Brillay vs. Fiverr for Art Commissions

Fiverr is a public commissions marketplace: buyers search or post needs, sellers compete through Gig listings, and orders run through Fiverr. Brillay is one bio link for scoped follower requests, with no public marketplace search, bidding, or ranking. Use Fiverr for discovery; use Brillay for direct follower demand. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start.

Create one Brillay page, put the link in your bio, and let followers choose and pay for a commission without browsing a public marketplace (how it works). No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate. pricing

Should commission artists choose Brillay or Fiverr?

Choose Fiverr if you want access to a public marketplace where buyers already browse for freelance services. Choose Brillay if commissions already come from followers, mutuals, newsletter readers, or repeat clients who know your work and ask whether your commissions are open.

Fiverr's own client help page describes Fiverr as "an online marketplace" where freelancers offer services through Gigs and clients browse skills, packages, and reviews before ordering (Fiverr Help Center, How Fiverr works for clients).

"Fiverr is an online marketplace where you can find and hire talented freelancers for a wide range of digital services."

— Fiverr Help Center, How Fiverr works for clients

That public marketplace is Fiverr's strength: an unknown buyer can search for a portrait artist, character sheet, emote pack, logo, or illustration style without already following the seller. Brillay works differently. You send people to your Brillay link from your bio, portfolio, pinned post, or client notes; they choose a commission, and you send the finished work by the delivery time you set.

The honest tradeoff is visibility versus control. Fiverr can expose your Gig to strangers, but you are placed beside other sellers in the same search environment. Brillay uses your creator-shared page, so your commission menu stands apart from offers in public search results.

How do the commission flows compare?

Fiverr routes commission demand through Gigs, search, project briefs, request-to-order, and the Fiverr order system. With Brillay, you put your commission menu on one link, set the price and scope, and let followers request the work directly.

Fiverr's search guide says buyers can narrow thousands of services by category, budget, and delivery time, and that buyers who cannot find a match can post a project brief to receive tailored offers (Fiverr Help Center, Searching freelancers and services). Fiverr also says Request to Order lets freelancers review project requirements before an order begins, which is useful when scope has to be checked before the buyer can purchase (Fiverr Help Center, Managing orders with Request to order).

With Custom Work, write down what the client gets, what you need from them, what is not included, the fixed price, and when you will deliver it; then send the finished work once as text, a file, and/or a link. For illustrators, treat scope boundaries as practical setup work: specify usage rights, required references, background complexity, canvas size, rush timing, and what is not included before the follower submits the request.

What would fees look like on each platform?

Fiverr charges buyers a service fee and also keeps part of the seller's order value, while Brillay charges an 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals. Stripe processing is separate on Brillay, using typical U.S. online-card pricing in the example below.

Fiverr's buyer payment help page states that the standard buyer service fee is 5.5% of the purchase amount, with an added $3.50 fee on orders under $200 (Fiverr Help Center, Paying for orders, extras, or custom offers). Fiverr's earnings help page says a freelancer earns 80% of every completed order's purchase amount, including Gig Extras and tips (Fiverr Help Center, Your earnings page). Stripe publishes typical U.S. online card pricing of 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful domestic card transaction, with different charges for international cards, currency conversion, and other methods (Stripe pricing).

Formula: Brillay net = listed price minus Brillay's 8% fee on paid work minus Stripe's illustrative 2.9% processing charge minus $0.30; Fiverr seller earnings = listed price multiplied by 80%; Fiverr buyer pays = listed price plus the published buyer service fee. The table is illustrative, excludes taxes and disputes, and is not financial advice.

Using Fiverr's 80% seller-earnings rule and Stripe's typical U.S. online-card rate, a $50 Brillay commission nets $4.25 more to the creator than a $50 Fiverr order before tax. Using the same published fee mechanics, a $150 Brillay commission nets $13.35 more to the creator than a $150 Fiverr order before tax. At a $300 listed commission price, the Fiverr seller earnings rule produces $240.00 for the seller, while Brillay's 8% platform fee on a Custom Work commission plus illustrative Stripe processing produces $267.00 before tax.

How does marketplace visibility affect artists?

Marketplace visibility helps new buyers find you, but it also turns every commission listing into a comparison surface. In Fiverr's Form 20-F annual report for the year ended December 31, 2024, Fiverr reported 3.6 million annual active buyers and said buyers came from over 160 countries (Fiverr Form 20-F, SEC).

For commission artists, the pain is that visibility becomes part of the job. You are not only drawing, designing, and communicating; you are also packaging your service so it survives search wording, thumbnail comparison, category placement, reviews, delivery promises, and price filtering. Low-priced or low-quality offers can sit next to serious work in the same browsing environment, which can pressure artists to over-explain value or underprice starter packages.

On Brillay, the follower sends the request and pays on your creator-shared page, as a guest with no account to create. With Brillay, share your page, let a follower choose and pay for a commission, and manage the request without competing in Fiverr-style search results, Gig rankings, or bidding. The tradeoff is equally clear: Brillay brings no browsers of its own, so it works best when someone already came from your art, your post, your client relationship, or a recommendation.

How do briefs and custom work differ?

Fiverr supports buyer-led project briefs and tailored offers, while Brillay starts from the creator's own predefined service card. That makes Fiverr broader for open-ended buyer needs and Brillay cleaner for repeatable commission formats.

