Rust Console Server Store Fees Explained: What Percentage Do You Actually Keep?

Why 5 percent is never what you actually pay

Here is the trap almost every owner falls into. A store platform advertises a headline rate, often around 5 percent, and you do the mental math assuming you keep the other 95. You do not. That advertised number is only the software fee, the platform's cut for running your store and delivering purchases. Every real-money sale also passes through a payment processor, and that processor charges its own separate fee on the same sale. Two fees, not one.

This is the correction owners keep discovering the hard way, usually when their first payout is smaller than the number they had in their head. It is not a mistake or a hidden charge, it is just how card payments work. The fix is not chasing a discount, it is understanding the two-layer fee stack and choosing a setup where both layers stay as small as possible, and where the money lands in an account you actually control.

One console note before the numbers, because it changes the whole picture. There are no add-ons to install on console, so the setup is refreshingly simple. The money side is a plain web checkout and the delivery side is a bot talking to your server over WebRCON. That actually simplifies your fees, because you can run the checkout on your own payment account instead of someone else's.

The two fees on every real-money sale

Fee one is the platform fee. This is the software's cut for hosting the store and handing the buyer their perk in game. It is usually quoted as a percentage, and on some systems a monthly fee or a minimum gets stacked on top for higher tiers. This is the number you see on the pricing page, and it is the one owners fixate on.

Fee two is the payment processor fee, and it is the one that gets forgotten. This is Stripe, PayPal, or a card gateway taking their slice for actually moving the money. Stripe's standard online rate is about 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per successful charge. PayPal sits in a similar range, roughly 3 to 3.5 percent plus a fixed fee of around 30 to 50 cents. This fee exists no matter which store platform you pick, because a card has to be processed by someone.

The thing to remember is that these two fees are separate and they add together. A store advertising 5 percent is really costing you that 5 percent plus roughly 3 percent plus a fixed per-sale fee, which is why your true take-home on a ten dollar sale is closer to 87 percent than 95. Watch for a third layer too: a flat monthly platform fee quietly raises your effective rate, and it hurts most on a small server that only sells a handful of VIPs a wipe.

Worked example: a ten dollar VIP, fee by fee

Take the most common product, a ten dollar VIP tier, and run it through two setups. Setup one is a middleman store on a 5 percent plan with PayPal doing the processing. The platform fee is 50 cents. PayPal takes about 84 cents, roughly 3.5 percent plus a 49 cent fixed fee. Total fees land around 1 dollar 34, so you keep about 8 dollars 66. That is roughly 87 percent of the sale, not the 95 the headline rate implied.

Setup two is a store that runs on your own Stripe account at a flat 3 percent with no monthly fee. The platform fee is 30 cents. Stripe takes about 59 cents, its standard 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. Total fees come to about 89 cents, so you keep about 9 dollars 11, roughly 91 percent. That is 45 cents more in your pocket on a single ten dollar sale, and you never touched your prices to get it.

Forty-five cents sounds trivial until you scale it to a real wipe. Sell forty VIPs across a peak wipe weekend and that gap is 18 dollars. Across a month of weekly wipes it comfortably covers your host bill, since G-Portal runs about 18 to 21 dollars per 30 days for up to 100 slots. The individual percentages are small. The compounding across a wipe cycle is what pays for the server.

The fee you cannot see: whose account holds your money

Percentages are only part of the cost. The bigger question is whose payment account your players are actually paying into. In a middleman model, the money lands in the platform's account first, the platform takes its cut, and then it pays you out on its own schedule. You do not own the Stripe or PayPal relationship, payouts can be delayed, and when a player disputes a charge you are often not the one handling the dispute.

The cleaner model routes every sale into your own payment account from the very first cent. You get paid on the processor's normal schedule instead of waiting on a third party, you own the chargeback and dispute process directly, and nobody sits between you and your own revenue. On console this is entirely doable, because the checkout is an ordinary web store and nothing extra has to be installed on your server.

This is exactly how a proper flat 3% real-money store is built. The payment lands on your own Stripe, and a bot reaches into the game over WebRCON to deliver the perk the moment the card clears. You keep the account, the customer relationship, and all but a small flat fee, instead of renting all three from a platform that skims the difference.

How to keep almost all of it on console

The console-real setup has two parts. First, a web store on your own payment processor, so payouts go straight to you. Second, a bot connected to your server over WebRCON that grants the purchase in game the instant the card clears. There are no add-ons to install on console, so delivery runs entirely over the same RCON channel your host already exposes. If the whole flow is new to you, the full walkthrough on how to take real-money donations on console covers it end to end.

Keep the platform fee flat and low, and make sure nothing is stacked on top of it monthly. Vantic's store is a flat 3 percent on your own Stripe with no monthly charge, so on that ten dollar VIP the platform takes 30 cents and the only other fee is Stripe's own card charge, which you would pay with any processor on earth. There is no middleman percentage and no minimum eating into a quiet week.

One rule protects all of this revenue, so treat it as non-negotiable. Sell only non-combat perks. Facepunch and the console community come down hard on pay-to-win, and an August 2025 rule bans granting paid DLC or skins to players who do not already own them. Stick to priority queue, cosmetic tags, extra teleport or home points, and non-combat convenience kits. If a perk wins gunfights, leave it out, because a delisted server earns zero no matter how low your fees are. The safe list is spelled out in the guide on what you can sell without getting delisted.

The genuinely zero-fee option built into console

There is one way to sell perks on Rust Console with no platform fee and no processor fee at all: the in-game Kit Vending Machine. It does not take real money, so a real-money fee simply cannot exist. It sells kits for a physical in-game currency item instead. Per the official RCE docs, a single machine shows up to seven kits, a server can hold around 128 kits total, each kit is priced as a currency item plus an amount, and you get stock, restock, and cooldown controls along with access tiers for Users, VIP, Mod, Admin, and Owner.

The smart play is to run both systems together. Real money on your web store buys VIP status at a low flat fee, and that VIP tier then unlocks better vending in game for your in-game currency. Build the loop around an in-game currency economy and players spend real cash for status while grinding currency for everything else. It keeps your economy alive, gives budget-conscious players a fee-free path to the same perks, and never once sells a combat edge.

Price your VIP so the fees never sting

Once you know the real fee on a sale, price around it instead of against it. A ten dollar VIP that keeps about nine dollars is a clean, honest number. A one or two dollar micro-purchase is where the fixed per-transaction fee hurts most, because a 30 to 50 cent flat fee is a huge slice of a tiny sale. If you want cheap items, bundle them so each transaction carries enough value to absorb that fixed fee comfortably.

Timing matters as much as pricing. Rust wipes reset the map weekly, often Thursday around 18:00 UTC, or every two weeks, and the first 24 to 48 hours after a wipe is peak population and peak spend. Have the store live and every VIP perk tested before the wipe, not after, price a tier that clearly pays for itself over a week, and promote it as the server fills back up. Low flat fees plus good timing is what turns a hobby server into one that quietly covers its own bill.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

the flat 3% real-money store · take real-money donations on console · what you can safely sell without getting delisted · set up your server store step by step · an in-game currency economy