The Free tier covers 100 patron events a month, no card on file. Here is the complete list of what counts toward that number, where your live count lives, and what happens when you cross it.
What "an event" means
An event is one change to a member's status on Patreon. When Patreon tells us a member moved, your count ticks by one — no matter which of the four sequences fires.
The five things that count
- A new patron joins. Free follower upgrades to paid, or a fresh
paid pledge.
Fires
free_to_paidoronboardingdepending on which. - An existing patron upgrades. A $5 patron moves to $10.
Fires
onboardingagainst the new tier. - A patron cancels. Pledge dropped mid-cycle.
Fires
winback_cancel(after a 3-day cool-off). - A card declines. Renewal charge fails.
Fires
winback_denied(after a 2-day cool-off — most cards self-heal in that window). - A refund posts. Patreon issues a refund on a recent charge. Treated the same as a cancel for sequence purposes.
Five categories. One count per update. That is the whole list.
What does NOT count
- A patron opening or clicking one of your sequence emails — that signal lives in your email tool, not on Patreon, and we never see it.
- A patron logging into Patreon. Patreon does not tell us, and it would not be a lifecycle moment if it did.
- A post you publish. That goes through Patreon's own feed and never touches FanConvert.
If you read "100 events" and pictured every open and click, the math sounds tight. It isn't — only the five lifecycle moments above pull against the cap.
Where your live counter lives
The Usage page in your dashboard shows three numbers, updated in real time:
- Events received this month — every counted Patreon update since the 1st.
- Monthly quota — 100 on Free, 3,000 on Early Bird and Standard.
- Remaining — quota minus received, never negative.
A colored bar runs under the number: green under 60 %, amber to 90 %, rose above. The page also shows when the counter resets — first second of the next calendar month, in your local timezone.
All four sequences run on Free
A common worry: "If I'm on Free, do I only get one or two sequences?"
No. The 100-event cap is a count, not a feature gate. All four —
free_to_paid, onboarding, winback_cancel, winback_denied —
run from day one, on Free and on every paid plan.
What happens when you cross 100
The sequences pause for the rest of the month and pick up on the 1st. Nothing is lost, no setup is undone. But every patron who hit a lifecycle moment during the gap will not hear from you.
Rough sizing for your campaign:
- ~100 active patrons → comfortable on Free, room to spare.
- ~300 active patrons → expect to hit the cap mid-month.
- ~1,000 active patrons → Free covers roughly the first three days.
For context, Backlinko's 2026 Patreon report counts 286,287 creators with at least one paying member on the platform, and the typical campaign size sits well under 1,000. If you're in that band, Free is a real plan, not a teaser. If you're past 300 patrons and you want every cancel and decline to get a real email, the paid tiers step up cleanly:
- Early Bird — $29 / month (recommended, limited seats). 3,000 membership moments per month, price-locked for the life of your subscription. Once seats fill, the tier retires permanently.
- Standard — $39 / month. Same 3,000 membership moments, no seat cap, always available.
- Pro — $59 / month. Up to 6,000 membership moments per month, plus founder-direct support — for campaigns past ~2,000 active patrons.
(The dashboard's Usage page labels these the same number you see above as "Events received this month" — "events" and "membership moments" are the same thing; the Patreon page reads better, the dashboard reads tighter.)
Two small gotchas
- Refunds count once. A patron who pays and is refunded registers one charge event + one refund event — two of your 100, not a round trip.
- Duplicate updates don't double-count. Patreon occasionally sends the same member moment twice within a few seconds. We deduplicate before counting.
— The FanConvert team. Start free, no card, at patreon.com/fanconvert.