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Ko-fi Zapier integrationAutomate Ko-fi with Zapier.

The Ko-fi Zapier integration gives you 1 trigger, 0 actions and 0 searches. One door in: every time a supporter pays you on Ko-fi, Zapier hears about it at once and can hand the news to the rest of your tools, from a sheet to an inbox.

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Overview

What the Ko-fi Zapier integration really does

The Ko-fi Zapier integration is a listener. Ko-fi is where creators collect support from the people who like their work, and Zapier is the service that links apps together. Here, Ko-fi can only start things: it tells Zapier that money came in, and you decide which other app reacts.

Everything hangs on a single operation, New Payment. It covers a one-off donation, a membership subscription, a commission and a shop order. Three results people usually build from it:

A supporter ledger that fills itself. Each payment lands as a new row in a spreadsheet, so you stop copying names from the Ko-fi dashboard by hand. A thank-you that does not depend on your memory. The payment starts an email or a message in your community tool, sent as soon as the payment comes in. A heads-up for commissions. When someone orders custom art, a card appears in your task board, so the request does not sit in a notification you swiped away.

Now the part the app page does not spell out. Zapier cannot write anything into Ko-fi. No action creates a post, a shop item or a goal, and no search looks up an older supporter. If your plan needs Ko-fi to change, this integration is the wrong tool. It also ignores everything that happened before your Zap went live (more on that below).

If you are weighing platforms, the same app has a Ko-fi Make integration page, and the Make vs Zapier comparison lays out the criteria side by side.

Vocabulary

Zapier words in one minute

Seven words come back on this page. Here is each one in plain English, once.

Zap
The automation you set up in Zapier: one starting event, then one or more steps that run each time that event happens.
Trigger
The event in an app that sets the Zap off. Once the Zap is switched on, Zapier sits and waits for it.
Action
What the Zap does after it starts: the step that writes, sends or moves something on your behalf, in another app here.
Task
What Zapier bills you for: one action that completes successfully. The number on your plan counts those, nothing else.
Polling vs instant
A polling trigger is checked on a timer. An instant trigger is pushed by the app itself the moment it happens. Ko-fi's is instant.
Filter
A step that lets the Zap carry on only when the incoming data matches a rule you set, and stops it quietly otherwise.
Connection
Your Ko-fi account linked to Zapier one time, then reused by every Zap that needs it, without signing in again.
Cost

What a Ko-fi Zap costs you

Short version: a supporter paying you is free to detect. You pay for what happens next.

  • TriggerFree, never counted
  • Each successful action1 task
  • Free plan100 tasks a month, 2-step Zaps
  • Ko-fi on the free planYes, it is not a paid-only app

The New Payment trigger never uses a task, however many supporters show up. Each action that succeeds afterwards counts as one task, and a failed action is not counted. Ko-fi is open to the free plan, which gives you 100 tasks a month and unlimited Zaps. The catch: a free Zap stops at two steps, one trigger and one action. Keeping only shop orders needs no filter: the trigger's own settings handle that. A second action, or a filter on some other condition, makes it a multi-step Zap that needs a paid plan. The polling grid below does not slow this trigger down, because it is instant.

Connect

Connect your Ko-fi page to Zapier

  1. 01

    Open your connected apps

    In your Zapier account, go to the Apps page and click + Add connection. You need a Ko-fi account of your own first; Zapier cannot create one for you.

  2. 02

    Pick Ko-fi in the list

    Type Ko-fi in the search box of the dialog, select it, then click Add connection. A new browser tab opens on the Ko-fi side, where the sign-in happens next.

  3. 03

    Sign in and allow access

    Log in to Ko-fi in that tab and grant Zapier access to the account. The connection then shows up in your list, ready for any Zap that starts with a Ko-fi payment.

First Zap

Your first Ko-fi Zap: log every supporter in a sheet

GoalEach Ko-fi payment becomes a row in a Google Sheets ledger, without touching the dashboard.

  1. 01

    Start a new Zap

    Create a Zap and choose Ko-fi as the app that starts it, with New Payment as the event. Pick the Ko-fi connection you added earlier.

  2. 02

    Test the trigger

    Run the test. Zapier brings back the three most recent payments on your account, so you can map fields from a real supporter rather than an empty example.

  3. 03

    Add the spreadsheet step

    Add the action in your sheet app and map what Ko-fi sent into your columns. Only do this once per column; every later payment follows the same mapping.

  4. 04

    Test the action

    Run the action once and open the sheet. If the row looks right, you are done. If it does not, fix the mapping now, before real money starts flowing through.

  5. 05

    Publish

    Click Publish to switch the Zap on. From this point, each new payment lands in the sheet within moments, and each row costs one task.

Triggers

The Ko-fi trigger

1 event starts a Zap when something happens in Ko-fi, and one of them is instant: the app calls Zapier straight away, whatever your plan.

