Studio Queues Team · Last updated August 25, 2026
DeviantArt commissions ended July 1, 2026. What that removed, what to rebuild if you relied on it, and why ArtStation was never the same kind of platform.
Both of these platforms occupy a large amount of space in how artists think about where commission work comes from, and both of them are further from that role than most artists realize. One of them formally left the business this year.
If you are planning around DeviantArt commissions or expecting ArtStation to bring you character work, the picture you are working from is probably several years old. Here is where each actually sits now, and what each is still genuinely useful for.
DeviantArt commissions ended as a platform feature on July 1, 2026, and the help documentation for it is now marked legacy. The platform still works as a place to host and post art, but it no longer handles the transaction. ArtStation was never a personal commission marketplace: it is a portfolio and industry hiring platform, which makes it valuable if you want studio or production work and largely irrelevant if you want to draw people's original characters. Neither one is a commission engine, and both are better understood as places to be seen than places to be paid.
This is the fact that changes the planning around DeviantArt commissions. DeviantArt's help center articles covering how to sell, buy, and calculate earnings from commissions are now labeled as legacy, each carrying a note that the commissions feature was phased out on July 1, 2026, and pointing artists toward DeviantArt Originals instead.
What that removed was a genuine piece of infrastructure. The old system let an artist list commission offerings in the shop section of their profile, took the buyer through a checkout, held the artist's earnings in clearing for a period before withdrawal, and gave both sides a defined dispute path. That is more structure than most places offer, and it is gone.
If you have older DeviantArt commission advice bookmarked, or a journal post pointing people at your shop, both need revisiting. And if you are researching where to take commissions, any guide still describing DeviantArt's built-in commissions is describing something that no longer exists.
DeviantArt directs artists to DeviantArt Originals as the alternative. Look at what it actually offers before assuming it replaces what you were using, because a redirect in a help article is not a statement that the replacement does the same job.
The sunset removed the transaction layer, not the platform.
It remains a large art hosting community with a long history, deep tagging, and an audience that still browses. For fandom work, original character art, and the categories DeviantArt has always been strong in, it is a reasonable place to post and be found.
What changed is that finding you and hiring you are now separate steps happening in separate places. Someone who sees your work there has to be routed somewhere else to actually commission you, which makes your links and your profile text carry more weight than they used to.
The realistic assessment: worth maintaining a presence, low effort to do so, not worth building a strategy around.
Artists who ran DeviantArt commissions through the shop tab lost a working system, and rebuilding it takes a few deliberate steps rather than one.
Audit your links. Journals, profile text, pinned posts, and your bio elsewhere may all still point at a commissions section that no longer functions. Anyone following those links now hits a dead end and has no obvious next move.
Rewrite your prices somewhere durable. They were previously held in the listing itself. Wherever they go now, it needs to be somewhere you can edit quickly, because prices in a journal post age badly and nobody remembers to update three places.
Rebuild the intake questions. The old flow prompted buyers to describe their request at checkout. Without it, briefs arrive as free-form messages, which is the most common source of scope disputes. Write down the four or five things you need from every client and ask for them the same way every time.
Decide how payment is structured. The feature held earnings in clearing before withdrawal, which gave both sides a buffer. Whatever replaces it, staging payment across milestones rather than taking everything up front or nothing does a similar job.
Say something publicly. Past clients who assumed they could reorder through the shop will not know it is gone. One post explaining where to go now recovers people who would otherwise quietly drift.
ArtStation gets grouped with DeviantArt in artist advice constantly, and they are different kinds of thing.
ArtStation describes itself as a portfolio and showcase platform for artists in games, film, media, and entertainment, and runs ArtStation Jobs as a job board for media and entertainment art positions. The orientation is professional and industry facing. Art directors, recruiters, and studios are the audience it is built to serve.
There is no personal commissions feature. Artists who want to advertise commissions there generally do it through their profile text or by listing something in the marketplace, which is a workaround rather than a supported flow.
Artists who want production work. Concept art, environment design, character design for games and film, freelance contracts with studios. This is what the platform is for and it does it well.
Artists building industry credibility. A strong ArtStation portfolio is read as professional in a way a social feed is not, and it is often the first place a recruiter looks.
Artists whose personal commission work overlaps with production skills. If you do character design that could serve either market, having both audiences is useful.
Who it does not serve: artists doing personal character illustration, fandom work, emotes, badges, or VTuber assets for individual buyers. The audience there is not shopping for that, and no amount of posting changes what a platform is oriented around.
With built-in DeviantArt commissions gone, both platforms share the same shape: they show your work, and they do not handle the job.
Neither one gives you current prices that update, slot availability, a structured intake, milestone payments, or a record of what was agreed. Those were exactly the things DeviantArt's feature provided, which is worth noticing, because artists who relied on it are now doing manually what the platform used to handle.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that clients examine an artist's portfolio when deciding whether to hire them. Both of these platforms are portfolio infrastructure. That is a real function and it is not the same as being a commission platform.
If you are posting on either, the practical question is where someone goes after they decide they want a piece.
For DeviantArt artists specifically, this is a new problem rather than an old one. Until this summer the answer was the shop tab. Now it is wherever you point people, and if that is a journal post listing prices, you have inherited the maintenance burden the feature used to carry, including keeping it accurate every time something changes.
A Studio Queues profile covers what the sunset removed. Each offering carries its price, an estimated turnaround, a monthly slot limit, the intake questions you require, and how payment splits across milestones, and it reflects current availability rather than whatever a journal said in March. One link in your DeviantArt profile or ArtStation bio, and the transaction has somewhere structured to happen.
That structure matters more when the discovery platform provides none, because the buyer arriving from a portfolio site has nothing reassuring them except your work.
Can I still take DeviantArt commissions through the site? Not through the built-in feature, which was phased out on July 1, 2026. You can still post about your commissions and route people elsewhere to arrange them.
What happened to commissions I had in progress? Check DeviantArt's own announcement about the sunset for how existing transactions were handled, since that is their process and not something to take secondhand.
Is DeviantArt worth using at all now? As a place to post and be found in certain categories, yes, at low effort. As infrastructure for running commissions, no longer.
Should I move my portfolio to ArtStation? Only if you want industry and studio work. For personal character commissions the audience is wrong regardless of how good the portfolio looks.
Can I advertise personal commissions on ArtStation? Artists do, through profile text and marketplace listings, but it is a workaround on a platform built for hiring rather than commissioning.
Where should I be posting instead? Wherever the people who buy your specific kind of work already are. Which platform your buyers are actually on covers the comparison.
DeviantArt commissions are over as a platform feature, and that is the single most important thing an artist planning their 2026 setup should know about it. The community and the hosting remain. The checkout, the earnings handling, and the dispute path do not.
ArtStation never had that role to lose. It is a portfolio and hiring platform for the entertainment industry, excellent at that job, and not oriented toward individual buyers commissioning personal work.
DeviantArt commissions aside, both are worth a presence and neither is worth a strategy, because both show your work and neither runs the transaction. If you want the part DeviantArt just removed, you can set up a Studio Queues profile and link it from either. Founding artists get 0% platform fees active for as long as premium subscription stays active, first 500 spots only. Stripe processing fees still apply.
