In 2025, Russians began to support content creators more often through donations, preferring one-time transfers to regular subscriptions. According to Yota analysts, traffic to donation services has tripled, while platforms with a subscription model have seen only 4% growth. Also, Russians began to spend 40% less time on subscription platforms.
One striking example is the DonationAlerts service, whose audience has almost tripled since the beginning of the year. In contrast, Boosty's attendance decreased by 11%, and Patreon lost about 50% of traffic.
Donation services provide authors, mainly streamers, with the opportunity to receive voluntary donations from viewers during broadcasts, while subscription platforms provide access to exclusive content on a regular basis.
The most active users of donation services remain young people aged 14 to 20 years — their activity has increased by 120%. However, interest in such platforms is also growing among older groups: traffic among users aged 21-25 years increased by 43%, and among the audience aged 26-35 years — by 65%.
Men make up the majority of users: their share reaches 65% on donation platforms and 62% on subscription services. The most active regions for donations are Khimki, Orenburg, Kaluga, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk, while subscription platforms are more popular in Novokuznetsk, Yoshkar-Ola and Kaliningrad.
