What are the top creator economy startups by revenue today?

The ranking of top startups in the creator economy by revenue

Below is a table ranking all the companies in this market by their current revenue scale. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Creator Economy.

What actually counts as a creator economy startup today?

For this ranking, we count independent companies whose business depends heavily on helping people create, distribute or monetize digital content.

That covers creator monetization platforms such as Patreon and Fanvue, commerce businesses such as Whop and ShopMy, newsletter and community software such as Kit, beehiiv and Circle, and AI creation companies such as Higgsfield, Midjourney, Suno and Runway.

We exclude Meta, YouTube, Spotify, Snap, Pinterest, Reddit and Roblox from the startup ranking. They are useful benchmarks, but adding mature public platforms would turn the article into a ranking of the entire creator economy rather than startups and private scale-ups.

OnlyFans sits near the boundary. It is already a mature and highly profitable private business, yet creator monetization is still its core business. We keep it because leaving out the largest independent creator platform would make the ranking less useful, while treating it separately from younger venture-backed startups where necessary.

That definition produces a broader creator economy than the one people had in mind five years ago. AI video, voice, image and music tools now generate enough revenue to compete directly with the biggest membership, commerce and community platforms.

Which creator economy startups make the most revenue today?

OnlyFans is currently the biggest independent creator-economy business on strong recognized-revenue evidence, while Higgsfield leads the younger startup group on annualized revenue.

OnlyFans generated around $1.6 billion of revenue in its latest reported fiscal year. Higgsfield says it has reached $700 million in annualized revenue. ElevenLabs has crossed $500 million ARR, while Midjourney is commonly estimated around $500 million but does not provide equally strong public disclosure. Suno has reached $300 million ARR.

Fanvue, HeyGen and Runway have all moved into roughly the $200 million annualized-revenue range. Patreon and Whop come next among the better-known creator monetization platforms.

The ranking gets less precise below the companies that disclose their own numbers. Patreon, Whop, ShopMy, Circle, Linktree and several others depend partly or entirely on external estimates, so small gaps between them should not be taken too literally.

Rank	Company	Best current revenue figure	Metric	Evidence
1	OnlyFans	~$1.6B	Fiscal-year revenue	Reported company accounts
2	Higgsfield	~$700M	Annualized revenue	Company disclosed
3	ElevenLabs	>$500M	ARR	Company disclosed
4	Midjourney	~$500M	Estimated annual revenue	External estimate
5	Suno	$300M	ARR	CEO disclosed
6	Fanvue	>$200M	Annualized run-rate	Company disclosed
7	HeyGen	>$200M	ARR	Company disclosed
8	Runway	$200M	ARR	Co-founder disclosed
9	Patreon	~$179M	Estimated annual revenue	External estimate
10	Whop	~$142M	Annualized revenue estimate	External estimate
11	ShopMy	~$80M	Estimated annual revenue	External estimate
12	Circle	~$68M	ARR estimate	External estimate
13	Linktree	~$55.5M	Estimated annual revenue	Older external estimate
14	Descript	~$55M	ARR estimate	External estimate
15	Kit	>$50M	ARR	Founder disclosed
16	VEED	~$50M	ARR estimate	External estimate
17	Substack	~$45M	Annualized revenue estimate	External estimate
18	Stan	~$35M	ARR estimate	External estimate
19	beehiiv	~$32M	Annualized revenue	CEO disclosed
20	Mirage / Captions	~$28M	TTM in-app revenue	App-market estimate

Is OnlyFans still the biggest private creator platform?

Yes. OnlyFans is still far ahead of every independent creator monetization company we found on actual annual revenue.

Fenix International, the company behind OnlyFans, generated about $1.6 billion in revenue in its latest reported fiscal year, according to financial reporting based on its company accounts. Revenue rose roughly 10%, while pre-tax profit reached about $715 million.

The marketplace operating underneath that revenue number is much larger. OnlyFans paid creators approximately $6.2 billion during the year, taking cumulative creator payouts since launch to around $30 billion.

Corporate revenue and creator payouts have to stay separate here. The $6.2 billion shows how much money moved to creators, while the roughly $1.6 billion figure represents the company's own top line.

Even Fanvue's current $200 million-plus run-rate is only a fraction of OnlyFans' scale.

Is Higgsfield really making $700 million a year already?

Higgsfield currently reports about $700 million in annualized revenue, making it the biggest younger creator-focused startup we found by current revenue run-rate.