1

New Payment

Instant trigger

In Zapier“Triggers when someone supports you on Ko-fi with a donation, membership subscription, commission or shop order.”

Fires whenever a supporter pays you on Ko-fi, whether it is a tip, a membership, a commission or something bought in your shop. One trigger covers all four, so a single Zap can catch every payment that comes in.

How it fires
the app tells Zapier the moment it happens, so the Zap starts right away, whatever your plan
When to use it
a podcaster who wants each new member welcomed in their community tool while the excitement is still fresh.
Watch out
to catch only one kind, use the trigger's optional settings, such as Would you like to include commission payments? instead of a filter. A filter only earns its place for a condition those settings do not cover, and makes the Zap multi-step.
When it breaks

When a Ko-fi Zap breaks

Zapier lists no help article and no specific limit for Ko-fi. What goes wrong here comes from how Zaps behave in general.

Four situations are worth knowing before your first Zap goes live, so you recognise them when they happen. When one does hit, the Zapier troubleshooting page walks through the fixes.

  • Old supporters never show up

    The Zap only reacts to payments made after it goes live. Your existing supporter list stays in Ko-fi, and bringing it over is a separate job.

  • The Zap keeps setting itself off

    If a Zap writes back into the very place its trigger watches, it starts again and again and burns through your task count fast. Keep the output elsewhere.

  • A sudden rush gets held back

    When a trigger returns a big batch at once, Zapier's flood protection can pause it. A launch day with many orders in a burst is the case to watch.

  • The free plan stops at two steps

    A second action, or a filter on a condition the trigger settings do not cover, turns the Zap multi-step. Sorting by payment type is not one of those cases.
Need help

Need help automating Ko-fi with Zapier?

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FAQ

Ko-fi Zapier integration: common questions

01Is the Ko-fi Zapier integration free?
Yes. Ko-fi is not one of the apps Zapier keeps for paid plans, so it works on the free plan. That plan gives you 100 tasks a month and lets you build as many Zaps as you like, as long as each one has just two steps: the Ko-fi trigger and one action in another app. Once you need a filter or a second action, the Zap becomes multi-step and a paid plan is required. No price is quoted here because the grids change often; check the current plan table on zapier.com before deciding.
02How many tasks does a Ko-fi Zap use?
One per successful action, per payment. The New Payment trigger itself is never counted, and neither is the waiting. So a Zap that adds a sheet row for each supporter uses one task per supporter. A Zap that adds a row and then sends an email uses two. If an action fails, it is not counted against your plan. Watching Ko-fi for new payments costs nothing either: only an action that completes is billed, so a quiet month costs you nothing at all.
03Does the Ko-fi trigger work in real time?
Yes. New Payment is an instant trigger: Ko-fi tells Zapier the moment the payment happens, so the Zap starts right away. The 15 minute delay that applies to polling triggers on the free plan does not apply here, and paying for a faster plan changes nothing for this trigger. In the editor, a Zap built on an instant trigger carries a lightning bolt, which is a quick way to confirm it. The only wait you will see is the time your action app takes to do its part.
04What does it take to connect Ko-fi to Zapier?
A Ko-fi account and a Zapier account, nothing else. In Zapier, open the Apps page, click + Add connection, search for Ko-fi, then sign in to Ko-fi in the tab that opens and grant access. If the page you want to watch belongs to someone else, you also need the right level of access on it. The connection is stored once and reused by every Zap that starts with a Ko-fi payment, so you do not repeat these steps for each new automation.
05Can a Zap react only to shop orders or only to memberships?
Yes, and on the free plan. New Payment covers donations, memberships, commissions and shop orders, but the trigger carries five optional settings, one per kind, such as “Would you like to include subscription payments?”. Say yes only to the kinds you want and the Zap stays at two steps, with no filter. The two shop settings are not twins: one keeps only items listed free that the supporter got for nothing, the other also lets through free-listed items where the supporter chose to pay something. A filter is only worth adding for a condition these settings do not cover, and that makes the Zap multi-step.
06What if the Ko-fi operation you want is not there?
Then Zapier cannot do it for Ko-fi today. The integration offers one trigger and no action or search, so creating a post, updating a goal or looking up an older supporter is out of reach from a Zap. The workable route is to treat Ko-fi as the starting point only and let every change happen in the other apps of the Zap. If the missing piece is on the Ko-fi side, the app's own settings are the only place to handle it, outside Zapier.
07Zapier, Make or n8n for Ko-fi?
It depends on what matters most to you, not on a winner. If you want the shortest setup with an instant trigger on a free plan, Zapier covers that with New Payment. If you need branching logic per payment type without paying for multi-step Zaps, compare how each platform prices extra steps. If you want to host the automation yourself, that criterion points away from Zapier. The side-by-side comparison pages on this site go through those criteria in detail.
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