As of January 2025, the success rate of fully funding a project on Kickstarter stood at ***** percent. This means that more than four out of ten projects on the platform achieved their funding goals, while less than six out of ten fell short of securing the necessary backing. More about Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American-based crowdfunding platform that was created in 2009 and has reportedly received pledges worth over *** billion U.S. dollars as of January 2025. The company focuses on creative projects and functions on a reward-based system, where backers of a project are promised a little something in return for their financial contribution, such as personalized merchandise, invitations to events, public acknowledgement or updates regarding the project’s development. Kickstarter also applies one of two types of reward-based crowdfunding, namely 'All-or-Nothing' support, where project initiators set a funding goal and receive the donations only if the goal is reached, as opposed to 'Keep-it-All,' the funding model used by other platforms, where the money raised is kept regardless of whether it meets the funding goal. Which are Kickstarter's most popular projects? As of January 2025, the most popular category of projects featured on Kickstarter was games, with roughly **** billion U.S. dollars pledged. Design projects were the second most funded, followed by technology and film and video. One of the most funded games in early 2025 was Exploding Kittens, a card game designed by Elan Lee, Shane Small and comic creator Matthew Inman. Their initial funding goal was only 10,000 U.S. dollars, which was reached within eight minutes. Exploding Kittens received over *** million U.S. dollars in pledges from more than ******** backers in less than a month, making it one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all time.

At the end of August 2014, the Coolest Cooler finished its Kickstarter campaign with more than ***** million U.S. dollars in project funding. Until then, the Pebble e-paper watch had held the title for the highest-funded project on the crowdfunding website, with ***** million U.S. dollars. In March 2015, Pebble's second smartwatch project completed its crowdfunding and publicity run with ***** million dollars raised in Kickstarter pre-order funding, becoming the most successful Kickstarter project as of July 2021. However, in 2022, the crowdfunding project Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson raised nearly ** million U.S. dollars - more than twice as much as Pebble Time - making it the most funded Kickstarter project of all time as of January 2025. Kickstarter and crowdfunding Founded in 2009, Kickstarter has become one of the most prolific crowdfunding platforms worldwide. The site enables creators to generate funding for their projects, bypassing traditional avenues of investment and opening the market for niche productions. Each project has a deadline, and if the pre-set funding goal is not met, no funds are collected. Until October 2012, the website required projects to be based in the United States, before expanding to the United Kingdom and later Canada in September 2013. Project backers do not have to reside in the United States. Most popular categories Kickstarter offers a diverse range of project categories, enticing creative ventures from all walks of life. With an approximate success rate of ** percent, the platform empowers innovators to transform their dreams into reality. Among these categories, games reign supreme as the most popular, with more than *** billion U.S. dollars pledged in 2024. Design and technology were also among the more popular categories on the platform.

These Kickstarter stats will show you what it takes to be successful on Kickstarter and what you need to know before launching your own campaign.

As of January 2025, the Kickstarter category with the highest success rate was comics, with a success rate of ***** percent. It was followed by the dance category, which had a success rate of ***** percent, and theater, with a success rate of ***** percent.

Just because certain Kickstarter categories get more pledges, doesn’t mean they have high success rates to get fully funded. Crowdfunding success is usually found in the art categories. These are the top 3.

Kickstarter, the popular crowdfunding platform, has seen a significant number of projects fall short of their funding goals. As of January 2025, 376,698 projects failed to reach their targets, with the majority (246,351) achieving only 1-20 percent of their funding objectives. This failure rate underscores the challenges creators face in securing financial backing for their ideas, despite Kickstarter's global reach and billions in pledged funds. Crowdfunding's growing impact Since its launch in 2009, Kickstarter has become a major player in the crowdfunding industry. The number of projects hosted on the platform exceeded 651,000 projects, with pledges surpassing 8.5 billion U.S. dollars. Notably, the most successful project to date, "Surpise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson", raised an impressive 41 million U.S. dollars in 2022. These figures highlight the platform's potential for creators to secure substantial funding for their projects. Success rates vary by category While many projects struggle to meet their funding goals, success rates differ significantly across categories. As of January 2025, comics boasted the highest success rate at 67.65 percent, followed by dance at 61.11 percent and theater at 59.72 percent. These statistics suggest that certain creative fields may resonate more strongly with Kickstarter's backer community, potentially offering better odds for project success in these areas.

These are the top 15 most successful projects on Kickstarter in terms of pledges:

9% of all projects never receive a single pledge and a total of 376,286 projects were unsuccessful.

To date, there have been 272,205 successfully funded projects. Here’s the breakdown of how much those successfully funded projects raised in pledge.

It’s no secret that some categories on Kickstarter get more pledges than others. These are the top 3 categories.

3 categories have more projects that have been successfully funded than all the other categories.

These are the top 3 categories that have the most unsuccessfully funded projects.