Accept Tips as an Open Source Maintainer

An open source maintainer can accept tips by putting a direct payment link — such as a FanBell Tips page — in their README, GitHub profile, or project site. A tip is a single, no-strings payment: no subscription tier, no funding goal, no progress bar, and no reply owed, unlike a paid question or a milestone campaign.

FanBell's pricing page states, "The fan pays only the displayed price. FanBell charges a 12% platform fee, and payment-processing fees are deducted separately from creator earnings. Creator earnings = fan payment − platform fee − processing fee," and that FanBell is "Free to start. No subscription required for the beta — you only pay when a fan pays you" (pricing).

Maintainers routinely get the "thank you" — a starred repo, a comment on a closed issue, a "how can I support this project?" message. What is usually missing is a place to turn that goodwill into a payment. GitHub Sponsors has moved more than $100 million to open source maintainers and projects since launching in 2019, supporting nearly 70,000 maintainers and organizations backed by more than 280,000 sponsors (GitHub Blog, "$100 million for open source"). GitHub Sponsors' $100 million total shows that users do pay maintainers directly once a simple payment path exists, so the missing piece for most projects is the link rather than the willingness. This page compares four common tip-link options — GitHub Sponsors, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, and FanBell — and then covers the FanBell-specific setup in detail, so the setup steps and fee figures for FanBell describe FanBell only and not tip links in general.

Why do most maintainers still work for free?

Most maintainers work for free because unpaid volunteering is the structural default of open source rather than an individual choice: the license already grants free use, and almost no downstream user is ever prompted to pay. Survey data shows the majority of maintainers still describe their maintenance work as an unpaid hobby rather than a job.

Sixty percent of open source maintainers describe themselves as unpaid hobbyists, and only 12% consider themselves professionals who earn most or all of their income from maintenance work (The 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report). Being unpaid is not the same as wanting to stay unpaid: 44% of open source maintainers describe themselves as unpaid hobbyists who would appreciate getting paid, while only 16% are unpaid hobbyists who do not want to be paid (n=437) (2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report). The 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report also found that paid maintainers are 55% more likely to implement important security and maintenance practices than unpaid maintainers, so funding a maintainer is a supply-chain security question and not only a fairness question.

A Harvard Business School working paper estimates the demand-side value of widely-used open source software at $8.8 trillion against a supply-side value of $4.15 billion, so the value users take from maintained open source dwarfs what it costs to produce.

"Sixty percent of maintainers report they are unpaid hobbyists, and only 12% of maintainers consider themselves professionals who earn most or all of their income from their maintenance work." — The 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report

Unpaid maintenance work also carries a retention cost: 22% of open source maintainers have already quit maintaining a project and a further 38% have considered quitting, for a combined 60% (n=350) (2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report). A tip link does not turn a side project into a full-time job, but it gives the people who already benefit from the work a way to say thanks in under a minute.

What's the difference between a tip and a funding goal?

A tip is a single one-off payment, sent whenever a supporter wants, with no target and no progress bar. A funding goal names a specific dollar amount for a defined milestone — a v2 rewrite, a year of hosting — and shows publicly how close the project is to that amount. Tips and funding goals are separate offers on FanBell.

Tips fit the ongoing "buy me a coffee" moment, where a user just wants to say thanks right now without the maintainer framing the payment as progress toward anything (how it works). Wishlist / Project Support fits a named goal, such as funding one specific feature or covering a year of hosting, and displays a funding progress bar toward that stated target. Running a tip link does not rule out adding a funding goal later — funding goal vs. tip jar: which gets more support compares the two side by side, and fund your open source project covers the milestone-campaign version in depth.

How does GitHub Sponsors compare to a direct tip link?

GitHub Sponsors and a direct tip link both let a user pay a maintainer, but differ on fee, tier structure, and account requirement. GitHub Sponsors runs on sponsorship tiers inside GitHub's own sponsor button and asks the supporter to sign in first; a FanBell tip link is a one-off payment on a page the maintainer controls and shares anywhere.

