Product17 min read
Where to sell digital assets in 2026: 33 marketplaces compared, and where Honed Assets fits
We read the seller pages of every marketplace that sells only digital goods and brings its own buyers. Here is what each one pays, what each one does that the others don't, and what we took from them when we built Honed Assets.
Before we built Honed Assets we did the boring thing: we read the seller, contributor and help pages of every marketplace that sells only digital goods and brings its own buyers, and wrote down what each one pays and what each one does differently. This post is that research, tidied up. It covers 33 live marketplaces across design assets, fonts, 3D and game files, stock media, templates and code, and general digital storefronts, plus five names that still appear in "where to sell" lists but no longer take new sellers on their own.
Two rules about what is here. First, every rate is the one the marketplace publishes on its own seller pages, as read on 13 September 2026. Where a marketplace does not publish its rate, the figure is what sellers report and is marked as such. Rates change, so check the source before you decide anything. Second, we left out storefront builders with no marketplace (Payhip, Sellfy, Lemon Squeezy) and mixed physical sites (Etsy, Amazon), because "you bring every visitor" and "we bring the visitors" are different businesses, and comparing their fees tells you nothing.
We are a marketplace, so we have a view. We have tried to keep the view out of the tables and put it in the last two sections, where it belongs.
How to read the numbers
"Your share" is the percentage of the sale price the seller keeps, before tax and before any payment-processing fee the marketplace charges on top. Where a range is shown, the low end is what a new seller gets and the high end is the best published tier. "On a $50 item" is the entry rate applied to a $50 sale, so you can compare a 70% marketplace that charges a processing fee with an 85% one that doesn't.
Subscription pools are different. A pool pays per download from a share of subscription revenue, so there is no fixed "you keep" figure; we describe the mechanism instead.
Design assets
| Marketplace | Your share | On a $50 item | How it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creative Market | 50% | $25 | Per item, seller sets the price, marketplace covers card fees. Rate varies per shop. No exclusivity. Monthly payout. |
| Envato Market | 50% | $25 | Per item. Author sets the price, a fixed buyer fee is added on top. One non-exclusive model for everyone since 1 July 2026. $50 minimum payout. |
| Envato Elements | 50% of net subscription revenue | pool | Authors split 50% of net subscription revenue by subscriber share (25% on Enterprise). Invite only, currently accepting video, 3D, animated graphics and fonts. Earnings finalise up to two months late. |
| Creative Fabrica | 50–75% | $25, or $37.50 if you referred the buyer | Per item plus subscription downloads. 50% on marketplace sales, 75% on sales from your own link. No listing fees. |
| Design Bundles / Font Bundles | 50–75% (reported) | $37.50 direct, $25 via an affiliate | 75% on direct sales; affiliates take 25%. $5 minimum price, $20 minimum payout, monthly. Seller terms sit behind login. |
| YouWorkForThem | 50% | $25 | Flat 50/50, no tiers, no exclusivity bonus. Payouts every three months. |
| UI8 | 70% | $35 | Per item 70%, plus 2% of product value per unique All-Access download. Curated submissions. |
| Honed Assets | 70–85% | $35, or $42.50 in the product's first 45 days or on a buyer you referred | Per item 70%. 85% for a product's first 45 days and on sales through your own link. Pro: 70% of each subscriber's fee split evenly across the Pro products they downloaded. Monthly payout on the 1st, $50 minimum. |
The design-asset marketplaces cluster at 50%, and 2026 was the year the exclusivity ladders that used to lift that number were retired: Envato moved every author to one non-exclusive 50% model on 1 July. The exceptions are UI8, curated and at 70%, and the two marketplaces that pay more when the seller brings the buyer: Creative Fabrica and Design Bundles.
Fonts
| Marketplace | Your share | On a $50 item | How it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fontspring | 50–85% | $25, or $42.50 in a font's first 30 days | Per licence, 50% royalty plus a 35% bonus on fonts released in the last 30 days. $20 minimum payout. |
| MyFonts (Monotype) | 25–50% (reported) | ~$25 | Rate set by foundry contract and not published. Foundries report roughly 50% on à-la-carte sales; the Monotype Fonts subscription pays around 25%. |
Fontspring's launch bonus is the single most interesting mechanic in the whole rate card, and we say more about it below.
