus optional $10/mo | no free trial: listings are pay-per-item | $0.20/listing + 6.5% of item price including shipping | processing 3% + $0.25 in the US via Etsy Payments |
Two structural points fall out of that table.
Hotplate's fee lands on your customer, not on you. With the fee passed on, your own cost is just card processing, which makes it the cheapest column here from your side. Your customers pay roughly $864 a year more at 40 orders a month.
Farmigo's minimum is the real price. 2% only exceeds $150 once you deliver more than $7,500 a month, so for most CSAs the price is $150 a month rather than 2%, and the effective rate is 3% to 10% depending on size.
Three situations, and they are narrower than the marketing suggests.
Genuinely tiny volume. Below the crossover, which is $2,000 to $4,800 a year depending on the rate. A vendor doing occasional weekend sales is better off paying a percentage of very little.
A free threshold that has not been used up. LocallyGrown.net charges nothing until $15,000 in sales, which is worth $450 and lasts fifteen months for a market selling $1,000 a month. That is real and it is the most generous version of this structure in the category.
Genuinely unpredictable months. If you might sell $3,000 in June and $200 in February, a percentage model costs you $6 in February and a subscription costs you the same as always. That option value is worth something, and it is the honest argument for percentage pricing.
That third one is the interesting case, because it is not about the average. It is about the variance.
Yes, and framing it that way makes the decision clearer.
A percentage model transfers risk. In a bad month you pay almost nothing; in a good month you pay a lot. A subscription does the opposite: fixed cost, and every additional sale is free.
So the question is not "which is cheaper on average" but "how much do I value not paying in a quiet month?"
That last point is the good-faith argument for beginning on a percentage model and moving later. It is not a bad decision; it just needs a pre-registered exit.
Set the trigger now rather than noticing later, because percentage fees never announce themselves.
The method:
Worked example: against a $144 flat plan and a 5% plus 55¢ model at $25 orders, the crossover is about $2,000 a year, or roughly $167 a month. Write down "$167 a month" and check quarterly.
A vendor doing $1,000 a month is five times past that and paying roughly $720 a year more than they need to. That is not a rounding error, and it accumulated one quiet month at a time.
Our guide to tracking income and expenses covers building that check into something you actually look at, our profit margin benchmarks put the fee in proportion against everything else, and the SBA's guidance on managing your finances is a reasonable framework for the wider picture.
A minimum turns a percentage into a subscription until you are large, and it is worth recognising.
Farmigo charges 2% with a $150 monthly minimum, in delivery months only. Since 2% of $7,500 is exactly $150:
So the honest description for most CSAs is not "2%." It is "$150 a month until you are reasonably large." At $3,000 a month in delivery revenue, the effective rate is 5%.
Cheddar Up's eCheck on Pro works the same way with a $1 minimum: below about $63 an order the minimum applies, above it the 1.59% does.
Whenever you see a minimum, calculate the point at which the percentage overtakes it. That figure, rather than the headline rate, is what you are actually buying.
The mirror image of a minimum, and considerably more generous when it exists.
LocallyGrown.net charges nothing until you have sold $15,000, then 3%. That threshold is worth $450 in avoided fees, and unlike a time-limited trial it lasts longer the smaller you are:
That is the right shape for a business finding its feet, and it is rare. Most free periods are measured in days and expire fastest for the people who most need them.
The thing to plan for is the far side. Once past the threshold, the 3% applies to everything, and the crossover against a $144 flat plan arrives at about $19,800 in cumulative sales. So the honest sequence is: use the free threshold, and set your switch trigger for the month you exhaust it.
Slightly, and in a direction worth knowing.
On a percentage model, every sale costs you the same proportion, so a $10 order and a $100 order are equally efficient. There is no fee reason to push order size.
On a flat subscription, the subscription is sunk and every additional sale carries only the card fee. That makes volume genuinely more valuable, and it makes the fixed 30¢ the thing to optimise, which means larger orders.
Neither should drive your product decisions much. But if you are on a flat plan and hesitating about whether to promote a second weekly drop, the fee model is quietly on the side of doing it.
The same logic explains a pattern worth naming: vendors on percentage models tend to under-promote. When every additional sale carries the same proportional cost, growth feels less rewarding than it is, and a slow month feels less alarming. That is the insurance working, and it is also a mild disincentive. A flat plan makes the marginal sale nearly free, which is a small but real nudge in the right direction.
Our guide to batch economics and cost per unit covers the production side of that decision, and running a real week through a flat-fee trial will tell you what your own marginal order actually costs.
Census Bureau data on small business statistics is a reasonable reminder of the scale most food businesses operate at, which is exactly the range where these crossovers sit rather than somewhere far above it.
If you want a flat plan with the rate published rather than discovered, Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually with 0% commission and 2.9% plus $0.30 processing stated up front, and it handles pickup at each place you sell with its own schedule and cutoff, local delivery with a radius and a route, and sales tax calculated, filed, and remitted in all 50 states. The honest bounds: it does not ship nationally, has no point-of-sale, no drop countdowns, and no free tier, so below the crossover a $0 percentage model like Hotplate or LocallyGrown.net is genuinely cheaper and you should use one. Above roughly $4,000 a year in sales, flat pricing wins and keeps winning. You can run one real week through a trial and put your own numbers into the formula rather than anyone's example.
Divide the annual subscription by the percentage rate. A $144-a-year plan beats a 3% platform at $4,800 in annual sales, and a 5% platform at $2,880.
Lower. It is a few thousand dollars a year, not tens of thousands. A vendor selling $400 a month has already passed the point where a $144 flat plan beats a 3% platform.
Substantially. A 5% plus 55¢ model is an effective 7.2% on a $25 order, which pulls the crossover against a $144 plan down to about $2,000 in annual sales, or $167 a month.
Below the crossover, while a free threshold lasts, or when your months are genuinely unpredictable. That last case is the honest one: percentage pricing is insurance against a quiet month rather than a saving.
It turns the percentage into a subscription until you are large. Farmigo's 2% with a $150 minimum means most CSAs pay $150 a month, with an effective rate of 3% to 10% depending on size.
Calculate your crossover, convert it to a monthly sales figure, write it down, and check once a season. Percentage fees grow quietly, so a pre-registered trigger beats noticing.
Only if you absorb it. Its 5% plus 55¢ is added to the customer's total by default, so your own cost is just card processing. Absorbing it instead costs about $864 a year at 40 orders a month.
One division: annual subscription ÷ percentage rate = the sales figure where flat pricing wins. Against a $144-a-year plan that is $4,800 at 3% and $2,880 at 5%, and a fixed per-order fee pulls it lower still, to around $2,000 a year for a 5%-plus-55¢ model at typical food order values.
Those numbers are the point. The crossover is not somewhere far in your future; it is roughly $170 to $400 a month in sales, which most vendors passed some time ago without noticing.
What percentage pricing genuinely offers is insurance, not savings: you pay almost nothing in a quiet month. That is worth real money if your months are unpredictable and worth nothing if they are steady. Decide which you are, write down your crossover as a monthly figure, and check it once a season rather than once you happen to wonder.
