I’ll share information I researched about which is better for OSS sponsorship: GitHub Sponsors or Open Collective.

Background: Which Has Lower Fees, GitHub Sponsors or Open Collective?

I investigated which is more suitable for OSS sponsorship from a financial perspective: GitHub Sponsors or Open Collective.

Using Open Collective - V - Medium

GitHub Sponsors is free for individuals, 6% for organizations (can be reduced to 3% with invoice payment but it's troublesome). So Open Collective might be attractive.

— V (@voluntas) November 17, 2023

GitHub Sponsors Fees

From a purely financial perspective, it seems best to use GitHub Sponsors for individual sponsorship.

GitHub Sponsors doesn't charge fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization. GitHub Sponsors charges up to 6% fees for sponsorships from Organization accounts. The 6% fee is split as follows:

• 3% credit card processing fee
• 3% GitHub service processing fee

Organizations can save the 3% credit card processing fee by switching to invoice billing for sponsorships. For more information, see “Paying for GitHub Sponsors by invoice.”

Source: About GitHub Sponsors - GitHub Docs

Open Collective Fees

While it was stated as follows, I’m not entirely sure if it’s really 3%.

My impression from using it is that first, the fees are about 3%, which is much cheaper than GitHub Sponsors, and that's very significant.

Source: Using Open Collective - V - Medium

After checking Open Collective’s official site and documentation, I understand it depends on the “host fee” settings.

$0: If you don't charge host fees to collectives ¹

15%: The percentage of host fee revenue that the platform receives ²

(1) Payment processing fees apply when using Stripe, PayPal, or Wise.

(2) For example, if the host fee is 10% and a collective generates $1,000 in revenue, the host fee revenue is $100. The platform receives $15 (15%) of that.

Source: Open Collective - Make your community sustainable. Collect and spend money transparently.

Fees Open Collective is free for Collectives, and for Hosts who do not charge a Host Fee to the Collectives they Host. If you do opt to charge a Host Fee, then 15% of that revenue will be charged as the Platform Share. I.e, if you charge a 10% Host Fee and your Collectives bring in $1,000, Host Fees will be $100 and of that 15% ($15) goes to Open Collective.

Source: Becoming a Fiscal Host - Open Collective Docs

That’s all from the Gemba, where I want to continue OSS sponsorship while using both GitHub Sponsors and Open Collective appropriately.