WEBTOONHow much do WEBTOON Originals creators earn?How much do WEBTOON Canvas creators earn?TapasHow much do Tapas creators earn?PatreonHow much do creators earn on Patreon?Using Patreon + Inkverse for early access (Ad)
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You’re in the right place if you’re wondering whether it’s possible to make a living, or even make it big, creating webtoons. While the biggest webcomics have sparked Netflix adaptations (like Heartstopper) and landed book deals (like Lore Olympus), the harsh reality is that most webtoon creators don’t earn a living wage from their comics.
We’re going to focus on the two biggest platforms (WEBTOON and Tapas), and then talk about Patreon (since it’s the #1 way indie webtoon creators earn money from their comics).
WEBTOON
WEBTOON is the biggest webtoons platform, and it has two types of creators: Originals creators (who have an exclusive contract with WEBTOON) and Canvas creators (who independently publish their comics on WEBTOON).
How much do WEBTOON Originals creators earn?
Every Originals creator signs a contract that gives WEBTOON the exclusive rights to their comic. In exchange, the creator earns a per-episode fee plus a revenue split on FastPass Coins. It’s important to note that those per-episode fees add up to create a minimum threshold, and you only start earning the FastPass revenue split once you’ve exceeded it. That means your Originals income hinges on two things: how productive you are (if you miss episodes, you don’t get paid) and how popular your comic is.
You don’t choose to become an Originals creator, WEBTOON staff editors personally recruit creators based on a number of factors, including how well you’re doing as an independent creator on Canvas and whether you have a big off-platform following.
Originals creators are typically contracted to produce one episode a week. Because contracts and readership levels vary, every Originals creator earns a different amount. WEBTOON has said that its highest creator made over $9 million in a year, but there seems to be a steep drop-off from the most popular Originals and the typical Originals creator. Multiple creators have spoken out about how difficult it is to support themselves on what they earn from WEBTOON.
Here are 2 examples:
- Chase Keels and Miranda Mundt, authors of the WEBTOON Original LoveBot, published an open letter to WEBTOON saying they wanted more transparency over pay and highlighting that they couldn’t make a living from the platform.
[Creators] cannot pay rent, feed themselves, or handle their life’s responsibilities if they create less than 4 episodes per month. Nor can they get any other side jobs, because 40+ panels of work takes up too much time to allow for it.
- An anonymous Originals creator posted on Reddit saying that while they made $800 per episode, after paying assistants to help with the workload and factoring in unpaid meetings with editors, they were effectively earning just $5 an hour.
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So while the highest earners can pull in over a million a year, WEBTOON has not publicly disclosed what typical Originals creators earn. Based on creators' own accounts, many appear to be scraping by on something closer to minimum wage.
How much do WEBTOON Canvas creators earn?
Most creators on WEBTOON are Canvas creators, and they have 3 potential income streams:
- Ad revenue. WEBTOON has an ad revenue sharing program, but it isn’t available to everyone. Creators earn 50% of revenue from ads displayed on their series, and there are two types of ads they can opt into:
- Viewer Ads are static ads shown at the bottom of an episode. To qualify, a series needs at least 1,000 subscribers and 40,000 global monthly page views.
- Reward Ads are 15 to 30 second video ads that readers watch to unlock locked episodes. To qualify, a series needs at least 100,000 global monthly page views, and creators can lock up to three episodes behind Reward Ads at a time. WEBTOON says video ads can be worth 3 to 5 times more than viewer ads.
- SuperLikes (tipping). Launched in 2025, SuperLikes let readers tip creators on episodes they really like. One Canvas creator’s Reddit post describes it as a nice new revenue stream with a smoother user experience (readers don’t have to leave the platform to send creators money), but it brings in noticeably less than ads.
- Patreon. WEBTOON allows creators to link out to their Patreon. This might sound trivial, but for most Canvas creators, Patreon is their main (or only) source of income.
Since Canvas creators earn money mainly from the Ad Revenue Program and SuperLikes, their earnings are heavily reliant on page views. As a result, Canvas earnings vary wildly from creator to creator, and they can vary month to month even for the same creator.
Let’s look at some examples. In this video, Canvas creator Morishita goes over her earnings on WEBTOON Canvas. She had 500,000 page views, 23,000 subscribers, and 19 episodes published over one year (2020 to 2021). In her video, she says she made $80 from the Ad Revenue Program. Because creators can only collect funds once they hit $100, Morishita hadn’t actually been able to collect any of her earnings yet.
In another video, Canvas creator TambriArt shares her earnings month by month over the course of two years. On her comic Fairy Lantern, she had 2.2 million page views, 25,000 subscribers, and 83 episodes published over two years (2021 to 2023). Her total earnings for those two years: $824.
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It’s worth mentioning that ad revenue is inconsistent in two ways: how much you can make in a given month (since fewer page views means fewer payouts), and the monetary worth of each page view itself.
In May 2022, Tambri made $231 from 400,000 page views, which works out to $0.50 per 1,000 page views. But when she went over her 2023 earnings, she found something strange. In April 2023, she made $28 from 100,000 page views, or $0.28 per 1,000 page views. That’s a clearly different rate, with no explanation as to why.
This disparity isn’t unusual. Speaking in the Taddy Discord server, the author of Love and Hex reported similar fluctuations:
I’ve had months where there were around 30-40k views and ad revenue as low as $8.
Tapas
There are 5 main ways creators can earn money on Tapas:
- Ad revenue. Tapas’s ad system is open to creators with at least 100 subscribers on the platform. According to Tapas, creators get 70% of ad revenue and Tapas keeps 30%.