The company announced the figure alongside a $400 million Series B financing at a $5.4 billion valuation. Higgsfield said the annualized number was based on its most recent four weeks of revenue.

A four-week annualization can move much faster than full-year recognized revenue, especially at a company growing this quickly. We therefore rank Higgsfield very high without treating its $700 million figure as equivalent to OnlyFans' $1.6 billion fiscal-year revenue.

The growth is remarkable. Higgsfield says annualized revenue was around $20 million about a year earlier, implying roughly 35-fold expansion.

Higgsfield also says it now has more than 30 million users and works with 390 of the Fortune 500. Its customer base increasingly includes brands, agencies and large companies alongside individual creators.

So the $700 million figure is credible as the company's current run-rate claim. We'd still want a longer operating period before treating that level as firmly established annual revenue.

Is ElevenLabs really a creator economy company anymore?

ElevenLabs still belongs in the creator economy, although enterprise voice AI now drives a much bigger part of the business.

ElevenLabs announced that ARR had passed $500 million after ending the previous year at $350 million. The company said enterprise deployments of voice agents across customer service, sales, hiring and marketing were driving the latest growth.

Creative work remains central to the product. ElevenLabs is heavily used for voiceovers, dubbing, audio production, media localization and other creator workflows.

But the customer mix has moved well beyond creators. Businesses increasingly use ElevenLabs as voice infrastructure.

We keep it in the broad ranking because creators and media production were fundamental to the company's rise and remain substantial use cases. In a narrower ranking limited to platforms that help creators monetize audiences, ElevenLabs would fall outside the category.

Does Midjourney really make around $500 million a year?

Midjourney probably sits near the top of the creator-startup market, but we have much less confidence in the exact $500 million figure than we do in ElevenLabs' ARR.

Recent private-market estimates place Midjourney around $500 million in annual revenue, following several hundred million dollars of estimated revenue in earlier years.

Midjourney built one of the world's largest paid generative-image products, stayed independent and developed a huge subscription business with a very small organization.

The precise number is harder to pin down because Midjourney does not publish detailed financial statements or regularly announce ARR milestones.

That weaker evidence is enough for us to keep ElevenLabs ahead even though the headline figures look similar.

If Midjourney eventually confirms revenue around this level, it would reinforce something already visible across the ranking: consumer creative AI can reach the scale of mature creator platforms astonishingly quickly.

How big has Suno become?

Suno has reached $300 million ARR with two million paying subscribers, putting AI music firmly into the top tier of creator startups.

CEO Mikey Shulman disclosed both figures after Suno had been publicly available for roughly two years. He also said more than 100 million people had used the platform.

A few months earlier, Suno's annual revenue had been reported around $200 million. Reaching $300 million ARR so soon afterward shows how quickly paid adoption has moved.

The customer behavior is also different from the old creator-software model. Many Suno subscribers are ordinary people making songs for themselves rather than professional musicians running a creator business.

AI tools are increasing the number of people who create content at all. That expands the potential market well beyond professional creators willing to buy editing, publishing or monetization software.

Are HeyGen and Runway already $200 million businesses?

Yes. HeyGen has crossed $200 million ARR, while Runway has also reached about $200 million ARR after doubling within a few months.

HeyGen announced that it had passed $200 million ARR after roughly doubling in eight months. The company also reported more than 30 million users and customers across 196 countries, including adoption across 85% of the Fortune 100.

Runway subsequently reached $200 million ARR after being around $100 million earlier in the year. Co-founder Anastasis Germanidis disclosed the new milestone while discussing the company's expansion from creative video toward broader world models and robotics.

Both companies started with products that felt strongly creator-oriented. Their revenue mix now reaches marketing teams, enterprises, developers and large production workflows.

That gives AI creator companies a growth path traditional creator SaaS often lacks: the same creative product can move from individual subscriptions into enterprise budgets without abandoning its original users.

Is Fanvue actually catching OnlyFans?

Fanvue has become a serious creator monetization company, but it is still nowhere near OnlyFans in total company revenue.

Fanvue currently advertises more than $200 million in annualized run-rate, around 325,000 creators and 17 million monthly active users. The company has also reported roughly 450% year-over-year revenue growth.

Those numbers put Fanvue ahead of most younger creator monetization platforms on current reported scale.

OnlyFans remains roughly eight times larger if we compare Fanvue's $200 million-plus annualized figure with OnlyFans' latest $1.6 billion fiscal-year revenue, before even adjusting for the difference between a run-rate and recognized annual revenue.

