Ranking transparency
This is a translation provided for your convenience. The French version is the reference text and prevails in the event of any discrepancy.
Ranking parameters: version 1, in force since 7 September 2026.
When you browse Discover, the home page, a directory page or search results on Kotsu, listings and workshops are shown to you in a particular order. This page describes exactly how that order is built, numbers included, and in which precise case a paid subscription can influence it.
We publish it because a directory whose sort order you cannot understand does not deserve your trust, and because what this page describes is what the code does: every number below is the one the service uses, and our release process refuses to publish a version of the service whose parameters no longer match this text.
1. The short answer
The order depends first on what you are looking for: your filters and keywords are conditions, not preferences. Then, in this order: the workshop's availability, then a merit score out of 100 points, identical for everyone, computed from real activity on Kotsu and never from what the workshop declares. If you have an account and choose the "For you" sort, what you have entrusted to us (your characters, saved listings, followed workshops, past requests) is added to merit. A visitor without an account only ever sees merit.
The Pro subscription breaks ties, and that is all. A Pro workshop is ranked as if its score were 3 points higher, out of 100. It therefore never passes a workshop that exceeds it by 3 points or more, and a workshop whose position was actually improved by this tie-break carries a visible notice on its card. We hold no stake in any workshop, no workshop pays us a cut of its commissions, and apart from this tie-break no payment changes a ranking.
2. What is retained before any ranking
Your filters (status, type of work, style, species family, budget, country, turnaround, Pro workshops) and your search words are absolute conditions. A listing that does not meet them does not appear, whatever its workshop's score or subscription. A search word that names a species ("wolf", "dragon") also retains the workshops that declared they make its family.
Never candidates: a draft listing, a listing its workshop chose not to list (it stays reachable through its direct link), a listing removed by moderation, and the page of a workshop under suspension or ban.
3. The four stages of the sort
The order is built in four stages, always in this order.
3.1 Availability, in tiers
Listings from open workshops come first, then those on a waitlist, then those from closed workshops. These tiers never mix: a closed workshop never passes an open one, whatever its score. A listing's availability is the more restrictive of its workshop's (scheduled waves included) and its own.
3.2 The merit score, out of 100 points
Identical for everyone, with no personalisation and no effect of the subscription whatsoever. Five components, each capped at its maximum:
- reviews, 40 points. The average of verified reviews (a review only exists for a commission delivered on Kotsu, and only one review per client counts), smoothed: everything happens as if 5 reference reviews were added to the workshop's own, at Kotsu's reference rating. A workshop with no review therefore has exactly the reference rating, no more and no less, and a perfect rating on two reviews does not beat a very good rating on fifty. The 40 points go to a smoothed average of 5 out of 5; below 3.5 out of 5, reviews bring nothing. The reference rating is the average of all reviews published on Kotsu, itself pulled towards 4.5 while they are few;
- delivered commissions, 15 points. Commissions delivered on Kotsu over the last 24 months, one per client, on a logarithmic scale: the first counts more than the tenth, and beyond 10 deliveries the points stop rising, so that an established workshop can neither coast on its record nor monopolise the top;
- responsiveness, 20 points. The share of requests received over the last 12 months that got an answer (accepted, declined, waitlisted, more details asked, or a quote sent) within 7 days. A request cancelled by the client or declined automatically by the workshop's rules counts neither for nor against; only one request per client counts; a request younger than 7 days still without an answer is not counted yet. This share is smoothed like reviews, with 5 reference requests towards Kotsu's reference share, itself pulled towards 80% while few requests have been measured: a workshop with no data is neutral, never penalised. Measurement started on 7 September 2026; it therefore weighs nothing during the first weeks, until requests come in;
- freshness, 10 points. The time since the last real activity: a delivered commission, a completed step, a handled request, a listing or a photo added, published terms. Full up to 30 days, it then decreases to zero at 180 days. Changing the open/closed status does not count as activity;
- completeness, 15 points. Eight items, in equal parts: a profile photo, a presentation of at least 80 characters, a city and a country, at least 3 portfolio images, at least one listing with a price, published terms of service, a current turnaround, payment terms.
The two components backed by real commissions (reviews and delivered commissions) weigh 55 points out of 100, more than the other three combined. The other three can only saturate: filling in a page or answering quickly leads to the maximum, never beyond.
