Ratings · Measured, not sponsored
NFT marketplaces
This category fought a fee war and everybody lost. Commissions were competed down to nearly nothing, enforced creator royalties disappeared along the way, and the fees these venues now collect tell you exactly which of them still have a market at all.
$2.80m of fees in thirty days across 11 chains, at a 0.5% rate — and 10% on its own drops.
0% fee and $18.04m of standing bids. Also the venue that made creator royalties optional, and the rest of the market followed.
Royalties enforced at protocol level rather than left to the buyer. Confined to one gaming ecosystem.
What we did · August 27, 2026We took thirty days of fees actually collected by each venue from public data, which is the clearest available measure of whether a market still exists there, and set it against what each one charges and what it does — or no longer does — for creators.
Which of these still has a market
Fees actually collected over thirty days, from public data. Not volume — revenue, which is much harder to inflate.
A venue collecting four figures a month has an interface, not a market. That is the most useful fact available to anyone deciding where to list work, and no comparison in this category publishes it.
The fee war took the creators with it
Marketplace commissions fell from around 10% to 0.5% at OpenSea and 0% at Blur. Enforced creator royalties fell with them.
Blur made royalties optional and capped them at 0.5% to win share; the rest of the market matched within months. Buyers got a better deal, venues got a worse business, and the people making the work stopped being paid on resale. One venue on this page still enforces royalties at protocol level — and it is confined to a single gaming ecosystem.
The ranking
Click any row for the quick read, or open a company for its full profile and per-criterion scores. Measured August 27, 2026. How we rate.
HOW WE SCORED THIS — CRITERIA AND WEIGHTS+
This category fought a fee war and everybody lost. Marketplace commissions have been competed down to nearly nothing, creator royalties went from enforced to optional along the way, and the fees these venues now collect show what is left: one venue takes a few million dollars a month, and most of the names people still recognise take four figures. We measured that, because it is the honest state of the market.
The published marketplace fee, quoted from the venue’s own documentation, alongside thirty days of fees actually collected from public data — because a headline of “0%” and a business that still needs revenue is a combination worth examining. Where a venue charges differently for its own drops or its own chain, that is recorded separately.
Whether creator royalties are enforced, optional, or capped, per the venue’s own documentation. This is the category’s defining change: royalties used to be enforced by marketplaces as a courtesy, and the fee war ended that almost everywhere. A buyer should know whether the artist is being paid, and a creator should know before they mint.
Thirty days of fees collected and value held in on-platform bidding pools, from public data at a stated timestamp. In a collapsed market this is the criterion that separates a venue from a website: a marketplace collecting four figures a month has an interface, not a market.
Whether listing requires granting a contract approval over your collection, what that approval can do, and the venue’s incident history — including phishing and front-end attacks, which have cost NFT holders far more than contract exploits ever have.
Chains supported with real activity, and whether the venue is the primary market for the collections on them.
Weights sum to 100. If we cannot verify a criterion, we delete it rather than score it on impressions — read the methodology.
Is there a free alternative?
If you are minting work, the marketplace is not where your economics are decided any more.
Enforced royalties are gone across the major venues, so secondary income should be treated as a courtesy rather than a revenue line. What still works: minting through a contract you control so the collection is portable, selling primary editions where the payment is unconditional, and choosing the venue with actual liquidity for your kind of work rather than the one with the best interface. And if you are buying, the fee difference between venues is now smaller than the price impact of buying into a collection with three bids in it.
What changed since last time
- 2026-08-27Category published.Every NFT marketplace comparison lists features. The number that decides where to list — whether a venue still has revenue, and therefore a market — is in public data and nobody publishes it.
Questions
Which NFT marketplace has the most liquidity?+
OpenSea, and the gap is not close. It collected about $2.80m in fees over thirty days; Immutable’s gaming orderbook collected $185k, Foundation $12,012, JPG Store $216 and Sudoswap $196. Blur is the exception the numbers cannot see: it charges 0%, so it collects nothing by design, but $18.04m of standing capital sits in its bid pools, which is real depth for blue-chip Ethereum collections.
Do NFT marketplaces still pay creator royalties?+
Almost nowhere, and this is the category’s defining change. Blur made royalties optional and capped them at 0.5% to win market share, the rest of the market followed within months, and by 2026 optional royalties are the norm across the major venues. The exception on this page is Immutable, whose orderbook enforces royalties at the protocol level rather than leaving them to the buyer. If you are minting work today, treat secondary income as a courtesy, not a revenue line.
What do the marketplaces charge now?+
Blur charges 0% and has since launch. OpenSea charges 0.5% on the open market — and 10% on its own Studio drops, which is twenty times its own marketplace rate. Magic Eden charges 2%. The fee war compressed commissions to roughly a twentieth of what was standard when the category began, and then took creator royalties with it.
Is it safe to list an NFT for sale?+
The contract risk is small; the signature risk is not. Listing means granting an approval and signing orders, and the largest losses NFT holders have taken came from people signing malicious orders on phishing front ends rather than from marketplace contracts failing. Check the domain, read what the signature actually authorises, and revoke approvals for venues you no longer use.
Where should I mint if I am an artist?+
Mint through a contract you control, so the collection is portable and does not depend on a platform staying in business — this page has two venues collecting three-figure monthly fees, and platform dependency is a real risk. Then choose a venue for its liquidity in your kind of work rather than for its interface, and price your primary sale as if secondary royalties will be zero. On the current evidence, they mostly will be.
How this is funded
It is not. There are no affiliate links on this page or anywhere on this site, no paid placements, and no sponsored positions. Nobody in this table can buy a place in it, accelerate their inclusion, or influence a score — and none of them paid us anything, because there is nothing here to buy. The full policy.