2025 Review: Building Better Sales for Designers

2025 was a strong year for the designer community on CGTrader.

Designer payouts reached a new record, growing by 13%, driven by 17% growth in buyer demand and 5.5% higher marketplace traffic. This growth reflects something important: designers created the right content at the right time, and their models closely matched what buyers were looking for.

Behind these results was a year of focused, practical improvements to discovery and buying flows - all aimed at helping high-quality 3D and 3D-print models reach the buyers who need them and convert more effectively.

Below is an overview of six key changes that contributed most to this outcome.

1. Better Discovery Through Search

Because search is where most purchases begin, we kicked off the year by focusing on improving how individual models are discovered.

Updates gave new and recently updated models more visibility and relied more on item-level signals, so each model is evaluated on its own merits rather than overall account-level factors. This includes a more consistent per-model quality assessment.

Improvements to Elastic Search support these changes and create a stronger foundation for further refinements this year.

For designers, this means better exposure for new, updated, and well-presented models.

2. Clearer Model Pages

Model pages were updated to make key information easier to read and licensing even clearer, helping buyers understand what they’re purchasing faster and with less friction.

We also introduced new badges at the top of the model page, such as Best Price Guaranteed, Top Selling, and Print Verified, among others, providing quick signals on value, popularity, and reliability.

Related models are now shown more effectively, giving designers additional exposure as buyers browse.

3. More Ways to Get Visibility

In 2025, we expanded the toolset that helps designers actively promote their work:

• Homepage Showcase highlights selected models or profiles on the homepage.
• Free Model of the Week features one free model sent to our marketplace email subscribers.
• Search Boost allows designers to increase the visibility of selected models in search.

These options give designers more control over how and when their work is promoted.

4. 3D Jobs: Lower Fees

Based on seller feedback, we also updated 3D Jobs to make it even more rewarding:

• Project commission fee reduced from 15% to 10%
• Commission fee capped at $20 for projects over $200
• One project with 0% commission available to every seller until 31 January 2026

The application flow now clearly shows which fee applies before you get started.

5. Stronger Support for 3D Print Models

For print-ready files, we focused on trust and proof, introducing Makes and the Print Verified badge.

Designers and buyers can now upload photos of real printed objects, reviewed by human moderators. Buyers can now filter by Has Makes and Print Verified, making it easier to find proven print-ready models.

Models with Makes are also featured on the 3D Print landing page in a dedicated “New 3D Makes” section.

6. Clearer Content Transparency

Models created using AI are now clearly marked on the model page. Human-made work remains central to the marketplace.

This helps buyers make informed decisions and supports trust on both sides.

To help designers better understand where demand is heading, we also published CGTrader’s 2025 3D market trends report. The report offers a data-led view of profitability and pricing, evolving file type preferences, buyer behaviour, and how AI-generated content is shaping both digital 3D and 3D printing markets.

Thank you for being part of the community and for sharing your feedback — it continues to shape what we build next.