pixiv
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
pixiv (Japanese ピクシブ) is a Japanese community for publishing illustrations, manga and prose. The platform describes itself as «one of the world's largest art communities, where you can view and post illustrations, manga and novels» — that is its own wording, not the result of an independent measurement.
It is built not as a social network with a feed but as a catalogue of works with tags, rankings and contests. Around the main site stands a family of services from one operator, pixiv Inc.: pixivFANBOX (a paid subscription to an author), FANBOX PRINT, BOOTH (a shop), pixivFACTORY, pixiv COMIC, VRoid, Pastela — all of them are listed in the single terms of use document.
The thing to get to grips with here first is the agreement. It is built on two levels: the general "Master Terms of Use" plus separate terms for each service, and — a rare case — with separate documents on regional restrictions and on economic sanctions.
Who's here
The platform gives no public audience figures on the open pages we checked: neither MAU nor a country breakdown. Its only claim about scale is the wording quoted above about "one of the largest art communities"; no measurement stands behind it.
The interface language of the home page is Japanese; two language versions, Japanese and English, are declared in the markup. Separately, the platform supports translation of works by users: the author of a work turns the collection of translations of the title, caption and text on or off, approves a submitted translation, and after approval the copyright in the translation passes free of charge from the translator to the author of the work. When submitting a translation, the translator agrees in advance both to the transfer of the right and to not exercising moral rights.
Getting started
Registration is ordinary and an account is free: the agreement says outright that use of the services, apart from pixiv Premium and cases stipulated by separate terms, is free of charge. Minors need the consent of a legal representative for the paid services, and the company has the right to demand confirmation of such consent, including the representative's contact details.
The paid tier is pixiv Premium. The storefront names the price: 4.15 USD a month when paying monthly; a 3 % discount when paying for 3 months, 8 % for 6 months and 16 % for 12 months; payment by card or through PayPal. The same page lists what the subscription gives: search by popularity, hiding advertising, 180 days of viewing history, muting up to 500 tags and authors, a traffic report for your works, replacing an uploaded work without losing bookmarks and comments, scheduled publication, exporting novels to PDF, a free Clip Studio Paint DEBUT for two devices, access to all sensei video lessons and a 5 % discount at partner print shops.
What a free account loses, the platform also states directly: search only by publication time, viewing history of 5 works, muting of only 1 item. That is, analytics on your own works and the scheduler are paid here.
A small thing worth knowing in advance: in the event of a late Premium payment the agreement provides for a penalty calculated at 14.6 % per annum for each day of delay.
What you can publish
The formats are illustrations, manga, ugoira (animated frame sequences) and novels with covers and reference material.
The prohibitions are gathered in the platform's guidelines and differ noticeably from the familiar Western ones. Besides the obvious (defamation, calls to self-harm, discrimination, extremism, sexual content with real minors) there are clauses specific to an art community:
- images with exposed genitals are prohibited, censoring may be acceptable if it fits within public norms;
- works in which a real photograph is the main element are prohibited; the exceptions are listed — a photograph as a background, a photograph reworked beyond recognition, a novel cover, reference material;
- it is prohibited to repeatedly post works copying the artistic style of a specific third party as a prank or with malicious intent;
- it is prohibited to apply labels that do not match the content: the age rating, the "original" mark, the "AI-generated" mark, the genre, tags.
And a separate clause that changes the whole picture for marketing: the main agreement classifies as prohibited behaviour "activity with a commercial, business or profit-making purpose", as well as use of the service or any part of it outside the service for such purposes or in preparation for them. Also prohibited are posts intended for commercial advertising, promotion or customer acquisition, including affiliate links — except in cases expressly permitted by the company. Earning here is meant to happen through the pixiv services (FANBOX, BOOTH), not through advertising on the platform itself.
Rights to what you upload — reading the agreement
Article 21 of the general terms is split into two parts, and it is important not to confuse them.
The rights to the work itself stay with the author: the intellectual property rights and all other rights to posted information belong to the user who created it; the exception is cases where a transfer of rights to the company is spelled out explicitly.
But right there a licence is granted, and it is broader than on many platforms. The user permits the company and its licensees to use what is posted «free of charge, to the extent necessary for the uninterrupted provision, promotion of use, advertising, construction, improvement and maintenance of the company's system», on a «non-exclusive, perpetual» basis, «including modification to the extent necessary in the light of the purpose of use». The platform gives the example itself: the company has the right to repost a user's works on the official pixiv accounts on social networks — Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are named — on its own sites and in its own advertising material.
The key difference from, say, Flickr: Flickr's licence is granted "as reasonably necessary to provide the services", pixiv's covers advertising and promotion as well, with the right to modify the work. And immediately after comes the clause about moral rights: the user does not exercise their moral rights as an author against the company and its licensees within the scope of the use described. In Russian law this corresponds to a waiver of objections to reworking and to changes in the attribution of the name; bear that in mind if you post works here that you later intend to licence on other terms.
On artificial intelligence the agreement speaks from the other side — not about itself but about other users. Prohibited is behaviour that the company deems to unfairly harm an author's interests through the use of the results of data analysis of their works, including training artificial intelligence — unless the author has given permission for such analysis. Separately prohibited are repeated posts of works resembling the work, image or voice of a specific third party and obtained through data analysis, as well as the distribution and sale of models and tools that help make such posts.
