What Is Whop? A Seller's Guide to How It Works and What It Costs

What Whop is, what you can sell on it, how checkout and payouts work, and what it costs per sale, checked against Whop's own docs.

By the OneClick Upsell team · · 4 min read
A small open box with a glowing orange cube inside next to a stack of white cards

"What is Whop" is the most common Whop search in the US over the last year, ahead of "whop login" and "whop app". If you are thinking about selling on it, this guide covers what it is, what you can sell, how the money moves, and what it costs. Every fee below comes from Whop's own documentation, linked at the end.

Whop in one paragraph

Whop is a platform for selling digital access: memberships, communities, courses, software, coaching and paid groups. You create a "whop" (your store and member area), add products with prices, and add apps that members get when they pay. Whop runs the checkout, takes the payment, manages the membership and pays you out. Buyers can find you through your own links or through Whop's marketplace, called Discover.

What you can sell

Most sellers on Whop fall into a few groups:

  • Paid communities. A chat, a forum for announcements, live events and a course library. Whop's own guide to paid groups walks through the Forums, Chat, Courses and Events apps.
  • Courses and education. One-time or subscription access to course content.
  • Software and tools. Whop calls these business-focused apps, such as data feeds and SaaS tools.
  • Discord access. Members link their Discord account and claim access to your server from the whop.
  • Services. Checkout links work as invoices for coaching, freelance work or events.

Add one-click upsells to your Whop

Install OneClick Upsell from the Whop App Store and offer a post-purchase upsell in a few minutes.

How products and checkout work

A product has a name, a headline, pricing and the apps members get. Pricing can be one-time, a subscription or free, and you can add several pricing options to one product, plus free trials and waitlists.

To collect money you share a checkout link. You can create free, one-time and recurring links, set stock limits, ask questions before checkout and redirect buyers to a page of your choice after they pay. If you want the checkout on your own site, Whop offers an embedded checkout element instead of a hosted page.

Whop-hosted checkout supports Apple Pay and Google Pay out of the box. If you embed the checkout on your own domain, you verify that domain for Apple Pay first.

What it costs to sell on Whop

Whop has no monthly fee. You pay per transaction. From Whop's fee page:

Item Fee
Domestic card payment 2.7% + $0.30
International card +1.5%
Currency conversion +1%
ACH debit 1.5%, max $5
Financing (Klarna, Afterpay and others) 15%
Dispute $15.00 each

There are also optional add-ons that stack on top when you turn them on: orchestration (0.8%), billing (0.5%) and managed tax (2% when tax is collected). With everything enabled and tax collected, a domestic card sale costs 6% + $0.30.

Sales that come from Discover used to carry a 30% marketplace fee. Whop removed it, so Discover sales cost the same as your own sales. We break the fees down further in Whop fees and payouts explained.

How you get paid

Money from a sale is generally available to withdraw within 1 to 4 business days. Standard payouts take up to 5 business days, and instant payouts take minutes for a fee. Payout options depend on your country and include bank accounts, wallets and crypto. Each method has its own fee, for example $2.50 for next-day ACH in the US.

How buyers find you

There are three main routes:

  1. Your own traffic. Social posts, ads, your email list or your website, all pointing at a checkout link.
  2. Discover. Whop's marketplace, where buyers browse whops by category.
  3. Affiliates. Whop turns on global affiliates by default. Anyone in Whop's affiliate network can promote your product for a default 30% commission, and you can change that rate or set a separate rate for existing members.

What Whop does not do for you

Whop handles payments and access well. A few things are still on you:

  • Raising order value. Whop has native upsells through locked apps (before checkout, after checkout or inside the whop). If you want multi-step funnels with downsells, order bumps on your own site and one-click charges on the card the buyer just used, you need an app. That is what OneClick Upsell does.
  • Email marketing. Whop shows you each user's email and lets you export it, but it is not an email marketing tool. Tools like WhopMail sync your members and send campaigns and automations from Whop events.
  • Tax decisions. Whop gives you options for tax on direct sales, but its docs are clear that choosing a managed option does not remove all of your own tax obligations.

Is Whop a good fit?

Whop makes the most sense if you sell access (a community, course, tool or group) and want payments, membership management and payouts in one place with no monthly fee. If you mainly sell physical products, a store builder is a better fit. If you are comparing platforms, see Whop vs Skool, Whop vs Gumroad and Whop vs Stan Store vs Kajabi.

Sources

Ready to raise your order value?

Install OneClick Upsell on Whop and build your first upsell funnel today.

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