3.3 The Pro tie-break
A workshop subscribed to the Pro plan (or to the founder offer, which gives Pro) is ranked as if its score were 3 points higher. Concretely, it passes a non-Pro workshop if and only if that workshop exceeds it by less than 3 points; at 3 points of difference or more, the non-Pro stays ahead. Between two Pro workshops, nothing changes. 3 points is a little more than a first five-star review, and less than a first delivered commission.
This tie-break applies in the "By merit" and "For you" sorts. It does not apply in the sorts you choose yourself (rating, turnaround, price), nor to the home page showcase. It never surfaces a listing outside your conditions, never hides one, and changes no rating or review.
How you see it: a result whose position was actually improved by this tie-break carries, on its card, the notice "placed higher by the Pro subscription", which links here. The notice is only shown if the position moved: a Pro workshop that would sit in the same place without its subscription does not carry it.
The "Pro" filter in Discover is something else: a facet, for anyone who wants to see Pro workshops only.
3.4 Rotation
At strictly equal scores, the order rotates every day. At the launch of a directory where nobody has a review or a commission yet, this is what keeps anyone from being stuck at the bottom.
4. The "For you" sort
If you have an account, the "For you" sort becomes your default sort as soon as you have entrusted us with at least one signal. It adds to merit an affinity worth up to 25 points, computed from what you have already given Kotsu, and nothing else:
- the type of work of your past requests and saved listings;
- the species of your characters and past requests, matched against the species families workshops declare they make (5 families at most per workshop) and, failing a declaration, against the listing's public texts;
- the style (toony, semi-realistic, realistic) of the workshops you saved or follow;
- the budget range of your past requests, compared with the listing's price;
- whether you already follow the workshop or saved one of its listings;
- the language of your interface, and your preferred currency.
Each missing signal simply does not count: affinity is bounded by what you entrusted. Nothing is stored: it is computed at each display and discarded. We use neither your browsing history, nor your clicks, nor the colours or images of your characters. The "By merit" sort is always one click away, and it is the only sort a visitor without an account sees. The privacy policy describes this processing.
5. The other sorts, the showcase and listings from one workshop
Explicit sorts (top rated, fastest delivery, price low to high or high to low) are respected to the letter, with no Pro tie-break and no notice. "Top rated" sorts on the smoothed average described above, workshops without reviews last.
The home page showcase (the three polaroids) is a pool, not a podium. Every day, three listings are drawn at random from the 24 most-favourited listings (at least 3 favourites each, one listing per workshop, ties broken by merit), and a workshop shown in the last 7 days does not come back while the pool can fill three places without it. As long as fewer than three listings reach that threshold, the showcase shows three open workshops drawn from the first 24 by merit alone, and the label says so. The draw is the same for everyone on a given day. No Pro tie-break, in either case.
In the listings grid, a workshop's first listing is ranked at its score and each of its following listings is counted with 5 points less than the previous one, so that one workshop does not occupy several consecutive places. In the "For you" sort, its first listing is the one that matches you best.
6. What we never do
- Accept a payment to remove, demote or hide a competitor
- Accept a payment to change a rating, remove a negative review or add one
- Rank a visitor without an account on anything other than their search and the workshops' merit
- Use browsing history, clicks or an advertising profile, for anyone
- Take into account the criticism a workshop expresses publicly about Kotsu, or its activity on other services
- Serve advertising. Kotsu displays no advertisement of any kind
7. For makers
7.1 What improves your position
Keeping your commissions open when you can take them, answering every request within 7 days (a quote or a decline is an answer, silence is not), delivering your commissions on Kotsu and letting your clients rate them, keeping your page complete and alive. None of this can be bought.
7.2 What degrades it
Requests left unanswered, an incomplete or abandoned page, mediocre reviews, and moderation measures, which remove a page from the ranking.
7.3 What you see on your side
Your dashboard shows your merit score, your completeness and what is missing, and your measured responsiveness from the very first request. Publicly, your responsiveness is shown from 5 measured requests; below that, nothing is shown rather than a number that means nothing. The reply time you used to type in your settings is no longer shown anywhere: only the measured one is.
7.4 Challenging your position
If you believe your position results from an error, write to us at contact@kotsu.shop stating the search concerned. We check, component by component, and give you a reasoned answer.
8. If these rules change
Any change to the ranking parameters (the points of each component, the Pro tie-break margin, the measurement windows, the signals of the "For you" sort) is announced to makers at least fifteen days before it comes into force, by email and on this page, whose version number and effective date then change. The only exception: a change required by a legal obligation or by a risk of fraud or manipulation.
9. Contact us
contact@kotsu.shop
This page is published pursuant to article L111-7 of the French Consumer Code and article 5 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1150.