3D, game and print files
| Marketplace | Your share | On a $50 item | How it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fab (Epic Games) | 88% | $44 | Per item, 88/12. Replaced Unreal Marketplace, Sketchfab Store and ArtStation's game-dev marketplace. |
| Unity Asset Store | 70% | $35 | Per item, 70/30, non-exclusive. $4.99 minimum price. Monthly PayPal payout. Curation takes weeks. |
| CGTrader | 60–85% | $30, up to $42.50 at the top level | 26 levels from 60% to 85%, +1% per sales threshold. The level can drop when recent sales dip. Payout fees on top. |
| TurboSquid (Shutterstock) | 40–60% | $20, $25–30 as an exclusive seller | 40% basic; exclusive SquidGuild 50% rising to 60% at $10k lifetime sales. Exclusivity means removing your models everywhere else. |
| ArtStation Marketplace | 80–95% | $40–47 | 5% fee for Pro members (12% otherwise) plus $0.30; a further 3% when ArtStation brought the buyer. 95% on sales you promote yourself. |
| Superhive (ex-Blender Market) | 70–90% | $32, up to $43 on the top creator plan | 70 / 80 / 90% by creator subscription tier, plus a 5.5 / 5 / 4% merchant fee. No exclusivity. |
| Cults3D | 80% | $40 | Per item, 80% of net selling price. Free files can use a Creative Commons licence. |
| MyMiniFactory | 85–90% | $40–43 | 15 / 12.5 / 10% platform fee by creator tier, plus 3.49% + $0.49 processing. Paid twice a month. |
3D is the most seller-friendly corner of the market by a distance, because the buyers are studios with budgets and the marketplaces compete for supply. Fab's 88% flat rate set the bar when it absorbed three marketplaces in one go. Note the pattern of "creator plans" at Superhive and MyMiniFactory, where a monthly fee to the marketplace buys a higher share.
Stock media
| Marketplace | Your share | On a $50 item | How it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Stock | 33–35% | $16.50 | 33% on photos, vectors and illustrations; 35% on video. Non-exclusive. Subscription licences carry a minimum royalty per sale. |
| Shutterstock | 15–40% | $7.50–20 | Six levels from 15% to 40% by downloads in the calendar year. Levels reset every January. |
| Pond5 | 30–40% | $15, $20 for exclusive video | 30% on everything; 40% for exclusive video. Some payout methods lose a further 4%. |
| Vecteezy | 50% of net subscription revenue | pool | Pro program splits net subscription revenue 50/50 by subscriber share. Free program pays $5 per 1,000 downloads ($10 for video). |
| Freepik contributor (Magnific) | 50% of net subscription revenue | pool | Each subscriber's net revenue, halved, divided by their downloads. $25 minimum, paid two months after the download month. |
| Motion Array | 10–45% of category revenue | pool | Seven download levels; top-20 assets in a category have their downloads counted at 3×. $50 minimum, monthly. |
Stock is the low end of the market for sellers, and the reason is volume: a stock library sells millions of near-substitutes, so no single contributor has leverage. Shutterstock's annual reset, which drops every contributor to 15% on 1 January regardless of the previous year, is the term sellers complain about most.
Templates, code and tools
| Marketplace | Your share | On a $50 item | How it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Codester | 70% | $35 | Flat 70%, no exclusivity. |
| TemplateMonster | 20% | $10 | From 1 July 2026 a flat 20% of the author's price on every product type; a customer fee is added on top for buyers. Exclusivity removed 1 January 2026. |
| Webflow Marketplace | 95% | $47.50 | Webflow keeps 5% for payment processing. Curated submissions, monthly payout. |
| Framer Marketplace | 100% | $50 | 0% cut, plus 50% of referred customers' subscriptions for 12 months. |
| Figma Community | 85% | $42.50 | Flat 15% fee covers processing and operations. |
| Notion Marketplace | 91% | $45.60 | 8% + $0.40 per transaction. Creators outside the US pay 1% more for currency conversion. |
The platform-owned marketplaces (Webflow, Framer, Figma, Notion) pay the most because the marketplace is not the business: templates sell the platform's subscriptions, so the platform can afford to give the template away. They are excellent places to sell if you make templates for that one tool. They are not somewhere to sell a font or a mockup.