How to grow
The platform makes no promises of its own about a feed algorithm. The tools it names as its own are rankings, contests, tags and search by popularity — and search by popularity is available only to Premium subscribers.
Statistics on your own works — a "traffic report" with charts by keyword and access data — is also Premium only, and data for the period before the subscription was taken out is not shown. Scheduled publication is there too, with the caveat that it does not work for ugoira.
Two prohibitions that trip up those used to mass promotion: you may not post excessive volumes of information in order to occupy space and visibility, and you may not use crawlers and other programs to aggregate and collect works.
Path to monetization
The platform itself does not pay authors for views. The money comes through neighbouring services from the same operator.
pixivFANBOX — monthly support of an author by subscribers. The mechanics are described in separate terms: a supporter enters into a "support agreement" on the chosen plan, the agreement runs from the day of payment to the last day of the same month and then auto-renews monthly; no refund of what has been paid is provided for, and the right of withdrawal (cooling-off) does not apply. The agreement describes the fee without a number: the "amount receivable" is the support money less "the fees established by the company", and the company receives its fee by withholding it from the funds received. The document does not name the size of the fee but refers you to the help centre. Withdrawal: the author requests a payout of the amount available as of the 20th of the month. The author declares and pays taxes themselves.
FANBOX PRINT — printing and selling merchandise. Here the agreement does contain numbers: if the royalties for a month come to less than 3000 yen, the payout is carried over to the next month and onwards; the payout goes out within 5 business days after the 20th of the second following month, and withholding tax and a transfer fee set by the company are deducted from the sum. It is separately stipulated that at an accumulated payout of 50,000 yen a year to an individual in Japan, the My Number identification number must be reported.
Sanctions restrictions — the thing to read before you invest time here. pixiv has a separate document on compliance with economic sanctions. It introduces two categories: a "settlement-restricted user" — someone who accesses the services from a "listed country" or pays with a card issued in such a country — and a "transfer-restricted user" — someone who resides in such a country or has given an account at a financial institution there for receiving money. The company does not allow the first group to use payment instruments and services that require them; the second group is prohibited from using services involving money transfers. Moreover, in the event of a violation the user is obliged to pay the company, as a penalty, an amount equal to the money deposited or the account balance, and the company has the right to set that penalty off against the balance. The document gives no list of countries but refers to the lists of Japan's Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
Tools and automation
There is no publicly documented programming interface for pixiv itself, and the platform's guidelines expressly prohibit the collection of works by crawlers and other programs. Official API documentation does exist for a neighbouring service from the same operator — VRoid Hub — but that is about three-dimensional models, not about publishing illustrations.
Built-in automation is limited to scheduled publication on Premium. There are no third-party scheduling services that claim pixiv support — and that is consistent with the absence of an open API.
Limits and rules
- Commerce. Activity with a commercial or profit-making purpose and posts for the sake of advertising and customer acquisition are prohibited, except in cases expressly permitted by the company.
- The licence to the platform. Non-exclusive, perpetual, free of charge, with the right to modify within the purpose of use and the right to repost in the platform's advertising; the author does not exercise moral rights within these bounds.
- AI. Analysis of other people's works to the author's detriment without their consent and the distribution of tools that help imitate a specific author are prohibited; posting works created by AI is prohibited in pixiv Requests, pixivFANBOX and BOOTH (an announcement dated 31 May 2023).
- Regional. A separate document lists prohibitions for Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States — including any image of the exploitation of a person, real or simulated, including one created by AI, whose age is under 18 or under the age of majority in the user's country. The document came into force on 25 April 2024, in the revision of 10 November 2025.
- Sanctions. Settlements and payouts are closed to users connected with "listed countries", with a penalty equal to the balance of funds; the platform does not publish the list, referring instead to the lists of the Japanese ministries.
- Storage. The platform gives no guarantee whatsoever that uploaded images and texts will be preserved and requires you to keep backups yourself.
- The language of the document. The English version of the terms is a translation for reference; in the event of a discrepancy the Japanese original prevails.
Who it's for
It suits artists, illustrators and authors of manga and prose who need a showcase inside a specialist community rather than a general social network. It suits those prepared to earn through subscriptions on FANBOX and sales through BOOTH rather than through advertising.
It does not suit commercial brand promotion: the agreement classifies profit-making activity and advertising posts as prohibited behaviour. It does not suit photographers: works in which a real photograph is the main element are prohibited. It does not suit those building automation: there is no open API, and collecting data with programs is prohibited.
Separately: if you are in a country that falls under the Japanese sanctions restrictions, the paid part of the platform is closed to you, and you cannot count on payouts.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself as follows: «pixiv(ピクシブ)は、イラスト・マンガ・小説の投稿や閲覧が楽しめる国内最大級の作品コミュニケーションサービスです。幅広いジャンルの作品が投稿され、ユーザー発の企画や公式コンテストが開催されています。»
Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the interface language of the home page: ja; the language versions declared: en, ja
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang
source, checked 2026-07-28
Catalogue section: all similar See also: catalogue index · region: Japan · scheduler comparison · find by situation · platform restrictions