Studio Queues Team · Last updated June 8, 2026
Most commission artists' terms of service are a pinned tweet, a Notion page they linked once in their bio, or three paragraphs in their commission post. When a dispute happens, the client has never read them and the artist can't easily prove they ever agreed to them. The terms exist, but they don't actually protect anyone.
A useful terms of service is two things: a clear statement of what you and the client are agreeing to, and a paper trail that proves the client agreed before they paid. Both halves matter. A beautifully written TOS that nobody clicks to accept is almost as useless as no TOS at all.
This article covers what to actually put in a commission terms of service, why each clause matters, how to make it enforceable through click-to-accept, and the one legal area where most commission artists give away more than they think they are (copyright).
Nothing here is legal advice. If you're running a real commission business and want a TOS that holds up in your jurisdiction, hire a lawyer to review it. The goal of this article is to help you understand what the document should do, so the conversation with a lawyer (or your own draft) is faster and better.
A terms of service for a commission is a contract. A simple one, usually short, between you and the client, that defines the work, the payment, the deliverables, and what happens when something goes wrong. The legal weight comes from two things being true at the same time:
Both are required. A vague TOS that the client clicked to accept is weak. A detailed TOS that the client never saw is worthless. The point of writing one is to satisfy both criteria, so when a client tries to dispute a chargeback, demands a refund, or claims they own the copyright, you have something concrete to point to.
Every TOS is different, but most working artists' terms cover the same core ground. Each section below explains what to include and why it matters.
What you're making. Format, size, level of finish, number of characters or subjects, whether backgrounds are included, file types delivered. This sounds obvious, but vague scope is the single most common source of commission disputes. "A portrait" can mean ten different things to ten different clients.
Get specific. "Single-character bust illustration, full color with simple background, delivered as a PNG at 3000x4000 px" leaves much less room for argument than "a portrait." Your TOS should describe the default; the client's intake form fills in the specifics for their particular commission.
When you start, when each milestone is delivered, when the final piece is delivered. Approximate is fine ("sketch within 7 days of acceptance, lineart within 14 days of sketch approval, final within 21 days of lineart approval"), exact is better if you can commit to it.
Just as importantly: what happens if you go over the timeline. Most artists' TOS commits them to nothing here, which is fair, but leaving it unsaid invites the client to expect strict adherence. A sentence like "estimated timelines may shift due to other work; significant delays will be communicated in advance" sets the expectation honestly.
How much, when it's due, what happens if it's late, what the deposit policy is. Three substantive points to cover:
Deposit. Most artists take 25 to 50 percent up front. Specify whether it's non-refundable and the conditions under which it would be refunded (e.g., the artist cancels the project, not the client).
Milestone payments. If you bill per milestone, state when each milestone payment is due. "Lineart milestone payment due before color work begins" is a defensible structure that protects you from clients who pay the deposit, get the sketch, and disappear.
Late payments. If a milestone payment is overdue, what happens. Options: project paused, late fee, project canceled. Pick one and write it in.
How many revisions are included, what counts as a "revision," and what happens if the client wants more. This is where most artists get strung along the worst.
Specify a number (1 to 3 minor revisions is standard) and define what a revision is. "Minor adjustments to existing elements" vs. "redrawing or changing the composition" is a meaningful distinction. Without it, the client can request a complete redraw and call it a revision. Charge per additional revision after the included number is exhausted.
Also specify the window. "Revisions must be requested within 14 days of milestone delivery; after that the milestone is considered accepted." Without a closing window, projects can stretch indefinitely and the client can return six months later wanting changes.
Who can cancel, when, and what the refund looks like.
The standard structure is: client may cancel at any time, but receives a refund of payments made for work not yet started. Anything delivered or in-progress is paid for. The artist may cancel under defined conditions (client unreachable, brief becomes inappropriate, etc.) and refund the unused balance.
State that the non-refundable deposit is forfeited if the client cancels for any reason other than artist non-performance. State your timeline for issuing refunds (e.g., within 14 business days).
This is the structural defense against ghosting that came up in the ghosting article. State that if the client does not respond to communications about an active milestone within a defined window (often 30 days), the project will be paused or closed. State that funds for delivered work are not refunded in that case.
Without this clause, a ghosting client can leave the project in limbo indefinitely and you have no clean exit. With it, you have an explicit endpoint that the client agreed to in advance.
This is the section most artists get wrong. The default in US copyright law is that the artist who creates the work owns the copyright unless certain specific conditions are met. The U.S. Copyright Office's Circular 30 on Works Made for Hire lays out the rules clearly:
For a commissioned work to be a "work made for hire" (meaning the client owns the copyright instead of the artist), all four of these conditions must be true:
The nine categories: contribution to a collective work, part of a motion picture or audiovisual work, translation, supplementary work, compilation, instructional text, test, answer material for a test, or atlas.
A character portrait, a fursona reference sheet, a stream emote, a Twitch banner, a digital painting, a pet portrait, a cover illustration for a self-published book, a tattoo design: none of these fall into the nine categories. That means even if a client's contract says "this is a work for hire," it legally is not, and copyright remains with the artist by default unless there is a separate, signed copyright assignment.
What this means for your TOS:
This is the single highest-stakes clause in a commission TOS, and most artists leave it ambiguous because they don't understand the underlying law. Naming the default explicitly (artist retains copyright, client gets a defined license) protects you from a client who later tries to claim more rights than they paid for.
