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01 · How we make money
Disclosure.
Last updated: 26 August 2026 · Also listed from /legal
That last sentence is the uncomfortable one, and I would rather say it here than have someone else point it out. Here is the rest of it, plainly.
What we’re paid
On a $70 entry, the host fee I set is 5% of the stake: $3.50. We pay Steppa $25 to list each public challenge, so an edition has to draw a prize pool of about $500 (about eight people at $70) before we make anything at all. Most community challenges on the platform never reach that, which is why most of them run once and stop. The processing fee is always “shown in app.” The 5% is the rate on our create-challenge screen, charged on top of the stake per Steppa’s terms.
What we’re not paid for
We don’t take a cut of the prize pool. Under Steppa’s current up-front model the entire pool is paid out to the people who finish. We don’t earn more when people fail, and we don’t earn more from a bigger pool per participant. The fee is a fixed percentage of each stake.
The conflict, named
Our income rises with the number of people who enter. Yours rises with the number who don’t finish. Those aren’t the same incentive, and you should know that before you trust anything we publish.
Our answer is to publish the outcome of every edition (entered, finished, what each winner got, and how many lost their stake) and to tune difficulty to a target where roughly two-thirds of people finish. We tell you that target in advance and we show you afterwards whether we hit it. If we ever start setting goals people can’t reach, the receipts will show it before we admit it.
Referrals
Steppa runs a referral programme that issues promotional credit: usable toward entry fees, not withdrawable as cash. Amounts are set by Steppa and shown in the app; we have seen $5 reported by third parties but have not confirmed it in writing. That credit comes from Steppa, not from us. Winnings from a credit-funded entry are credited as withdrawable cash. We also run our own bonuses, funded out of our host fee. Those are described on /refer and paid in Steppa gift credit where the point is a next entry.
Not affiliated
We are an independent host. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or employed by Steppa LLC. We don’t control the app, the payouts, the rules, or any decision Steppa makes about a challenge result.