How to Price Your Art Commissions (Without Underselling Yourself)
Most artists price commissions by guessing low and hoping. Here's a calmer way: a formula built on time and a real hourly rate, a worked example sheet, and how to raise prices without losing clients.
Ask ten artists how they priced their first commission sheet and at least nine will describe some version of the same method: look at what other artists charge, feel like a fraud, subtract twenty percent, post it, and quietly resent every order.
There’s a calmer way to do this. It starts with treating a commission as what it is — skilled labour plus a licence to use the result — and pricing both on purpose.
Start with time, not confidence
The single biggest pricing mistake is anchoring on how good you feel compared to your favourite artists. Feelings are not a unit. Hours are.
The base formula:
(hours the piece takes × your hourly rate) + expenses = your floor price
Each part is knowable:
- Hours — track your next few pieces honestly, from sketch to final tweaks, including the emails. Most artists underestimate by a wide margin because they only count the fun parts.
- Hourly rate — your local minimum wage is the absolute floor; a skilled trade rate is a fairer aspiration. If it would be illegal to pay someone your rate to stack shelves, it’s too low for skilled creative work. Australian artists have a genuine advantage here: NAVA publishes benchmark rates in its Code of Practice, which we covered in our Australian artist’s guide — quoting from a published standard is far easier than defending an invented number.
- Expenses — software subscriptions, hardware wear, payment processing fees, the slice of your internet bill. Small individually; real in aggregate.
The formula’s output isn’t necessarily what you charge. It’s the line below which a commission costs you money to accept.
Build a simple tier sheet
Clients don’t buy hours; they buy outcomes. Package your prices into tiers so saying yes is easy. As a purely illustrative example of the structure (your numbers will differ):
| Tier | What’s included | Price logic |
|---|---|---|
| Sketch / bust | Loose lines, one character, plain background | Fewest hours — your entry point |
| Half body, flat colour | Clean lines, flat colours | Roughly 2× the sketch hours |
| Full body, full render | Full illustration treatment | Your flagship — priced accordingly |
| Extras | Additional characters, detailed backgrounds, props | Priced per addition, not “thrown in” |
Two rules make a sheet work:
- Every tier maps back to your hours. If full renders take you four times as long as sketches, the price should say so.
- Extras are line items. “Can you just add her cat?” is additional hours. A sheet that names the price for extras protects you from a thousand small unpaid scope creeps — and pairs well with the terms of service we cover in how to open commissions.
Personal use is not commercial use
A commission for someone’s profile picture and a commission for a company’s product art are different products, even if the drawing takes the same hours. The difference is the licence: commercial buyers make money from your work, and standard practice across the industry is to charge a multiple of your personal rate for commercial usage rights, scaled to how the work will be used.
At minimum, your sheet should say that listed prices are for personal use and commercial enquiries should ask. That one sentence prevents the worst version of this mistake: discovering your character design is on merchandise you priced as a profile picture.
Why underpricing backfires (on everyone)
Pricing low feels safe and humble. In practice:
- It attracts the hardest clients. Bargain hunters are, notoriously, the most demanding and the quickest to dispute — the pattern behind many of the commission scams that target artists.
- It burns you out at full speed. A full queue at unsustainable prices is a treadmill, and the maths of artist burnout doesn’t care that you were being modest.
- It reads as a quality signal. Buyers routinely interpret price as information. Suspiciously cheap doesn’t say “humble” — it says “unsure”.
You are not obliged to be the cheapest option. You’re obliged to be worth what you charge, which is a much more achievable target.
Raising prices without drama
Prices are supposed to rise as you improve; the awkwardness is normal and survivable.
- Watch the queue. Slots filling within hours is the market telling you the price is below demand. That’s your cue.
- Announce, don’t apologise. “New commission prices from next opening” is a complete sentence. Clients who valued you at the old price mostly stay; the ones who leave were buying the discount, not the art.
- Grandfather the queue. Anyone who already booked keeps their price. Cheap goodwill, permanent reputation.
- Let your work argue for you. A well-curated portfolio showing your current level makes the new number self-explanatory.
Final thoughts
Price from time and a defensible rate, package it in tiers, separate personal from commercial, and revise upward when the queue says so. None of it requires bravado — just arithmetic done before the client is watching.
And if you’re building the audience those commissions will come from, that part has a home: artbase is a community where your portfolio, tags and the people who love your work live in one place, and it’s open to everyone now.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge for art commissions as a beginner?
Work out the hours a piece genuinely takes you, multiply by at least your local minimum wage, and add something for expenses. That number is a floor, not a target — but starting from a floor based on time beats guessing based on confidence, which is what most beginners undercharge from.
Should I charge per hour or per piece?
Quote clients a flat price per piece — it is easier to say yes to — but calculate that price from your hours internally. Track the real time a few commissions take and your flat prices will stop being guesses.
Should commercial use cost more than personal use?
Yes. A personal commission is enjoyed privately; a commercial one makes the buyer money. Charging more for commercial usage rights — often some multiple of your personal rate — is standard practice across the industry, not greed.
When should I raise my commission prices?
When your queue fills faster than you can clear it, when you dread opening slots at the current price, or when your skills have visibly outgrown your sheet. Raising prices with an existing queue is the classic sign the market already values you above your rate.