Specify that you can post the work in your portfolio, on social media, and use it in promotional contexts (artbooks, prints, behind-the-scenes content) unless the client has specifically purchased a privacy clause. This protects your ability to use your own work to attract future clients, which is most artists' primary marketing channel.
Some commissions (private gifts, NDA-covered work, designs for clients who don't want them public) need this carved out. Define a "privacy" tier or add-on if you take that kind of work, with its own price.
What you will not draw. Common exclusions: real people you can't get permission from, hate symbols, characters owned by others without permission, explicit content if you're SFW-only, content involving minors in any inappropriate context, content that violates the law where you live.
Be explicit. "I do not draw [list]" is clearer than "I reserve the right to decline." Both are useful, but a list prevents the client from claiming they didn't know.
State your normal response time (often 1 to 3 business days), state the channels you accept (e.g., "communication only through [platform]; messages on other platforms may be missed"), and state the client's response expectations (when you ask for an approval, they have N days to respond before the project pauses).
This is what protects the project from getting tangled across Discord, Twitter, email, and Instagram DMs. Pick one channel, name it in the TOS, and refuse to do project work outside it.
The state or country whose laws govern the agreement, and the venue for any disputes. For most small commissions this is rarely invoked, but having it there makes the contract more solid and signals that you've thought about this seriously. Your jurisdiction (where you live and work) is usually the default.
This is one of the clauses where a lawyer's actual input is valuable, since governing-law clauses interact with consumer protection laws in ways that vary by jurisdiction.
A TOS only does what it's supposed to do if you can prove the client agreed to it. The standard for that in most online commission contexts is click-to-accept (sometimes called "clickwrap" in legal terminology): the client checks a box or clicks a button explicitly saying they agree to the terms, before they can submit the intake form or pay.
The structure that works:
What does not work:
If you cannot produce, after the fact, a record showing "this client agreed to this exact TOS at this exact time," your TOS is much weaker in any dispute. The paper trail is what makes the legal weight real.
A note on version control: keep dated archives of your TOS. If you update the terms, projects under the old version are governed by the old version. New projects use the new version. Without dated archives you cannot prove what the client actually agreed to at the time they paid.
Patterns that come up over and over and quietly weaken what would otherwise be a reasonable contract:
Calling commissions "work for hire" without understanding what that means. Covered above. If you use this language, you may be inadvertently giving away copyright, or you may be writing something legally meaningless that creates confusion later.
Forbidding any client behavior that's not actually enforceable. "Client may not show the artwork to anyone before public release." If you can't actually monitor or enforce this, putting it in the TOS just makes the document look unserious. Only include clauses you can actually enforce or that have a concrete consequence.
No definition of "minor" vs. "major" revisions. Without this, the client decides what counts as a revision and you do unlimited work.
Refund policies that contradict themselves. "Deposits are non-refundable. Clients may request a refund of any payment if they are unhappy with the work." These cancel each other out. Pick one position and write it consistently.
Promising specific delivery dates with no buffer clause. "Final delivered by [date]" without "estimated" or "subject to delays" creates a contractual obligation that becomes a problem the first time a project runs over for any reason.
Updating the TOS without notifying existing clients. Projects already in progress are governed by the TOS the client originally agreed to. Quietly changing the terms mid-project is not enforceable and is bad practice.
Skipping the governing law clause. Without it, if a dispute escalates, the jurisdiction question itself becomes a fight, which is exactly what you don't want.
A TOS is not a one-time document. It's a structural piece of your business that interacts with every other part:
If these are five separate tools with no connection, the TOS exists on paper but isn't enforced by your operational reality. The client agreed to terms, but the workflow doesn't make them happen. This is how most artists end up with a TOS that legally protects them in theory but never actually fires when they need it.
The artists whose TOS actually does what it's supposed to do have a workflow where the agreement and the operations are the same system. The client clicks to accept the terms, the system enforces the deposit before booking, the system tracks revisions against the limit, the system auto-closes a stalled project after the defined window. The TOS isn't a PDF gathering dust; it's the underlying logic of the workflow.
StudioQueues is built around this integration. Click-to-accept TOS is part of intake, milestone payments are enforced before each phase, revision counts are tracked against the limit you set, and timeouts close stalled projects automatically. The terms you write are the terms the system enforces. Founding artist spots include 0% platform fees for life, and there are only 500 of them.
For most working commission artists, a well-thought-out template TOS that covers the clauses above, customized for your jurisdiction and your work, is sufficient. Many lawyer-drafted TOS templates exist for freelance creative work. They are a reasonable starting point.
When to actually pay a lawyer for original drafting or review:
Below the threshold of "this is meaningful business income," a careful template TOS is usually fine. Above it, get a lawyer. The cost is real but small relative to the value of the protection.
A commission TOS is a tool, not a magic shield. It works when it's specific, when the client actually agreed to it, when your workflow enforces it, and when the underlying legal facts (especially around copyright) are understood correctly. It fails when it's vague, when nobody clicked to accept it, when the workflow ignores it, or when it includes clauses that don't match what the law actually says.
Most commission artists' TOS is worse than they think it is. The fix is rarely complicated; it's writing the document carefully, surfacing it at the right moment in the workflow, and getting actual click-to-accept agreement before any work or money changes hands. That's the version that does what it's supposed to.