General digital storefronts with a marketplace
| Marketplace | Your share | On a $50 item | How it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gumroad | 70–90% | $42.75 on your own link, $35 via Discover | 10% + $0.50 on your own links plus card processing; 30% flat on Discover sales. Merchant of record for worldwide sales tax. Fees are kept on refunds. |
| itch.io | 90–100% | $43.25 at the 10% default | Open revenue share: you pick 0–100%, default 10%, plus Stripe or PayPal fees. Payouts can take over ten days. |
| Whop | 94–97% | $46.85 | 2.7% + $0.30 card processing; a 3% platform fee on sales gated through Discord, Telegram or TradingView. Extra fees on international cards and currency conversion. |
| BeatStars | 100% | $50 before PayPal fees | 0% commission on a yearly seller plan ($19.99 or $79.99). Instant PayPal payments. |
These are the "you mostly bring the buyer" end of the market, and the rates reflect it. Gumroad's split rate is the honest version of that: 10% when you brought the buyer, 30% when Discover did.
Gone or merged in 2026
Five names still show up in lists of where to sell but no longer take new sellers on their own:
- Design Cuts closed after 11 years and now redirects to Creative Market.
- TheHungryJPEG's domain lands on 123RF's stock site; no separate designer programme is published.
- Iconfinder designer pages now resolve to Magnific (the rebranded Freepik); icons are sold through the Magnific contributor programme.
- Unreal Engine Marketplace, Sketchfab Store and ArtStation game-dev all folded into Epic's Fab, which carries the 88% share forward.
- Envato exclusive-author tiers were retired on 1 July 2026; every Envato Market author is now non-exclusive at 50%.
What each one does that the others don't
Rates are the headline, but the mechanics underneath are where marketplaces actually differ. These are the ones worth knowing about, whichever marketplace you pick.
Paying sellers more when they bring the buyer. Creative Fabrica pays 75% on self-referred sales against 50% by default; Gumroad charges 10% on your own links against 30% via Discover; ArtStation pays 95% on self-promoted sales. It is the fairest mechanic in the rate card, because it charges the seller for the thing the marketplace actually provides: the buyer.
Splitting subscription revenue by subscriber, not by download count. Envato Elements, Vecteezy Pro and Freepik all pay each seller out of the specific subscribers who downloaded them. It means a subscriber who only downloads your work pays you, rather than diluting into a marketplace-wide pool where a thousand icon downloads outweigh one UI kit. UI8 adds a 2% per-unique-download top-up so its All-Access pass never fully cannibalises per-item sales. Motion Array counts a category's top-20 items at 3×.
A launch bonus for fresh work. Fontspring adds 35% on top of its 50% for a font's first 30 days. It keeps the catalogue moving without changing the base rate, and it rewards the sellers who keep publishing rather than the ones who published once.
Trust marks that cost the marketplace effort. Superhive staff download and test every product before it lists. MyMiniFactory runs an automated printability check on upload. YouWorkForThem has an editor reply to every portfolio within 5–10 business days; UI8 reviews within 24 hours. These are cheap for a marketplace to do and hard for a seller to fake, which is exactly why they work.
Seller conversion tools. ArtStation gives sellers coupons with auto-generated share images, cart-recovery emails, wishlist-drop campaigns and a notification to followers on every new product. Superhive and Creative Market let sellers message their customers. The marketplaces that treat sellers as businesses give them the tools a business needs.
Showing sellers what buyers want. TurboSquid publishes search reports (top searched, top purchased and zero-result keywords). Pond5 forwards buyer briefs and requests to artists. Both turn the marketplace's data into the seller's product roadmap.
Per-creator memberships. MyMiniFactory Tribes and Gumroad memberships let a buyer subscribe to one creator rather than to the marketplace. Recurring revenue stays tied to the seller who earned it.
Pricing primitives. Pay-what-you-want with a minimum (itch.io, Gumroad); personal versus professional licence tiers priced by buyer type (Fab); a price floor with "don't undercut" guidance (Unity, $4.99) that stops a race to the bottom.
Faster payouts. Creative Fabrica pays on request within seven days, MyMiniFactory twice a month, Gumroad every Friday. Monthly with a $50 minimum is the industry floor, not a feature.
Publishing the numbers. Framer publishes total creator payouts per month. Cults3D publishes a best-seller leaderboard. Both recruit sellers better than any "join us" copy.
Seen, and not worth copying
- Annual level resets. Shutterstock drops every contributor to 15% on 1 January. A seller's rate should depend on what they have made, not on the calendar.
- Exclusivity ladders. TurboSquid's SquidGuild and the old Envato tiers. Envato and TemplateMonster both retired theirs in 2026, which tells you what sellers thought of them.
