CodeCanyon vs Codester: Fees, Licences and Refunds Compared

You have found a template that does most of what you need. It might be a Flutter booking app or a landing page for the product you are about to launch. A second search turns up the same kind of item on another marketplace, sometimes from the same author, and now the choice is about where to buy, not what. The prices are close. The rules attached to each purchase are not.

That is the CodeCanyon vs Codester question for a buyer, and it got harder this year. Since 1 July 2026, Envato no longer requires any author to sell only on its marketplaces. The same item can now be listed on CodeCanyon, on Codester and on the author's own site, at different prices and under different licence, refund and support terms. If you sell code yourself, that date also changed what a CodeCanyon sale pays you.

The licence is the difference most likely to cost you money later. On CodeCanyon it depends on whether your end users pay, and we cover that test, including the freemium trap, in how the CodeCanyon Regular and Extended licences split. This post compares the two marketplaces on everything else.

Where we stand: we sell on both. Nine of our Flutter apps are on CodeCanyon, our three Bootstrap landing page templates are on Codester, and two more Flutter apps sell direct through Gumroad. We make no claims here about our own sales, review times or refunds. Every rule below comes from the marketplaces' own pages as they read on 23 October 2026, and where a page would not load for us, we say so.

Most CodeCanyon vs Codester comparisons are out of date

The pages that rank for this comparison are mostly directory listings, seller recruitment reviews first written years ago, and vendors pitching a third marketplace or selling direct. Most of them put it as Codester's 70% against Envato's tiered fees. That stopped being accurate on 1 July 2026.

Envato's announcement on its Author Hub made three changes from that date:

• Exclusivity requirements are gone. Authors can sell the same item on Envato Market and anywhere else.
• The split between exclusive and non-exclusive accounts is gone. Every author is on one model.
• Every author's fee is 50% of the item price component of the list price. For non-exclusive authors that is down from 55%. For exclusive authors it is a rise, from tiers that third-party write-ups put as low as 12.5% for the biggest sellers.

Buyers feel this through prices. Some authors now sell direct alongside Envato and price the two copies differently. The author of HBook, a WordPress booking plugin, lists it at $129 on Envato and $99 on its own site and links the gap to the new fee. A cheaper copy elsewhere comes with that seller's licence and refund rules, not Envato's.

CodeCanyon vs Codester at a glance

Each cell comes from a page we checked on 23 October 2026. Where we could not verify something, the cell says so.

	CodeCanyon (Envato Market)	Codester
Author share	50% fee on the item price, for every author, since 1 July 2026	70% in third-party reviews; Codester's seller page did not load
Exclusivity	None since 1 July 2026	None, per third-party reviews
What the buyer pays	List price: item price plus an Envato buyer fee (amount not verified)	Not published on any page we could load
Licences	Regular (free end product) or Extended (end users pay), one end product each	Codester's own terms; its licence page did not load
Refund grounds	Not as described or broken and unfixed, unpatched security issue, promised support not given, not downloaded within 30 days	Not working as advertised and unfixed, or no support, per Codester's replies to reviews
Refund process	Author first, then a dispute; Envato's decision is final	Request from Order History; seller has 5 days; a silent seller loses
Refund time limit	180 days for supported items, 30 for unsupported	Not on the help page we could load
Included support	6 months, extendable to 12; no customisation or installation	Not published on any page we could load
Review before listing	Yes, each item; no published turnaround	Yes, per Codester; no published turnaround
Flutter catalogue	"Over 4,000" on the category page, though its subcategories list 2,403	Not published on any page we could load

The pattern is plain. CodeCanyon's rules are published and checkable. Codester's mostly are not, at least from outside: its seller page, FAQ, licence page and item pages, one of our own included, returned 403 errors to our checks, as they did when we wrote our buying guide earlier this month. Its help centre loads, but only some articles open. You can probably read the rest in a normal browser, and you should, because most of what is written about Codester's terms is third-party reviews, some first published in 2016.

Commission: 50% of what, and 70% of what

For authors, commission is the headline. As usually stated, the two numbers are not comparable.

Envato's 50% applies to the item price, not the price the buyer sees. The list price on an item page is the item price plus a buyer fee that Envato keeps, so the author gets half of what is left after that fee. On a $29 list price, that is at most $14.50, and in practice less. Envato's buyer fee page returned 403 to us and third-party sources disagree on the amount, so we will not put a number on it.

Codester's 70% shows up consistently in third-party reviews from 2016 to July 2026, along with monthly PayPal payouts. We could not load Codester's seller page to confirm the figure or what it is calculated on. If it applies to the full price, 70% of $29 is $20.30. That is a big "if".

The percentage is also not the number that pays your rent. Sales volume is, and neither marketplace publishes sales by category. A bigger share of a smaller audience can pay less. What July settled is that you no longer have to choose.

Licences: one is published in detail, one we could not read

CodeCanyon's licence overview is short and specific. The Regular Licence covers an end product that is free to end users. The Extended Licence is for when the end user must pay. Each covers one end product, neither can be reused across several clients, and neither allows use in stock items or templates.

