Studio Queues Team · Last updated May 29, 2026
Learning how to price art commissions is the part of the job most artists hate. You set a number, the client pauses, and suddenly you are wondering if you asked for too much or way too little. Then you finish the piece, count the hours, and realize you would have made more flipping burgers.
The fix is not a magic number. It is a system you can run every time, so the price reflects what the work actually costs you to produce. This guide covers how to price art commissions in a way you can defend and repeat: what to include in the price, how to set a defensible hourly rate, what to do about revisions and rush jobs, and how to write a quote a client can say yes to without negotiating you down.
This is written for working artists who take commissions as part of their income. If you are pricing one piece for a friend, most of this still applies, just dial the formality down.
When a client pays for a commission, they think they are paying for the finished piece. You should think about what the price needs to cover. There are five buckets, and skipping any of them is how artists end up working at a loss.
Time spent on the piece. Sketching, lineart, coloring, rendering, revisions, exports. This is the obvious one and the only one most artists count.
Time spent on the project that is not making art. Emailing the client, gathering references, sending invoices, processing payment, posting the final piece, archiving files. Real working hours that the price has to cover.
Materials and overhead. Software subscriptions, hardware depreciation, brushes and asset packs, your studio space and internet, the platform fees on every transaction. If you only count paint and canvas, you are missing most of the overhead a digital artist eats.
Self-employment costs. If you are taking commissions as self-employed income, you are responsible for your own taxes, including the self-employment portion of Social Security and Medicare. The current self-employment tax rate in the US is 15.3% on net earnings, per the IRS. That is on top of regular income tax. None of this is tax advice, and your situation depends on where you live and how your business is structured. The point for pricing is that a dollar of commission income is not a dollar in your pocket, and your price has to reflect that.
Profit. Not the same as wages. Profit is what is left after everything above is paid. Without it, your art career is a hobby that occasionally writes you a check.
If your current price is your hourly time multiplied by some round number you saw on Twitter, you are probably only paying yourself for bucket one. The other four are coming out of your own pocket.
A useful sanity check before you set your own rate. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for craft and fine artists was $56,260 in May 2024. The lowest 10% earned under $29,120; the highest 10% earned over $133,220. And 57% of artists in this category are self-employed, meaning the median includes a lot of people who, like you, set their own prices.
The spread is the point. There is no single right rate. There is a rate that, when you multiply it by the hours you can realistically work in a year, gets you to an income you can actually live on. Work backward from that number.
Most working artists use some version of this:
Base price = (estimated hours x hourly rate) + materials + platform fees + buffer
Each piece breaks down like this.
Estimated hours. Be honest. Track the actual time you spend on a commission, including the non-art hours described above. If your first attempt at a tier takes 12 hours, the next 10 probably will too, even if you wish they took 6.
Hourly rate. This is the number you most often set too low. A useful starting point: take the annual income you need to live and run your business, divide by the number of billable hours you can actually work in a year (start with 1,000 to 1,200, not 2,080, because nobody bills 40 hours a week of pure commission work), and that is your floor. Going below that floor means you are paying the client to commission you.
Materials. For traditional artists this is paint, canvas, framing, shipping. For digital artists it is your share of software subscriptions, hardware, and reference assets, prorated across the year.
Platform fees. Whatever your payment processor charges (Stripe, PayPal, crypto fees), plus any platform you sell through. Build this into the price; do not eat it.
Buffer. Real commissions take longer than your estimate. A 10 to 20% buffer on the estimated hours covers the inevitable scope creep without forcing you to ask for more money.
There is no rule that you have to charge the same way for every piece.
Hourly. You quote your hourly rate and bill what the piece actually takes. Honest, but most clients hate the uncertainty and you spend energy defending the timer. Best for large, open-ended pieces where the scope is genuinely unknown.
Flat rate per tier. You define a sketch tier, a lineart tier, a full color tier, and so on, with a fixed price for each. The client knows what they are paying upfront. This is the default for most commission-based artists and the easiest to put on a public menu. Build your formula behind the scenes, then publish the round number.
Per element. A base price for the first character or subject, then add-ons for each additional character, complex backgrounds, props, or specific finishes. This works well when your work has clear modular components.
Most working artists use flat-rate tiers as the headline price and add per-element pricing for extras. Hourly is reserved for one-off requests that do not fit any tier.
The price on your menu should cover one piece, delivered on a normal timeline, with a defined number of revisions. Anything outside that is an add-on, and your terms should say so before the client pays.
Revisions. Include a specific number in the base price (one or two is standard) and charge per revision after that. The number matters less than the fact that it is stated. Without a limit, you will get strung through unlimited revisions and the client will not even feel bad about it because nobody told them there was a limit.
Rush fees. If a client wants the piece in half your normal turnaround, charge a percentage on top, commonly 25% to 50%. The rush fee is not a profit grab; it is what you charge to bump them ahead of clients who waited their turn.
Commercial use. A commission for personal use and a commission that will appear on someone's product packaging are not the same product. Commercial use is typically priced as a multiplier on the base, or as a separate licensing fee. Decide your policy in advance and put it on the menu.
Deposits. A non-refundable deposit (commonly 25% to 50%) covers your time if a client backs out mid-project. It also separates serious clients from people who were never going to follow through. Almost every working artist who has been burned once will tell you to take a deposit.
When you send the price to the client, do not just send a number. Send a short breakdown:
Clients negotiate against vague quotes, not specific ones. A quote that lists what is and is not included gives the client a clear yes-or-no decision, which is what you want.
A few patterns that quietly cost working artists money:
Anchoring to the cheapest artist on social media. There is always somebody on Twitter offering full-color illustrations for $25. They are not your competition; they are subsidizing their own work. Price for the income you need, not against the floor.
Quoting before scoping. A client says "I want a portrait." You say "$150." Then it turns out they wanted three characters in a detailed environment. Always ask for the full brief before you quote.
Lowering the price to win the job. If a client balks at your number, the temptation is to drop it. What that teaches the client is that your price is negotiable and you do not believe in it. Better move: explain what is included for that price and offer a lower tier instead.
Forgetting to raise rates. Your prices should go up as your skill, queue length, and demand grow. Most artists wait too long. If you are booked out three months in advance, your prices are too low.
Not tracking actual time. If you do not know how long a piece really takes you, you cannot price it correctly. A simple time log for one month will tell you whether your current prices match reality.
A commission price is not just a number. It is the end of a workflow that started when the client filled out an intake form and will end when you mark the piece complete and get paid. Every step in between (queue position, revision count, milestone delivery, payment release) affects whether you actually capture the price you quoted.
This is the part most pricing guides leave out. You can have the right number on paper and still lose money on the project because a client ghosted after the sketch milestone, or because revisions stretched to month three with no end clause, or because the chargeback hit 60 days after delivery.
Running commissions like a business means the pricing system, the queue system, the milestone system, and the payment-protection system all work together. That is the problem StudioQueues is built to solve: one workflow for the whole commission, so the price you quote is the price you actually keep. Founding artist spots include 0% platform fees for life, and there are only 500 of them.
You will not get this right on the first try. Set a price, take the commission, track the hours, and revisit the number. Over a few months you will find the rate where you are profitable, the clients are not balking, and you are not exhausted at the end of every piece. That is the rate. Keep it until your skill grows enough to raise it.
The artists who learn how to price art commissions as a system they refine, rather than a guess they apologize for, are the ones still doing this five years from now.
