Every week I get some version of the same message from a coach with a big email list: "I'm about to sign with Delphi. Before I do, can you tell me what they actually take off the top?" It's the right question. It's also a question that's surprisingly hard to get a straight answer to right now.

I've spent the last two years building the platform behind 150+ AI digital twins for coaches and experts, so I pay close attention to how competitors structure their money. Here's what the public record actually says about Delphi's fees, commission structure, and creator payouts as of today, October 26, 2026, and where I think you should push for answers in writing before you sign anything.

Does Delphi Take a Commission From Your Subscription Revenue?

The honest answer is: it's complicated, and right now it's not fully public.

Per Delphi's own Creator Terms, found at new.delphi.ai/terms-creator and checked October 26, 2026, monetization payments are governed by an individual Statement of Work rather than one published percentage that applies to every creator. That's a meaningful change from what used to be documented.

Historically, Delphi's own documentation at docs.delphi.ai stated a 15% platform fee on its old Builder and Scaler plans, meaning a creator kept roughly 85% of subscription revenue, with that rate reportedly negotiable on the old "Unlimited" tier. Some creators have mentioned rates as high as 20% on certain plans in anecdotal reports. I want to be clear that this reflects the previous plan structure, not a number you should assume applies to a contract you'd sign today.

Why does this matter so much? Because Delphi's public pricing itself just changed. I broke down the older Delphi pricing structure in detail here, but as of the current Premium plans page at delphi.co/premium/plans, checked October 26, 2026, the structure now looks like this:

  • Free: $0, to build and test a Delphi that lives on Delphi's own platform
  • Scaler: $5,000/year, roughly $416.67/month equivalent, which lets you put your Delphi on your own website or community, with 10 integrations, Pro Voice, 12 million training words, actions, and product recommendations
  • Scaler + API: $10,000/year, roughly $833.33/month equivalent, adding API access, SSO, a 60-day custom onboarding, 20 million training words, unlimited integrations, and priority support
  • Immortal: tailored, custom pricing, built for large audiences and white-glove service, and it's this tier that's associated with standalone monetization

A lot of pages still indexed online, some as recent as early October 2026, reference the older structure of $79/month for Builder and $299/month on annual billing for Scaler. That pricing has been replaced. If you're researching Delphi right now, you need to know you might be looking at outdated numbers, and the commission question gets harder to answer precisely because it's now tied to a custom Statement of Work rather than a single published rate card.

How Do Creators Actually Get Paid?

This is the part most creators don't ask about until after they've signed, and it's the part that affects your cash flow directly.

Historically, Delphi creates a Stripe Express connected account on your behalf. You cannot connect your own existing Stripe account. Your earnings dashboard inside Delphi shows total revenue, Delphi's fee, and upcoming payouts. Payments have been described as USD-only, and Delphi may require tax documentation like a W-9 before releasing payouts.

What's not publicly published anywhere I could find, as of October 26, 2026, is a universal payout schedule. Stripe Express supports multiple payout cadences, daily, weekly, or monthly, but which cadence you actually get depends on how Delphi has configured your account, not on anything stated in the Help Center. Stripe's own general guidance suggests a first payout lands roughly 7 days after your first successful payment and completed bank setup, sometimes longer. If you're planning cash flow around subscription income, that's a gap worth closing before you sign, not after.

There are other costs that aren't public either. Delphi doesn't publish per-message or per-voice-minute overage pricing anywhere outside your account dashboard. Add-ons like Pro Voice, an SMS number, or a "Built-For-You" setup exist, but their prices aren't listed publicly. Whether Stripe's own processing fees stack on top of Delphi's platform fee isn't documented. Neither is who eats the cost of a refund or chargeback. If you have a large list and expect real subscriber volume, every one of these is worth getting answered in writing.

Is There a Free Plan to Test It First?

Yes, and this part is genuinely useful. Delphi launched a free tier for signup on March 3, 2026 that lets you build and test a Delphi living on Delphi's own platform. US, UK, and Canada users have to complete identity verification to use it.

The honest caveat: the free plan is good for testing tone, accuracy, and how well it ingests your content. It does not let you test the actual monetized product, because native paid subscriptions aren't part of the public standard plans anymore. So you can see if the AI sounds like you, but you can't see what it's like to actually charge your audience and get paid until you're already on a paid tier with a custom Statement of Work behind it.

What This Looks Like on BuddyPro Instead

I think about this exact tradeoff every day running BuddyPro, because our model starts from a completely different premise: you keep 100% of the profit.

Here's the actual math. Experts on BuddyPro pay $197/month on annual billing, which comes out to $2,364/year, flat. There's no commission on subscription revenue, no revenue share, no Statement of Work negotiation for a different cut depending on your size or leverage. The only other cost is the real AI usage of your subscribers, typically $15-30/month per subscriber, which usually works out to around 20% of what you charge them. That leaves most experts running 75-85% profit margins on a product they price at $1,000-2,000/year.

If you're a business coach with a serious list, that math compounds fast. Top business coaching clients on BuddyPro generate $600K+ annually, with some exceeding $1M+, and those numbers reflect what happens when you keep 100% of the profit on a premium-priced product instead of handing a recurring cut of every subscription to a platform under terms that can change year to year.

There's no free trial on BuddyPro, and I'll say that plainly rather than oversell it. What you get instead is a self-serve build: you upload your books, courses, podcasts, and frameworks, everything you've got, and the AI trains itself within a couple hours. You review it, refine it, connect Stripe directly under your own account instead of a platform-controlled one, set your own price, and launch under your own brand with 24/7 access for your subscribers. No platform fee sitting between you and your own audience's trust. If you want the fuller picture of how experts monetize their expertise with an AI twin, that's the model it's built on.

What Should You Actually Ask Delphi Before You Sign?

If you're seriously evaluating Delphi, don't rely on anything you read online, including this article, for the exact commission number. Ask them directly, in writing, for the exact percentage fee named in your Statement of Work, the payout schedule tied to your account's Stripe Express setup, and whether Stripe's own processing fees are deducted before or after their cut is calculated. Ask whether that fee is locked for a term or can be renegotiated at renewal.

For a creator with a large list, the commission percentage matters more than the sticker price on the plan. A $5,000 or $10,000 annual platform fee is a fixed, known cost you can model. A revenue share on every subscriber you bring in for years is not fixed, it scales with your success, and right now it isn't published anywhere public. That's the number that determines whether your AI twin becomes a six or seven figure business or a product where a third party quietly keeps growing its cut of your audience's trust. Get it in writing before you build anything on top of it.

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If you want to talk more about Delphi's pricing and creator economics, or building a premium AI twin business, feel free to catch me on LinkedIn or wherever I'm at in the world at the moment you're reading this, which is usually San Francisco, Prague or Bali.

David Riha · AI Digital Twin Builder · October 26, 2026

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