- Tipping. Readers can tip creators directly once a series hits 250 subscribers. However, just like WEBTOON, Tapas creators don’t get paid out until they’ve earned $25.
- Creator Bonus Program. This program is aimed at influencers (you need at least 30,000 followers/subscribers on another platform to qualify). You get paid based on monthly views, which supplements your income from Tapas Ads.
- Early Access. You can lock your newest episodes behind a paywall, where readers either pay with Ink (Tapas’s in-app currency) to read ahead or wait for the free release. To apply, a series needs 5,000+ subscribers on Tapas, a regular update schedule (at least twice a month), and a buffer of three unpublished episodes. One important note: Early Access episodes have to stay exclusive to Tapas while behind the paywall.
- Premium. There are still some Premium series that are exclusive to Tapas. To be considered, you first have to be on either Early Access or the Creator Bonus Program. Unlike Early Access, Premium puts the whole series behind a Wait-Until-Free (WUF) paywall, where users have to pay with Ink to unlock episodes immediately or wait 3 hours to 7 days to unlock the next episode for free (each series can set its own price and WUF time window).
How much do Tapas creators earn?
Tapas is harder to nail down as fewer creators have shared what they earn on the platform. As with WEBTOON, how much you make depends on how many views your comics gets.
That said, Morishita published a short comparing what she earned on Tapas versus WEBTOON. From 2014 to 2019, with 500,000 page views, her webtoon made her $273 on Tapas over those 5 years. The same comic on WEBTOON made her $80.
On the Tapas forum, other creators reported earning anywhere from $0 to $5 a month. One creator said they had managed to make $90 over three years across three webtoon series with 4,700 subscribers combined.
Patreon
If you are indie creator, you might be discouraged seeming those number from other indie creators on WEBTOON and Tapas, but its important to note that most indie webcomics creators earn the bulk of their money on Patreon (and not on any of the comic platforms).
Patreon isn’t a webcomic platform. It’s a membership platform where fans pay creators a monthly subscription fee in exchange for perks. For webcomic creators, those perks usually mean early access to episodes, bonus content, behind-the-scenes posts, high-res downloads, or Discord access.
The main benefits of Patreon are that it isn’t tied to any one specific platform, and it’s a more predictable source of monthly income. The downside is that you have to drive your own audience there, which is why most webcomic creators use platforms like WEBTOON Canvas or Tapas for discovery. Once you’ve built an audience, Patreon is a tool you can use to convert your most dedicated fans into paying supporters.
How much do creators earn on Patreon?
Although it isn’t a webcomics site, many creators use it to post bonus episodes (and even NSFW content) for patrons who pay a monthly fee.
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💸 “Patreon is the best way for indie comic creators to make money.” — Delfi Arts, interviewed on The Ugly Truth About Webtoon Platforms
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Patreon lets creators set up personalized tiers and earn a predictable subscription-based income. Just as importantly, it lets creators build a direct relationship with their audience, so if they ever leave a webtoon platform, they can carry their readership over to wherever they publish next. How much webtoon artists earn on Patreon varies depending on the size of their fanbase, but it can be a very lucrative resource.
Almost every big WEBTOON Canvas creator has a Patreon, earning anywhere from $4,000 a month (Idolomantises, author of Monsters and Girls) to $20,000 a month (PastaFlavour, author of Boy Girlfriend).
But can you make a lot of money from Patreon, even if you have fewer than 1 million views? Red & Flynn, authors of the webtoon Shiloh, have 172,976 views on WEBTOON and 3,676 followers. On Patreon, they have 1,369 paid members and earn over $6,000 per month. For comparison, that is 215x higher monthly earnings than Tambri got from WEBTOON’s Ad Revenue Program for her comic for a month with a similar amount of views!! That means, getting a superfan to pay a monthly subscription is a lot more valuable for indie creators than a viewer on any webcomics platform.
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One thing to keep in mind, its not easy to build your audience on Patreon, even if have WEBTOON views. For example, Peter Barton has 1.2 million views on WEBTOON for A Kat’s (GOD AWFUL!!!) Blessing, but on Patreon they have 100 patrons and earn $234 a month.
To get patrons, creators need a motivated fanbase that goes beyond their followers on WEBTOON. Looking at social media offers a clue: Red & Flynn have 55,000 followers across Instagram and Twitter showcasing they have built a fanbase outside of any one webtoon platform. Moreover, what you offer on Patreon makes a huge difference to your income, for instance: Early access to your latest episodes, sketches, and NSFW is what readers are willing to pay for.
Using Patreon + Inkverse for early access (Ad)
Patreon is by far the best way for independent webtoon creators to get paid for their comics, and Inkverse makes it easy to offer early access to your latest episodes, exclusively to your Patreon backers, without making them leave their comic reader.
All you need to do is create a Patreon account (if you haven’t already), add your account details to Taddy Ink, and then select how many of your newest episodes you want to make exclusive to your Patreon backers. These episodes will appear on Inkverse (our comic reader app) with a padlock that says “Patreon exclusive”. When readers click on them, they’ll be prompted to join your Patreon.
Not only does the Patreon integration on Inkverse let you get paid for your comic, it also means you don’t have to start from scratch in order to start earning. Readers reading your comic on Inkverse will see the benefit of subscribing to your Patreon for early access.
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Updated May 8th, 2026
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Additional Resources:
🧑🏾 Webtoon character creation worksheet
🖌️ Webtoon concept art worksheet
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