For a buyer, a brief can be convenient: describe a mascot, album cover, tattoo design, or stream overlay once and wait for responses. For a seller, it can also mean evaluating leads that may or may not fit budget, style, usage, or deadline. Fiverr's public marketplace is useful precisely because it can route open-ended demand toward sellers, but that openness also creates more comparison and qualification work.

Brillay's commission logic is the opposite. You define the menu first: for example, "single-character bust," "emote pack," "logo sketch review," or "reference-sheet cleanup." The follower answers your fields, attaches up to five reference files, and pays by card as a guest before you start; you set the fixed price and delivery time before the request is sent. You can also decline a request that does not fit, so nothing reaches your desk that you did not price and scope yourself (Brillay, How to track which followers have paid).

For artists who already receive messages like "are commissions open?" or "can you draw my character?" the creator-defined format often saves time. The link does not need to persuade strangers in a crowded search result; it turns known interest into a scoped request you can review, decline before delivery, or fulfill with one delivery.

Which platform handles direct follower demand better?

Brillay handles direct follower demand better when the follower already knows you, because it keeps the transaction on your link rather than sending the follower into a public marketplace. Fiverr handles stranger demand better when the buyer starts by searching for a service category instead of a specific artist.

Direct follower demand is different from marketplace demand. If someone follows your character art account, saves your portfolio, or messages because they want your specific style, sending them to a search marketplace can introduce distractions. They may see cheaper alternatives, compare unrelated packages, or delay while browsing.

Brillay gives the people already asking you a way to pay. Your bio link can contain Custom Work for commissions, Paid Questions for quick art advice, Tips for support, Goals for studio expenses, and Brand Collaboration Inquiries for commercial leads. If some requests are really paid critique rather than finished art, paid Q&A versus coaching calls explains when to sell an answer instead of a full service.

What should artists list in each offer?

Artists should list tightly scoped commission products on Brillay and more searchable service categories on Fiverr. A marketplace Gig needs to explain itself to strangers; a Brillay service can assume the follower arrived because they already like your work.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook reports that craft and fine artists had median annual pay of $55,290 and about 4,300 projected openings each year on average, which makes time, skill, and scope more relevant to commission pricing than the cheapest adjacent search result (BLS, Craft and Fine Artists). Those figures are not commission-rate rules, but they connect to the real pricing problem: custom visual work must cover skilled labor, not just a file at the end.

On Brillay, a good Custom Work listing usually names:

• exact deliverable: one bust portrait, three emotes, one logo concept, or one feedback note;
• inputs needed: character references, pose notes, brand colors, canvas dimensions, or usage context;
• exclusions: no commercial license, no rush work, no prohibited content, or no revision-based production;
• delivery time: a delivery time you can actually meet;
• separate upsells: additional character, background, commercial usage, or rush timing as a new request.

On Fiverr, the same commission may need broader category language so a buyer can find it in search: character illustration, Twitch emotes, logo design, album cover art, or custom portrait. On Brillay, the offer can be narrower because the follower is choosing from your page rather than from a category full of alternatives. The narrower version is the one the follower actually reads before paying, because they arrived for your work, not for a category.

What are the honest commission tradeoffs?

Fiverr's tradeoff is competition inside a large marketplace; Brillay's tradeoff is no marketplace discovery. Neither platform solves every commission problem, and neither replaces clear scope, realistic delivery time, client communication, or portfolio quality.

Fiverr can be a strong fit if you want strangers to find you, you are willing to maintain public Gigs, and you are comfortable pricing with Fiverr's seller share and buyer service fee in mind. It is also useful when buyers prefer Fiverr's established order environment or are already purchasing services there.

Brillay is a stronger fit if requests already come from your audience and you want one direct page for custom work, with creator payouts available in 41 supported countries. It does not plug into social DMs; you redirect followers to your Brillay link. It also is not a download store, subscription platform, or booking tool.

You do not need a follower minimum or platform approval: keep Fiverr for marketplace discovery, then put Brillay in your bio so even a small audience can ask, "Are your commissions open?" without an awkward payment conversation in DMs. The split keeps stranger acquisition separate from follower demand, which can make pricing and scope easier to explain.

Frequently asked questions

Is Brillay a Fiverr marketplace alternative?

Brillay is an alternative for direct follower commissions, not a like-for-like public marketplace. Fiverr has search, Gig listings, buyer browsing, project briefs, and request-to-order; on Brillay, the follower requests and pays on your creator-owned page as a guest, without signing up.

How much should I charge for an art commission, and what fees come out?

Fiverr's own help pages describe buyer service fees and seller earnings as 80% of the purchase amount.

Can followers attach references for art commissions?

Yes. Custom Work lets the follower attach up to five reference files with the brief, and you send the finished commission back as a written note, files, and/or a link in one package.

Does Brillay include revision rounds?

No. Set up Brillay commission menus as one-time delivery offers; if your art package needs rounds of changes, set out your terms in the Correction & revision policy followers see before paying, handle fixes in the order's Customer support conversation after delivery, or price each new change as a separate paid request.

Can I use Fiverr and Brillay together?

Yes. Many commission artists can treat Fiverr as a public marketplace channel and Brillay as the direct-follower channel from a bio link, portfolio page, or pinned commission announcement.

Ready to take direct commission requests?

If your commission demand already comes from people who follow your work, give them a direct request path instead of sending them into another search page. Create your free Brillay page — set up a direct commission request page for followers who already want your style.