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Superhive
👤 Jonathan Williamson (Co-founded CG Cookie, Blender's training site, in 2008, then built the store for its students. He also shaped Blender's 2.8 UI.)🌐 siteautotroph.com
Blender gives its software away. Superhive built the paid store around it and routed $51M to creators since 2014.
Will it work? · our read
Not sovereign. The store is real: over a million customers, $51M paid out, twelve years. But the Foundation owns the trademark and the channel, and the founder says the sales model is breaking.
01How the money moves
Blender ships free, without the tools pros need
→
8,135 creators list 65,000+ paid add-ons and assets
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Superhive takes 10-30% per sale, plus $49-199/mo plans
02The numbers
$51,056,880 to creatorsStatedrevenue never disclosed
2026-07-17
Superhive publishes these itself, cumulative since June 2014. The counters move live: customers ticked from 1,096,003 to 1,096,006 while we read the page, so we rounded the fast-moving ones. market stats
Creators keep 70-90% of each sale. Superhive's own cut is never published; its founder's August 2020 numbers imply about 18% of gross. [our read]
🔒
You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
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Superhive Market Statistics — the live first-party dashboard: $51,056,880 paid to creators, 8,135 creators, $998,538 to the Blender Fund (read 17 Jul 2026; counters tick live).Superhive pricing — Free, Pro and Ultimate at $0, $49 and $199 a month for 70%, 80% and 90% commission (read 17 Jul 2026).How Your Commission Earnings Are Calculated — the payout formula, and how Blender Dev Fund gifts come out of the creator's own commission (updated 7 Apr 2025).Beyond Business as Usual: A New Name for Blender Market (Amber Kelly, 29 Apr 2024) — $33M paid out by then, 9 creators past $1M, and why they gave up the name.We Built This Together. Now We Need to Fix It. (Jonathan Williamson, 21 Apr 2026) — the founder on the lifetime-updates model crushing creators and Superhive alike.
Superhive has never published its own revenue, so the headline is the biggest number it does publish: $51,056,880 paid out to creators, read off its live Market Statistics page on 17 Jul 2026. Indie Hackers lists Blender Market at $435K/mo 'verified revenue' — that is gross marketplace volume, not Superhive's income, and we did not use it. The founder's own August 2020 post shows the gap: $529,593.94 gross against $433,620.83 to creators, leaving about 18% to the house [our read]. The $998,538 'Donated to Blender Fund' is money creators opt to give out of their own commission, not a company gift; Autotroph contributes separately as a Corporate Gold member. Pricing came from the live pricing page today, not the support article that still quotes July 2024. Nothing is invented: the rename and the sustainability crisis are both in the company's own posts. We never score you.