GitHub Sponsors charges no fee on sponsorships from personal accounts, meaning 100% of a personal-account sponsorship reaches the sponsored developer (GitHub Docs, "About GitHub Sponsors"). A FanBell tip instead carries FanBell's 12% platform fee, charged only when a fan actually pays. A sponsored account on GitHub Sponsors can publish up to 10 one-time sponsorship tiers and 10 monthly tiers, each with its own payment amount and benefits, so recurring support is the common pattern there rather than the only one.

Organization sponsorships are priced differently from personal ones: GitHub Sponsors charges a fee of up to 6% for sponsorships from organization accounts, split into a 3% credit card processing fee and a 3% GitHub service fee.

"GitHub Sponsors does not charge any fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization." — GitHub Docs, "About GitHub Sponsors"

GitHub Sponsors and a direct tip link are not mutually exclusive, and a maintainer can list both. GitHub's own Sponsors FAQ answers "How do I sponsor a project?" with "Sign in and start by navigating to your dependencies, your explore tab, trending repositories, or collections", so a sponsorship starts from a signed-in GitHub account. A direct tip link instead works for anyone who lands on the project from a README, a blog post, or a conference talk, and Stripe lists Visa and Mastercard as accepted from Stripe accounts in all countries and from customers globally. FanBell's how-it-works FAQ answers "Do my fans need an account to pay?" with "No. Fans check out as a guest and pay by card through Stripe — there's no FanBell account to create and no app to install"; the constrained side is the maintainer's, because receiving payouts requires a Stripe account in a country Stripe supports (Stripe global availability).

What are the common tip-link platform options for maintainers?

Common options include GitHub Sponsors, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, and FanBell. They differ mainly on the platform fee charged on a one-off tip, whether recurring support is offered, and where the payment page lives. Each platform's own documentation is the authoritative source for its current fee, and published fees change.

Three of the four publish adoption figures on their own sites: GitHub Sponsors reports nearly 70,000 maintainers and organizations sponsored, Ko-fi's help center states that "over a million creators have chosen Ko-fi as their digital home", and Buy Me a Coffee's help center states, "We have over 1 Million creators and millions of their fans on Buy Me a Coffee". None of those figures is broken out by open source maintainers specifically, so read them as platform-wide adoption rather than as a maintainer share.

Payment-processor fees are not handled the same way across the four, so a platform fee alone is not always the maintainer's total cost. Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, and FanBell each deduct a payment-processor fee in addition to their platform fee. GitHub Sponsors is the exception: GitHub Docs states that "GitHub Sponsors does not charge any fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization," and names a credit card processing fee only for organization sponsorships, where 3% processing is part of the up-to-6% total.

Ko-fi's Free plan charges 0% on one-time tips and a flat 5% service fee on shop items, memberships, monthly tips, and commissions, with the payment processor's usual fees applying on top (Ko-fi Help Center, "Does Ko-fi take a fee?"). Buy Me a Coffee charges no monthly fee and a 5% transaction fee, so creators keep 95% of earnings. FanBell charges a 12% platform fee only when a fan pays, with Stripe's processing fee deducted separately from creator earnings.

On the fee alone, Ko-fi's Free plan and GitHub Sponsors' personal-account sponsorships are the cheapest way to take a plain tip, and FanBell's 12% is the highest of the four. The trade-off is scope: a FanBell page also carries Paid Private Questions, Creator Services, and a funding-goal offer on the same link, so a maintainer choosing purely on tip fee and a maintainer who also wants to sell scoped paid work will reasonably land on different platforms.

Where should a maintainer put a tips link?

A maintainer should put the tips link wherever a user is already thinking "this saved me time": near the top of the README, in the GitHub profile bio, on the project's docs site, in CONTRIBUTING.md, and in release notes for major versions. Repetition helps, because a user can decide to support a project without reading the whole README.