The gap is huge today. Fanvue has still reached a level where it belongs in the same conversation as Patreon and Whop rather than in a long tail of small OnlyFans alternatives.

Is Patreon still one of the biggest creator startups?

Patreon remains one of the largest traditional creator platforms, although several AI creation startups have already grown past it.

The best current external estimate puts Patreon around $179 million of revenue, up from roughly $140 million the year before.

That is still much larger than most community, newsletter and creator SaaS companies. Circle is estimated around $68 million ARR, Kit has crossed $50 million ARR, Substack is around $45 million annualized revenue and beehiiv has disclosed $32 million annualized revenue.

Patreon's position looks very different once Higgsfield, ElevenLabs, Midjourney and Suno enter the comparison. All four now sit hundreds of millions of dollars higher on their current reported or estimated revenue measures.

Patreon is still a giant within creator monetization. The broader creator-tools market has simply grown around it.

Has Whop become bigger than most older creator platforms?

Whop has grown into one of the biggest young creator-commerce companies, with estimated annualized revenue around $142 million.

That estimate is up from about $56 million at the end of the previous year, meaning Whop more than doubled within roughly a year.

Its marketplace has expanded quickly as well. Whop has processed billions of dollars of cumulative GMV and built a large base of sellers offering communities, digital products, software, memberships and other online products.

Whop's structure gives it more ways to make money than a simple storefront subscription. It participates in payments, marketplace discovery, apps and transaction flows while also serving merchants directly.

That combination has pushed Whop well above businesses such as Substack, Stan, beehiiv and most creator SaaS companies on current estimated revenue.

Patreon is still larger on the best available estimate, although the gap is now relatively small.

Which creator-commerce startups are making more than $50 million?

Patreon, Whop, ShopMy, Circle, Linktree and Kit all appear to have crossed the $50 million level, but they reach that revenue in very different ways.

Patreon earns from creator memberships. Whop combines marketplace economics, payments and digital commerce. ShopMy earns from brand subscriptions and transactions linked to creator-driven shopping. Circle sells community software. Kit sells email and marketing software. Linktree monetizes a huge free audience through paid plans and adjacent services.

Those differences become important when we look at how quickly each company can scale with creator activity.

Company	Current revenue evidence	Main business model
Patreon	~$179M revenue estimate	Membership platform
Whop	~$142M annualized revenue estimate	Marketplace, payments and digital products
ShopMy	~$80M revenue estimate	Affiliate commerce and brand subscriptions
Circle	~$68M ARR estimate	Community software
Linktree	~$55.5M revenue estimate	Link-in-bio and creator tools
Kit	>$50M ARR	Email and creator marketing software
VEED	~$50M ARR estimate	Video creation software

How big is ShopMy now?

ShopMy has quietly become one of the largest dedicated creator-commerce startups, with estimated revenue around $80 million.

The estimate has ShopMy rising from roughly $27 million the previous year, which would mean revenue nearly tripled.

ShopMy combines subscription revenue from brands with transaction revenue when creator recommendations lead to purchases. That model lets the company benefit directly when commerce generated through creators increases.

The platform also says it works with a large network of creators and brand partners, while annual commerce flowing through the ecosystem has moved into billion-dollar territory.

Among companies built specifically around affiliate creators and product recommendations, ShopMy now sits much closer to Whop and Patreon than to the smaller creator-tool market.

How big are Circle and Kit today?

Circle and Kit have both crossed roughly $50 million of recurring revenue, which puts them near the top of creator-focused SaaS.

Circle is currently estimated around $68 million ARR, up from roughly $55 million at the end of the previous year. Its product has expanded from community hosting into courses, events, payments, websites, email and AI features.

Kit founder Nathan Barry has directly said the email platform passed $50 million ARR.

The business models are more straightforward than marketplace companies such as Patreon or Whop. Both mainly sell software subscriptions, so revenue depends more directly on paying customers and account expansion.

For creator SaaS, $50 million ARR remains a substantial milestone. Most products in the category never get close.

Are Linktree, Descript and VEED still among the biggest creator tools?

Linktree, Descript and VEED are still sizable creator-software businesses, although the available revenue evidence is uneven.

Linktree's best public estimate is around $55.5 million of annual revenue for an older operating period. Descript is estimated around $55 million ARR, while VEED is estimated around $50 million ARR more recently.

We would avoid drawing much from the tiny differences between those numbers. They come from estimates, cover different periods and measure slightly different things.

All three have nevertheless reached roughly the $50 million scale.

