Tapas was founded by San Francisco-based Korean entrepreneur Chang Kim and Young-Jun Jang in 2012,[5][2][3] initially under the name Comic Panda.

Kim drew parallels to YouTube, a site where people can upload their video content and earn money, and noted that such a model for comics hosting was already successful in South Korea.

[5] This included $2 million USD of Series A funding which Tapastic received in 2014 through a partnership with Daum Communications.

"[8] However, Tapas removed its right of first refusal requirement on May 18, 2017, due to the poor community reception.

[14][15] On May 11, 2021, South Korean company Kakao Entertainment announced that it had acquired Tapas Media for $510 million.

[6] Tapas also includes a "Mature" section on its website (but not on its app), dedicated to explicit content.

[18] In an interview, Chang Kim said that their revenue model of providing a few free chapters then requiring payment to continue means that works that grab readers immediately are preferred, saying, "In print, stories can have a slow buildup, but our series need to hook readers from the first chapter, because people are quick to decide if a story is for them or not."

[5][9] The Tapas app has an in-app currency called "Ink", which users can purchase with money or earn through certain actions such as watching video ads.

[5][26] Creators retain ownership of their works[7] and may also profit from selling licenses of their media for movie and TV adaptations.

[12] While Tapas does not make its financial data public, it reported that in 2020 users typically spent $50,000–$70,000 USD in total each day on the service.

[6] In 2015, the WSJ reported that some artists on Tapas were making around US$800 per month on the service;[5] after 2020, the company announced that in that year it had paid US$14 million to creators.

[6] According to Publishers Weekly in April 2016, Tapas had over a million active readers, most of which were from North America and 90% of which were under the age of 34.

In 2015, data compiled by Alexa Rankings and reported by the Wall Street Journal showed that Line Webtoon was slightly ahead of Tapastic in the total number of global visitors, while Tapastic was just ahead of Webtoon in the United States.