The scale of the surrounding audience is why placement matters: in the 12-month period covered by GitHub's Octoverse 2025 report, 395 million public repositories hosted 1.12 billion contributions, a record, and GitHub's developer population passed 180 million. Octoverse 2025 is the most recent edition of that annual report as of September 2026, so the 1.12 billion figure describes the Octoverse 2025 measurement year rather than the trailing twelve months. A GitHub user who is not already looking for a funding page will rarely go hunting for one, so a maintainer's tip link has to sit where that user already is.

Common placements:

• A "Support this project" line near the top of the README, before installation instructions.
• The GitHub profile bio or a pinned-repo description.
• The bottom of a CONTRIBUTING.md, next to the ways to file issues or open a PR.
• A release-notes callout on major versions, when goodwill toward the project is highest.

FanBell does not read or plug into GitHub, Discord, or any other platform's messages — the maintainer adds the link manually wherever their users already are, the same way a GitHub Sponsors page is linked today.

Does a tip come with any reply or obligation?

No. A FanBell Tip is a one-time payment that requires nothing back from the maintainer: no reply, no delivery, no follow-up thread, and no reward tier. A supporter who wants an actual answer is buying a different product — a Paid Private Question, where the fee explicitly covers a written or voice reply from the maintainer.

A Tip requires no delivery or response, which is what separates it from every other offer on FanBell. A Paid Private Question instead lets a user type one specific text question that the maintainer answers by text or voice, with the maintainer setting only the price and the reply time. Keeping tips reply-free protects a maintainer's time, because a tip button never creates a new inbox to manage. Sixty-one percent of unpaid open source maintainers are solo maintainers, and only 20% of unpaid maintainers have more than two co-maintainers, so an offer that adds zero reply obligation matters most on a one-person project.

Can a maintainer combine tips with paid support requests?

Yes. A tip link and a priced help offer answer two different requests and can sit on the same page. A tip is for a user who wants to say thanks with no expectation of a reply. A Paid Private Question or Creator Service is for a user who wants a scoped answer or deliverable.

The 2024 Tidelift survey also recorded what maintainers dislike most about the work, including the expectation that fixes arrive for free:

"Most users, even ones who require fixes, are not willing to roll up their sleeves to help. They just expect someone else to fix it for free." — A maintainer quoted in The 2024 Tidelift Maintainer Impact Report

Many maintainers already field "quick question" issue comments that go beyond a bug report — a config question, an integration gut-check, a "should I use X or Y" call. Turning the recurring ones into a priced text offer is covered in get paid for quick dev questions, not consulting calls, while a code review or bug fix that needs an actual patch fits a Creator Service, covered in developers can sell code review and bug fixes. Every offer on FanBell is asynchronous, with no booking calendar and no live call required.

What should a maintainer know about tip income at tax time?

Under general US federal tax treatment, tip income received through a payment link is taxable earnings rather than a tax-free gift, because the payment is tied to a public project rather than a personal relationship. Reporting mechanics, thresholds, and the correct form vary by country and by whether the maintainer is an individual, a company, or a fiscally hosted project. This section describes general US treatment only and is not tax advice.

The IRS states that "Generally, you must include in gross income everything you receive in payment for personal services" (IRS, "What is taxable and nontaxable income?"), and IRS Publication 525 applies the same rule to income received for personal services. The IRS's gift exclusion applies to personal gifts between individuals rather than to payments tied to a public project or online presence. Whether one specific payment is a gift or compensation turns on facts those IRS pages do not resolve for any individual maintainer, so the general rule above is a starting point rather than a determination. For US maintainers specifically, a payment platform must file Form 1099-K only when the gross amount of reportable payment transactions to a payee exceeds $20,000 and the number of transactions exceeds 200, the threshold restored by the One Big Beautiful Bill (IRS, "IRS issues FAQs on Form 1099-K threshold under the One Big Beautiful Bill"). The $20,000 / 200-transaction Form 1099-K threshold is a US federal reporting rule that applies to the payment platform, not to maintainers outside the United States, and receiving no Form 1099-K does not make tip income untaxable.