- A surprise marketplace fee. Gumroad's 30% Discover rate is its most complained-about term, because sellers find out about it on the payout.
- Rate cuts by decree. TemplateMonster's move to 20% and CGTrader's level drops on slow months both filled their own forums with departures.
- Closed intake as a feature. Motion Array and Envato Elements are invite-only. It keeps quality up and caps supply at the same time.
What we took, and what we built
Honed Assets is the marketplace we would have wanted to sell on after reading all of the above. Here is what we took from whom, and what it became.
| Seen at | What we built |
|---|---|
| Creative Fabrica, Gumroad, ArtStation | A sale of your own product through your own affiliate link pays 85% instead of 70%. Other shops' items in the same order still earn you the 10% affiliate commission, paid from our share. |
| Envato Elements, Vecteezy, Freepik | Honed Assets Pro pays sellers 70% of each subscriber's fee, split evenly across the Pro products that subscriber downloaded that month. A product the subscriber also bought outright is never counted twice. |
| Fontspring | Every product earns 85% instead of 70% on everything it sells in its first 45 days. Not a launch-week promotion: permanent, and it resets for every new upload. |
| Superhive, YouWorkForThem, UI8 | Every shop and every product is reviewed by staff. Beyond that, our team tests products hands-on and publishes "Tested by Honed Assets" notes that lead the product's reviews, with no star rating and no effect on the shop's average. |
| ArtStation, Superhive, Creative Market | Coupons with share links that carry a generated offer image; one-time cart-recovery emails; shop announcements with a rich editor, emailed to buyers and followers up to twice a month. |
| TurboSquid, Pond5 | A Demand page for every shop: the last 30 days of buyer searches, the searches that returned nothing, units by category and tag, and open buyer requests ranked by upvotes, which shops answer with a product attached. |
| MyMiniFactory, Gumroad | Shop memberships: a shop sets a monthly price and members download everything in it. The seller's 70% goes to the shop's payout. |
| Freepik | A "Made with AI" switch on every product, shown as a label, and a buyer filter to hide AI-made work. |
| TemplateMonster | Shop badges at 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 sales. |
| itch.io, Creative Fabrica | Bundles at one price, and site-wide sale events that shops join or leave with one click. |
| Fab | Licence tiers by use rather than one price: Personal, Commercial and Extended Commercial for most categories; Desktop, Webfont, App and ePub for fonts. |
And the things from the "not worth copying" list that we have deliberately not done: no level resets, no exclusivity, no surprise fees, and no invite-only intake. The share is 70% for everyone from day one and it goes up, never down.
Where we are honest about being behind
A comparison that only flatters the author is advertising. So:
- Rate. Fab (88%), Cults3D (80%), the platform-owned template marketplaces (85–100%) and the bring-your-own-buyer storefronts (90%+) all pay more than our 70% base. Our answer is that we bring buyers and review every product, which those either don't do or do only for their own ecosystem, and that 85% on new work and on self-referred sales is the rate a working shop actually sees on a large part of its catalogue. Whether that is worth 15 points is a judgement, and it is yours to make.
- Payout speed. We pay on the 1st of the month with a $50 minimum. Creative Fabrica, MyMiniFactory and Gumroad all pay faster. We would like to, and it is on the list.
- Catalogue. We launched this week. Every marketplace above has more products and more buyers than we do today. What we can offer in return is an uncrowded catalogue, a launch bonus on every upload, and a team that reads every message.
- Not yet built: a published review SLA, a per-download minimum for Pro payouts so a download is never worth cents, seller-set affiliate rates, multi-seller bundles with automatic splits, pay-what-you-want on free products, and monthly published payout totals. Several of those are borrowed from the list above and we intend to do them; we would rather say so than pretend the list is complete.
Choosing
If you make templates for one tool, sell them on that tool's marketplace; nothing else will pay 85–100%. If you make 3D or game assets, Fab and the 3D specialists are the best-paid corner of the whole market. If you make stock, know that the rates are what they are and volume is the only lever.
If you make design assets (fonts, UI kits, mockups, icons, illustrations, templates, brushes, presets) the honest comparison is with the 50% marketplaces in the first table, and against those, Honed Assets pays 70% to 85% with the same review, the same distribution model and none of the terms in the "not worth copying" list. Open a shop at /sell; the onboarding takes about five minutes and there is no fee to find out.
