What to Know Before You Upload to artbase

If a friend or an assistant has pointed you at artbase, you probably want to know what you are signing up for before you hand over your work. Fair enough. Here is the whole picture: who runs it, what it costs, what happens to your files, and what the community is like.

None of what follows is a sales page. The awkward parts are in here too, under a heading that says so.

The short version

artbase is an online art community at artbase.au. Artists and writers post work, get comments, and build a portfolio on the same profile. It is free to join, there is no invite code, and it is built in Australia by an independent team. It went public in July 2026.

It is also new, and growing quickly. That is worth knowing before you decide, so it goes near the top.

First: you may have found a different one

This trips up more people than anything else. The name is not unique. There is collection-management software for galleries and collectors that is now part of Artlogic, an art equipment hire business in Australia, and a community art centre in the United States, all using a similar name.

None of them are us. The art community this blog belongs to is at artbase.au, and nowhere else. If you landed on a site selling database licences to galleries, or hiring out easels, you have the wrong one.

Who is behind it

artbase is independent. It is not a product of Adobe, Meta or any of the big platform companies, and it is not an old art site with a fresh coat of paint. It is built in Australia and open to artists and writers everywhere, which is a description of where the servers and the accent come from rather than a restriction on who can sign up.

This blog is written by the same team. That is worth saying out loud, because it means everything here has an interest attached to it. The honest move is to make the interest visible and then still tell you where other platforms beat us, which is what our head-to-head with DeviantArt and our rundown of where to post art actually do.

What it costs

Free, for the part that matters. Public posts, follows, likes, comments, tags, messages, groups, dailydraw and your portfolio are all included at no cost, and the free plan carries no ads.

There is a paid tier. Pro is US$4.99 a month, US$49.99 a year, or A$69.99 a year in Australia, billed through Stripe. It buys profile themes, card styles, unlimited private collections, scheduled posts, bulk uploads, a monthly username change and two post boosts a month. Presentation and convenience, in other words. It does not buy you an audience, and no part of the core platform is locked behind it.

What happens to your art

Four things, stated plainly:

You keep ownership. Uploading does not hand your work over. Delete a post or the whole account whenever you like.
Your art is never used to train AI models. Not by default, not with a setting buried three menus deep. It is simply not something artbase does.
AI-generated work is allowed but must be labelled at upload, and every viewer has one setting that hides labelled AI work from their feeds entirely. Our roundup of platform AI policies shows how that compares with everyone else.
Public is the default. A public profile is public. Anyone can look, and anyone can screenshot. No platform can promise otherwise, and one that does is lying to you.

That last point is the one people skip. The promise not to train on member art is a promise about what artbase does with your files. It cannot bind a third-party scraper that reads a public page, because no website can. If that is your main worry, the tools that actually help are in our guide to protecting your art from AI scraping, and you should be keeping your own backups regardless of which platform you use.

What the community is like

artbase opened to the public in July 2026 and has been growing quickly since. What joining now gets you, in practice: a new piece is seen on its tag pages rather than buried under thousands of uploads from the same hour. Comments arrive as sentences, because nobody wandered in by accident. The same names turn up often enough that you learn them. Short usernames are still unclaimed. Early members also set the culture, which is a thing you only get to do once.

The parts that are not finished

Some niches are still filling up. If you work in a specialist corner, you may be the one who starts its tag or its group, and set the tone for everyone who arrives after you.
No app store download. artbase runs in the browser and works well on phones, tablets and desktops, so there is nothing to install.

How to check for yourself

You do not have to take our word for any of it. Five minutes gets you your own answer:

Open artbase.au and browse the recent page without signing up. The gallery is public, so you can see exactly what gets posted and how often.
Look at a few profiles and read the comment threads. That tells you more about a community than any description of one.
Read the upgrade page for the current price in your own currency, which is the authoritative version rather than any figure quoted in an article.
Sign up, post one piece, and see what happens. It is free, it takes a minute, and deleting the account afterwards costs nothing.

Final thoughts

The fair summary is this: artbase is an independent art community that is growing quickly. If you want the biggest possible audience today, a bigger platform will serve you better and we will keep saying so. If you want a place where a new upload is actually seen and the comments come from people who meant to be there, that is what artbase is good at.

You can decide on five minutes of scrolling. Have a look.

Frequently asked questions

What is artbase?

artbase is an art community at artbase.au, built in Australia and open to creators everywhere. It launched publicly in July 2026, it is free to join with no invite code, and it has an optional paid Pro plan billed through Stripe. It is a recent platform that is growing quickly, with a community posting on it every day.

Is artbase free?

Yes. Signing up, posting publicly, following, commenting, tagging, messaging and building a portfolio all cost nothing, with no ads on the free plan. Pro is optional and costs US$4.99 a month, US$49.99 a year, or A$69.99 a year in Australia. It adds profile themes, card styles, post boosts, scheduled posts, bulk uploads and unlimited private collections. Nothing in the core platform is behind it.

Does artbase use my art to train AI?

No. Member artwork is never used to train AI models. There is no opt-out setting to find because it is not done in the first place. Separately, AI-generated and AI-assisted work posted to artbase must be clearly labelled at upload, and every viewer can hide labelled AI work entirely with one setting.

Who owns the art I post on artbase?

You do. Posting to artbase does not transfer ownership of your work, and you can delete a post or your whole account. As with any platform, you should still keep your own copies of your original files rather than treating an upload as a backup.

Is artbase growing?

Yes. artbase opened to the public in July 2026 and has been growing quickly since, with new members joining and posting every day. Joining now means your work is seen on its tag pages rather than buried, and early members get to set the culture.

Who runs artbase and where is it based?

artbase is an independent platform built in Australia and open to artists and writers everywhere in the world. It is not owned by Adobe, Meta or any of the large platform companies, and it is not a rebrand of an existing art site.

Is artbase the same as the gallery database software with a similar name?

No. Several unrelated businesses use a similar name, including collection-management software for galleries now part of Artlogic, an art equipment hire business in Australia at artbase.com.au, and a community art centre in the United States at theartbase.org. The art community described here lives at artbase.au and has no connection to any of them.

Is it safe to upload my art to artbase?

The two things worth knowing: your work is public by default on a public profile, so anyone can view and screenshot it, and AI scrapers can read any public page on any website, which is why the platform-level promise not to train on member work cannot cover third parties. Keep original files on your own drive, and treat any platform as a place your work is shown rather than stored.