This page is not tax advice and describes US federal treatment only; maintainers outside the United States should check their own tax authority's rules. Do you pay taxes on tips from fans? covers the US reporting mechanics in more depth, the 1099-K threshold for creators, explained covers the form itself, and a licensed tax professional can confirm how any of it applies to a specific situation.

How do you set up a tips page in an afternoon?

Setting up a FanBell tip link takes minutes rather than a funding application: create a free page, turn on Tips, set two or three suggested amounts, then paste the link into the README and the GitHub profile. FanBell's how-it-works page describes step one as "Claim your free link: Pick your username and create your FanBell page in a couple of minutes. No monthly fee, no upfront cost".

FanBell's own setup description is "Claim your link, turn on offers, share it, and get paid," and its how-it-works FAQ answers "How long does it take to set up?" with "A few minutes. You claim your link, turn on a couple of offers, and paste the link into your bio — that's enough to start taking paid interactions". Neither that page nor the pricing page states an application form, star count, follower count, or audience threshold as a requirement, and FanBell's pricing page states, "Free to start. No subscription required for the beta — you only pay when a fan pays you". One step is not instant: payouts require connecting a Stripe account, which runs Stripe's standard identity verification, and Stripe accepts businesses and individuals only in the countries on its availability list. A maintainer with a small but useful library can therefore set up a tips page the same day as one with a widely-used framework. Any price or setup example on this page is illustrative and is not a guarantee of what a given project will receive in tips.

Frequently asked questions

The questions maintainers ask most about tip links are whether tips replace GitHub Sponsors, whether a minimum audience is required, whether a reply is owed, what the fees are, and whether the income is taxable. The short answers: no, no, no, a 12% platform fee only when a fan pays plus Stripe processing deducted separately, and generally yes.

Does accepting tips replace GitHub Sponsors?

No — GitHub Sponsors and a FanBell tip link can run side by side. GitHub Sponsors charges no fee on personal-account sponsorships and lives inside GitHub's own sponsor button, while a FanBell tip link is a separate page the maintainer controls and can also use for Paid Private Questions or a Creator Service.

Do I need a certain number of stars or contributors before accepting tips?

No. FanBell's public pricing and how-it-works pages state no star, follower, or repo-popularity threshold as a condition of turning on Tips: the pricing page's stated requirement is only that "you only pay when a fan pays you," alongside "Stripe Connect payouts to your account", and the setup flow is described as "Claim your free link: Pick your username and create your FanBell page in a couple of minutes. No monthly fee, no upfront cost". A small utility library can accept tips exactly the same way a widely-adopted framework does.

Do I have to reply when someone tips me?

No. A FanBell Tip is a one-time payment with no delivery or reply required. A user who wants an actual answer back should send a Paid Private Question instead, which the maintainer answers by text or voice.

What does FanBell charge for tips?

FanBell's pricing page states, "The fan pays only the displayed price. FanBell charges a 12% platform fee, and payment-processing fees are deducted separately from creator earnings. Creator earnings = fan payment − platform fee − processing fee". FanBell's 12% platform fee and Stripe's processing fee are additive, not alternatives. The same page also notes: "The 12% platform fee is configurable and may change as the product evolves", so check the pricing page for the current rate. Stripe's standard US pricing for card payments is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards, plus 1.5% for international cards and 1% if currency conversion is required (Stripe pricing), so a $10 tip from a US card leaves roughly $8.21 after a 12% platform fee and that processing fee.

Is tip income from an open source project taxable?

Under general US federal treatment, yes. The IRS states that "Generally, you must include in gross income everything you receive in payment for personal services", and the IRS gift exclusion covers personal gifts between individuals rather than payments tied to a public project. This is general information, not tax advice, and treatment outside the United States varies by country. See is fan payment income a gift or taxable income for the distinction, and confirm specifics with a tax professional.

Create your free FanBell page and give the users already thanking you in your issues a real way to do it.