How to use the Commission Price Calculator
- Pick the commission type. Choose from sketch to full illustration. The Base price fills in from your price for that type; change it and the calculator remembers it for that type.
- Describe the piece. Set the number of Characters and the percentage each extra one adds, then the Background, Detail and rendering, any Extra revisions, Rush delivery and Usage rights. Each dropdown fills in a suggested percentage or multiplier that you can overwrite.
- Set up payment. Choose a Platform to load its published fee, set the Deposit and the currency, and decide whether to Add the fee to the client’s invoices. Type your Hours to see the effective hourly rate.
- Read the quote. The right side shows every line item, each invoice, the fee taken from it, what reaches your account and your hourly rate.
- Send it. Copy client quote gives a clean, itemized message for the client; Copy my numbers copies the fees and net for your records. Save your price sheet under My price presets so next month’s quotes start from it.
Where commission prices quietly leak
Most price sheets list a flat price per type: half body $80, full body $110. Then a client asks for two characters, a background and a quick turnaround, and the extras get guessed on the spot. Percentages solve that, because they scale with the piece. In the default example, a second character at +50% adds $40 to an $80 half body. The background (+15%) and cel shading (+25%) are then calculated on the $120 for both characters, since two figures take twice the shading, giving $18 and $30 — $168 in all.
The second leak is payment. Platforms take a percentage plus, often, a fixed fee on every payment. A 50% deposit means two invoices, so the fixed fee is charged twice. Here’s what that $168 commission actually pays you, collected as an $84 deposit and an $84 balance, with the fees published for US accounts:
| How the client pays | Fees on two invoices | You keep | Per hour over 6 h |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank transfer or cash | $0.00 | $168.00 | $28.00 |
| PayPal goods & services, 2.99% | $5.02 | $162.98 | $27.16 |
| Stripe card, 2.9% + $0.30 | $5.48 | $162.52 | $27.09 |
| PayPal invoice, 3.49% + $0.49 | $6.84 | $161.16 | $26.86 |
| Ko-fi free plan (5%) via Stripe | $13.88 | $154.12 | $25.69 |
Taking the whole $168 in one PayPal invoice would cost $6.35 instead of $6.84 — the difference is exactly one fixed fee. That’s rarely worth giving up a deposit for, but it adds up across dozens of small sketches, which is why some artists take full payment up front for anything under a set amount.
Passing the fee on without coming up short
If your platform allows it and you choose to pass fees on, adding the percentage to the price isn’t enough, because the fee is charged on the larger amount too. For an $84 invoice with PayPal’s 3.49% + $0.49, adding 3.49% and 49¢ gives $87.42; PayPal then takes $3.54 and you receive $83.88, twelve cents short. The exact amount to charge is:
invoice = (amount you want + fixed fee) ÷ (1 − percentage fee)
That’s (84 + 0.49) ÷ 0.9651 = $87.55, which leaves exactly $84.00 after the $3.55 fee. Ticking Add the fee to the client’s invoices does this for every payment, and the client quote then lists the processing fee as its own line so nobody is surprised.
Tips from practice
Ask what the art is for before you quote. A profile picture, a book cover and a T-shirt run are different jobs. Commercial use is where the real value lies for the client; a multiplier of ×2 for small commercial use and ×3 for merchandise is a sensible starting point, and bigger product deals deserve a proper license instead.
Price extra characters as a percentage. A second figure in a quick sketch and a second figure in a painted scene are very different amounts of work. A percentage keeps that in proportion automatically.
Define “rush” and “revision” in writing. Rush should mean faster than your posted turnaround, not “soon, please”. Revisions should mean changes after sketch approval, not the sketch rounds themselves. Put both in your terms with the Commission Contract Template Generator.
Check the hourly rate before you say yes. If a quote works out below the rate you need to live on, raise the base price rather than trimming hours you’ll spend anyway. The Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator tells you what that rate should be.
Keep a preset per price list. When you raise prices, save the new sheet as a new preset. Clients who were quoted under the old list can still be honored exactly, and you can see how far your rates have moved.