MyMiniFactory Raised Its Fees on the Cheapest Files. Our Data Says You Can’t Raise Prices to Cover It.
On August 1st, MyMiniFactory switched on a system it calls Local Currency Billing. Creators noticed the currency part, because it moved their prices around without warning. What got less attention was the other change that landed the same day.
The fee on small transactions went up roughly fivefold.
We spent the last few months measuring what miniatures actually sell for, across 247,482 listings and 2,262 creators. That data says this fee change lands almost entirely on the part of the market that can least afford it, and that creators have no realistic way to pass it on.
Here’s the case.
What changed on August 1st 2026
MyMiniFactory’s Creator Portal has published these processing rates for years:
- 2.9% + $0.30 on payments over $3
- 5% + $0.10 on payments of $3 or less
Their Terms and Conditions now say:
- 3.49% + $0.49 on payments over $3
- 5% + $0.49 on payments of $3 or less
The fixed fee on small transactions went from ten cents to forty-nine cents.
Percentages scale with your price. Fixed fees don’t. A 49 cent charge on a $50 sale is noise. On a $3 file it’s 16% of the sale, before anyone takes a commission.
There’s also a $2 fee on any payout under $100 now, which lands hardest on creators just getting started.
Their own contract doesn’t agree with itself
Section 2.2 of MMF’s terms sets processing at 3.49% + $0.49. Section 2.3, directly below it, gives a worked example: a $10 price, 63 cents tax, customer pays $10.63, processing fees of 61 cents, commission $1.50, creator keeps $7.89.
Run the new rate against that. 3.49% of $10.63 is about 37 cents, plus 49 cents, gives 86 cents. Not 61.
Run the old rate. 2.9% of $10.63 is about 31 cents, plus 30 cents, gives 61 cents exactly.
The example in the live contract was written under the old fees and never updated. Under the rates actually in force, that sale nets $7.64, not $7.89. Their Creator Portal help pages still show the old rates too, so a creator doing their homework properly gets the wrong numbers.
I don’t think that’s malicious. I think it’s what happens when a company ships a commercial change and doesn’t check what else needs updating. The effect on your income is the same either way.
Why you can’t just raise your prices
This is where our own research comes in, and it’s the part I’d want to know if I were sculpting for a living.
We pulled 247,482 listings from a major marketplace for 3D printable models, covering 2,262 creators, each with a price attached.
The median model costs $5.99. Two thirds of everything sits under eight dollars. Only 10% of the catalogue costs more than $16.99.
Here’s how the catalogue splits by price band:
Price band | Share of listings |
Under $3 | 10.4% |
$3 to $5 | 28.1% |
$5 to $8 | 26.5% |
$8 to $12 | 15.2% |
$12 to $20 | 12.3% |
Over $20 | 7.6% |
Roughly 65% of the market sits at eight dollars or below. That’s the zone where a 49 cent fixed fee actually hurts.
Now the finding that surprised us. We grouped creators by catalogue size and looked at median price in each group. If reputation and scale gave you pricing power, the biggest creators should charge the most.
They don’t. Creators with more than 1,000 models have a median price of $5.00. Creators with fewer than ten models are also at $5.00. The middle groups peak at $6.00 and come back down.
That’s the whole problem in one line. There is no pricing ladder to climb. The market has decided a single miniature is a five to eight dollar object, and nobody, however established, has broken through that ceiling.
So when a platform raises the fixed fee on cheap transactions, you can’t respond by charging more. The data says the market won’t let you. Your only lever is what the platform takes.
Two more findings that sharpen it:
The typical creator is small. The median creator has 23 models listed. The top 500 creators hold 82.5% of all listings. Most people selling here are running a couple of dozen sculpts against operations releasing thousands.
Pre-supporting is unpaid. About 8.5% of listings mention being pre-supported, and their median price is $5.59 against an overall $5.99. Pre-supported files are cheaper than average. The single most requested thing in resin printing earns nothing extra.
The market is already squeezing creators hard. That’s the context the August 1st fee increase landed in.
The actual numbers
Here’s what each platform takes, at the price points where the market actually lives.
MyMiniFactory (entry tier) | Minarium | |
Monthly subscription | $9.99 | none |
Commission | 15% | 8% flat |
Card processing, over $3 | 3.49% + $0.49 | 2.9% + $0.30 |
Card processing, $3 or under | 5% + $0.49 | 2.9% + $0.30 |
Listing fees | none | none |
Payout fee | $2 under $100, free above | $1.50 flat, $100 minimum |
Fee on your buyer’s cart | Library Management Fee | none |
Per sale, at real market prices:
Sale price | MMF leaves you | Minarium leaves you | Difference |
$2.99 | $1.90 (64%) | $2.36 (79%) | +$0.46 |
$5.00 | $3.59 (72%) | $4.16 (83%) | +$0.57 |
$5.99 (median) | $4.39 (73%) | $5.04 (84%) | +$0.64 |
$8.00 | $6.03 (75%) | $6.83 (85%) | +$0.80 |
$9.99 (median bundle) | $7.65 (77%) | $8.60 (86%) | +$0.95 |
Over a month, at the median price of $5.99:
MyMiniFactory | Minarium | |
100 sales, gross $599 | $429.25 | $502.21 |
Difference | +$72.95 |
That’s about $875 a year on 100 sales a month. Not because of one dramatic fee, but because a 7 point commission gap and a 19 cent processing gap compound across every single transaction, and then a subscription comes out whether you sold anything or not.