Descript and VEED increasingly sell AI-powered production to business teams, while Linktree has been broadening from a simple bio link into commerce and monetization. That movement upmarket is showing up across much of the creator economy these days.

Is Substack still bigger than beehiiv?

Substack still appears larger than beehiiv by company revenue, although the gap is much smaller than their difference in public profile might suggest.

Substack is estimated around $45 million in annualized revenue. beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk disclosed $32 million in annualized revenue late last year.

That puts Substack roughly 40% ahead on the available figures.

Their models are different enough that revenue alone does not tell the whole story. Substack takes a percentage of paid subscriptions, while beehiiv relies more heavily on SaaS subscriptions and has built advertising and monetization products around them.

beehiiv has grown unusually quickly for a newsletter-software company. The business reached $32 million of annualized revenue only four years after launch.

Substack still leads today, but the comparison is much closer than many readers would probably expect.

Is Stan still one of the leading creator storefront startups?

Stan remains one of the larger creator storefront companies, but Whop has already moved several revenue tiers above it.

Current estimates put Stan around $35 million ARR, compared with approximately $142 million of annualized revenue for Whop.

Their products solve a similar basic problem in different ways. Stan gives creators a storefront where they can sell products to audiences they already have. Whop has added a much stronger marketplace and discovery layer around merchants, communities, apps and payments.

That lets Whop benefit from demand generated inside its own ecosystem instead of relying almost entirely on each creator bringing traffic.

Stan still stands out for building a substantial business with relatively little outside capital. By pure revenue scale, though, Whop is now roughly four times larger on the available estimates.

Which influencer-marketing companies make the most revenue?

The biggest influencer-marketing businesses can generate well over $100 million, but agencies and service groups should not be compared blindly with software startups.

ONE Group, built around businesses including YKONE, MIRROR MIRROR and BarCode, has disclosed group revenue around €150 million. Studio71's U.S. business was reported around €246 million before becoming part of Fixated.

Those figures are large because agency and media businesses recognize substantial service revenue. Their margins and economics look very different from a subscription software company such as Kit or Circle.

Enterprise software providers such as CreatorIQ also operate at considerable scale.

We therefore keep agencies and influencer-service businesses in the market picture without using their gross revenue to crowd out software and marketplace companies whose economics are fundamentally different.

Have AI creator tools already become bigger than traditional creator platforms?

Yes. AI creation startups now occupy most of the highest revenue positions among younger creator-economy companies.

Higgsfield is at a $700 million annualized run-rate, ElevenLabs has crossed $500 million ARR, Suno has reached $300 million ARR, and HeyGen and Runway are already around $200 million.

Traditional creator platforms generally sit lower. Patreon is estimated around $179 million, Whop around $142 million annualized revenue, ShopMy around $80 million and Circle around $68 million ARR.

The speed is the striking part. Patreon was founded in 2013. Kit also dates back to 2013. Substack launched in 2017. Circle began in 2020.

Several of the AI companies reached comparable or larger revenue in only a few years.

AI creation company	Current revenue evidence	Traditional creator company	Current revenue evidence
Higgsfield	~$700M annualized	Patreon	~$179M revenue estimate
ElevenLabs	>$500M ARR	Whop	~$142M annualized estimate
Midjourney	~$500M revenue estimate	ShopMy	~$80M revenue estimate
Suno	$300M ARR	Circle	~$68M ARR estimate
HeyGen	>$200M ARR	Kit	>$50M ARR
Runway	$200M ARR	Substack	~$45M annualized estimate
-	-	beehiiv	~$32M annualized

Does LTK's $6 billion in annual sales make it bigger than OnlyFans?

No. LTK's billions of dollars in annual merchandise sales measure shopping activity generated through its ecosystem, not LTK's own company revenue.

This distinction affects a lot of creator-economy rankings.

Affiliate platforms and marketplaces often publish GMV, merchandise sales, creator earnings or payment volume because those numbers show how much economic activity passes through the platform. The company keeps only part of that amount.

A business facilitating $6 billion of retailer sales could generate vastly different revenue depending on commissions, advertising, subscription fees and the mix of transactions.

We therefore cannot place LTK above companies with actual disclosed company revenue simply because the commerce flowing through LTK is much larger.

The same rule applies to Hotmart, Later, FanBasis and other companies whose strongest public figures measure marketplace volume rather than corporate revenue.

Why aren't Hotmart, Later and Kajabi ranked higher?

Hotmart, Later and Kajabi are clearly substantial creator businesses, but their strongest public numbers do not give us a clean current company-revenue comparison.