Codester has its own licence terms. Its help centre lists an article called "What licenses are there?", but neither that article nor the licence page would load for us. Third-party reviews describe a Regular and an Extended licence, and at least one says the Extended licence allows unlimited use. If that is current, it is a different thing from Envato's Extended Licence, which still covers one end product. The descriptions we found disagree with each other, so do not rely on them, for our items or anyone's. Read the licence shown at checkout.

If your app will ever charge its users, ask the author in writing which licence covers that before you pay, on either marketplace. It is one of the checks in our guide to what to check before buying a Flutter app template, alongside code quality, maintenance and whether the template needs a server.

Item review and support: both check, neither publishes a timeline

CodeCanyon's homepage says each new item is reviewed one by one before it goes on sale. Codester says in its public replies that it reviews every item before accepting it. In July 2026 it added that higher standards had led to more rejections, and that items needing more than a few tweaks would not get step-by-step feedback. In April it said it was raising the support it expects from authors and removing authors who do not provide it.

Neither marketplace publishes a review turnaround we could find, and author reports were too thin and inconsistent to give you one. What authors on both marketplaces do report, in reviews from late 2025 to mid 2026, is rejection with little or no explanation.

For buyers, item review is a floor. It checks that an item works and matches its description, not that the code is easy to rebrand or that its dependencies are current. Support is narrower than most buyers expect. CodeCanyon's item support policy gives 6 months, extendable to 12, and excludes customisation and installation. We could not find a published support period for Codester.

Run every check in this post on one item and you have spent an evening on licence pages, refund rules, support terms and comment threads, and you may still not know whether the template needs a server that bills you every month it is live. Our Flutter apps and Bootstrap landing page templates settle the server question up front: ten of the eleven Flutter apps need no server at all, Zenith only needs somewhere to host its audio files, and each Flutter app's page lists its state management and database before you pay.

Refunds: what each marketplace actually promises

Envato's refund rules say a refund is due when the item is not as described or does not work and the author cannot fix it, has a security hole the author does not patch in reasonable time, comes without the promised support, or was not downloaded within 30 days of purchase. A change of mind, unmet expectations or a lack of skill to use the item do not qualify. For a supported CodeCanyon item you have 180 days, for an unsupported one 30. You contact the author first, then open a dispute, and Envato's decision is final.

Codester's help centre explains how a refund request works. You request it from your Order History, and the seller has 5 days to fix the problem or decide. If the seller does not respond at all, the buyer wins automatically. If the seller responds without deciding, the request closes with no refund, and you can open a dispute, which gives the seller another 5 days. Approved refunds are processed in 1 to 2 business days, longer on a card. That page does not list the grounds. Codester's replies to reviews on Trustpilot say refunds cover items that do not work as advertised and cannot be fixed, or authors who give no support. A 2019 reply mentions a 30-day limit; we could not confirm it still applies.

So Envato publishes wider grounds and, for supported items, a much longer window. Codester publishes a tighter clock that works for you if a seller goes quiet. Neither refunds code that works but is messier than you hoped.

Both score badly on Trustpilot. On 23 October 2026, CodeCanyon had 1.3 from 231 reviews and Codester 2.3 from 108. Reviewers on both describe disputes closed without explanation and items that did not work as listed. Trustpilot says it does not verify reviews and both samples are small, so read them as a list of what can go wrong, not how often.

Which one suits you

If you are buying

For a Flutter app, start on CodeCanyon. Its Flutter category is large, and its licence, support and refund rules are published in enough detail to plan around. Budget for the Extended Licence if your users will ever pay.

For a simple HTML or Bootstrap landing page, Codester is a reasonable place to buy. A static page for your marketing site carries little licence risk. Read the licence on the item anyway, and test the download the day you buy, because the 5-day seller clock only helps if you start it early.

If the same item is on both, or sold direct, compare the terms, not only the price. A cheaper copy can mean a different licence, a different refund route and support from the author alone.

If you are selling

CodeCanyon has a large published catalogue, over 4,000 Flutter items by its own count, and published buyer protections, which is part of what buyers pay for. Since July you keep half of the item price after the buyer fee, and you can list the same item elsewhere.

Codester is reported to pay 70% and does not require exclusivity, per third-party reviews. Confirm the figure and its basis on Codester's seller page before you plan around it, and expect stricter review and a clear expectation that you support buyers.

For most authors the answer is no longer either-or. If you list on both, note that Envato's announcement says links to other channels in item descriptions must follow its Help Center guidelines. We will not tell you which one pays us more: we do not publish our numbers, and one studio's numbers would not predict yours.

Whichever marketplace you buy from, the rebrand is your job: CodeCanyon's support excludes customisation and installation, and we found no Codester terms that say otherwise, so the new name, icon, package name, signing and store listing come out of your own days before launch. Our app reskinning service does that work from $150, typically in 5 to 10 business days for a Pro reskin. If you have not settled on a template at all, start with whether to buy an app template or build from scratch.