At $5.99 you need three sales a month on MMF just to cover the subscription before you earn a cent. On a $2.99 file it takes six.
Where MMF’s structure is better
Payouts, above $100. Theirs are free at that level and ours cost $1.50. If you’re withdrawing large amounts infrequently, that’s a small point in their favour and I’d rather say it than have you find it.
Below $100 it flips: they charge $2 and we don’t pay out at that level at all.
What we charge, plainly
Minarium takes a flat 8% commission plus standard card processing at 2.9% + $0.30. There’s no monthly subscription, no listing fee, no charge to open a store, and nothing added to your buyer’s cart at checkout. Payouts are $1.50 flat from $100.
That’s the complete list. If you find a fee I haven’t mentioned here, email me and I’ll fix the post.
We also don’t do what MMF started doing on August 1st. Under their Local Currency Billing system, you set one price in one currency and MMF calculates what every other buyer in the world pays, using what their terms describe as “currency conversion, local pricing conventions and commercial rounding.” You’re paid on your number, not theirs. And their terms state they are “not required to provide a transaction-by-transaction breakdown” of how that works.
Your price is your price here. We don’t set a different one for your international buyers and keep the difference.
Creators are already saying it
Ricardo, who sells as Imp3dsion, posted publicly in early September about fighting the change for over a month.
He wrote that MMF told him they couldn’t change prices manually, which he found hard to accept from the people who built the site. His workaround was to switch his currency to euros and price his tiers below the platform’s suggested rates, so his subscribers would get a cheaper month. He said he wouldn’t be able to properly restore his old prices- an eight-dollar figure, a twenty-five-dollar commercial license, a five-fifty early bird tier- until after October 1st. Two months locked out of his own pricing.
Then he apologized to his own customers for it, and wrote this:
We don’t have any better place for now.
He’s since started uploading his catalog to Minarium.com.
He isn’t the only one, though he is the bluntest. PSMiniatures wrote that they were required to move to GBP, and that dollar amounts would fluctuate with conversion rates they have “no control over.” Different tone, same fact underneath.
To be fair, not everyone minded. 2ndDynasty, based in Sweden, welcomed the currency change because dollar swings had been costing them money. For some creators, the feature genuinely solves a problem.
The fee increase is a different matter. Nobody has come forward to say they’re glad about that one.
What to do this week
Whether you move or not, run these three checks.
Work out your real take-home. Not the commission rate. Take your actual average sale price, subtract commission, subtract processing including the fixed fee, then divide the monthly subscription across your typical volume. If most of your catalogue sits under eight dollars, and our data says it probably does, the number will be worse than you expect.
Check what your international buyers pay. Ask someone in another country to load your store page. If it differs meaningfully from your price at the going rate, you’ve found where the gap goes.
Don’t build on one platform. That goes for us too. Ricardo’s line about not having a better place is the thing worth fixing, and you fix it by being in more than one place before you need to be.
Open a store on Minarium — 8% flat, no subscription, live the day you upload.
Our full pricing research, covering 247,482 listings across 2,262 creators, is available at minarium.com. MyMiniFactory figures are taken from their published Terms & Conditions and Creator Portal as of September 2026. Creator statements are quoted from their own public posts, with permission where indicated. Nothing here has been checked with MyMiniFactory, and if they want to respond, we’ll publish it
MyMiniFactory Fees Discrepancy
We did a second deep dive and found a discrepancy with their claims on fees.
Their earnings page walks through a $10 sale and calls it an 8% platform fee. Their Marketing as a Service FAQ refers to “the existing 8% commission” and explains that ad commission stacks on top of it, reaching 28% at the Expert tier. Their Store Manager fees page says 15% for Upcoming, 12.5% for Pro, 10% for Studio. Their Terms and Conditions agree with that last one. That same fee page also lists a 1% surcharge on every payment from a customer outside the USA, which appears nowhere in the contract. On a thousand dollar month, the spread between the highest and lowest of those commission figures is seventy dollars. I’m not accusing anyone of anything here. I’m saying that if you sell on MyMiniFactory, there is no page you can read that tells you what you actually earn.