Hotmart has reported more than $10 billion of cumulative GMV. Later has disclosed more than $2.4 billion in annual GMV run-rate. Those figures show large commercial ecosystems, yet neither tells us directly how much revenue the company itself keeps.

Kajabi has the opposite problem. The company crossed $100 million ARR years ago, which proves it had already reached serious scale. The older disclosure does not tell us precisely where Kajabi belongs today.

Putting any of these companies at an exact position would create more precision than the evidence supports.

We would rather leave a large company unranked than invent an apparently clean number from GMV, an old disclosure or assumed take rates.

Which creator startups have the strongest revenue evidence?

OnlyFans has the strongest large-company evidence in the ranking, while ElevenLabs, Suno, HeyGen, Runway, Fanvue, Higgsfield, Kit and beehiiv all provide useful direct disclosures of current scale.

OnlyFans' number comes from company accounts and represents recognized fiscal-year revenue. That gives it a different level of reliability from ARR or a short-period annualized run-rate.

ElevenLabs directly disclosed more than $500 million ARR. Suno's CEO disclosed $300 million ARR and two million paying subscribers. HeyGen announced more than $200 million ARR. Runway's co-founder disclosed $200 million ARR. Fanvue publishes its $200 million-plus run-rate. Kit's founder has discussed crossing $50 million ARR, and beehiiv's CEO has disclosed $32 million of annualized revenue.

Higgsfield also disclosed its $700 million annualized figure directly, though the company says it is based on its most recent four weeks. We therefore have high confidence that Higgsfield reported the number and less confidence that $700 million represents a stable full-year revenue base.

The middle of the ranking is murkier because Patreon, Whop, ShopMy, Circle, Linktree, Descript, VEED, Substack and Stan rely partly or entirely on third-party estimates.

Which creator-economy revenue figures should we trust the least?

Midjourney's roughly $500 million estimate is the biggest number in the ranking that we would treat cautiously, while several smaller private-company estimates also carry plenty of uncertainty.

There is strong evidence that Midjourney has built a very large subscription business. The problem is precision. The company does not publish the kind of current ARR disclosure available from ElevenLabs, Suno or HeyGen.

We use the ~$500 million estimate because it is the best current evidence in the research, while keeping its weaker source quality visible.

The same caution applies to narrow gaps lower in the ranking. Patreon at roughly $179 million versus Whop at $142 million is directionally useful. Linktree at $55.5 million versus Descript at $55 million tells us almost nothing about which company is actually larger today.

Once figures come from different estimates, periods and metrics, rankings are better read in bands than as a horse race decided by the last million dollars.

What does the creator startup ranking look like without AI companies?

Without generative-AI companies, OnlyFans dominates the creator economy, followed by Fanvue, Patreon and Whop.

OnlyFans sits around $1.6 billion of annual revenue. Fanvue reports more than $200 million in annualized run-rate. Patreon is estimated around $179 million of revenue, while Whop is estimated around $142 million annualized.

ShopMy follows around $80 million, then Circle around $68 million ARR. Linktree, Kit and several creator-software companies sit around the $50 million range.

This narrower definition probably matches what many people instinctively mean when they hear "creator economy": platforms that help creators build audiences, sell products, run memberships, earn commissions or operate online businesses.

It also makes the contrast with AI clearer. Once generative creation tools enter the category, most of these familiar creator companies fall several places.

What are the top creator economy startups by revenue today?

OnlyFans is currently the biggest independent creator-economy company on recognized revenue, while Higgsfield leads the younger startup cohort on annualized revenue.

OnlyFans generated roughly $1.6 billion in its latest fiscal year, giving it a large lead over the rest of the independent creator market.

Among younger companies, Higgsfield reports about $700 million in annualized revenue. ElevenLabs has crossed $500 million ARR, while Midjourney appears to be in roughly the same broad revenue band on weaker external estimates. Suno follows at $300 million ARR.

Fanvue, HeyGen and Runway now sit around the $200 million level. Patreon and Whop lead the next group of more traditional creator platforms.

If we narrow the ranking to companies directly helping creators monetize audiences, Fanvue, Patreon and Whop become the clearest leaders below OnlyFans, followed by ShopMy, Circle, Kit and other creator SaaS companies.

The biggest shift is already visible. Creator-economy revenue used to be concentrated in memberships, advertising, newsletters, commerce and audience tools. Today, several of the fastest-growing companies make money much earlier in the process: they sell the ability to create the content itself.

That change has rewritten the top of the ranking faster than the older creator platforms have grown.