48hourslogo vs LogoNerds 2026: Which Fits Your Store?

Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are affiliate links and I may earn a commission at no cost to you. It does not change what I recommend or what the vendors’ own pages say.

I get this question a lot from people launching their first store, and it is almost always asked the wrong way. The question is not which of these two makes a prettier logo. It is which one hands you something you can still use in eighteen months, when a supplier asks for your brand files in vector, when a packaging printer asks for an EPS, and when your attorney asks who owns the mark you are about to file on.

48hourslogo and LogoNerds sell the same thing to the same person, a custom logo for a small business, and they do it in completely different ways. 48hourslogo runs a crowdsourced contest. You post a brief, dozens of designers submit concepts, you pick finalists, you declare a winner. LogoNerds assigns your project to its in-house team and delivers a fixed number of concepts on a schedule. One is an auction. The other is a commission.

Those two models produce different answers on the four things that actually cost money later: who owns the copyright, whether you get a vector source file, how long it really takes, and what triggers a surcharge. Price is the least interesting axis here, and I am going to put it last on purpose. I read both vendors’ pricing pages, terms and FAQ entries directly on 15 September 2026, and every figure below is quoted to the page that publishes it.

If you are selling $1,000 to $5,000 products, your logo is not decoration. It goes on a dealer application that a brand’s sales manager reads before deciding whether you look like a real company. Get the boring parts right the first time.

Get a brand mark you own outright, with the source file, in 48 hours

48hourslogo’s entry package is $129 for roughly 20 concepts, and its FAQ says the design copyright transfers to you automatically once you declare a winner, with a copyright certification you can download. Every package includes a vector source file.

Start a 48hourslogo contest →

Copyright assignment: the one axis that can cost you real money

This is where the two services genuinely diverge, and it is the reason I lead with it instead of price. A logo you cannot prove you own is a logo you cannot defend, license to a fulfillment partner, or comfortably file at the trademark office.

What 48hourslogo publishes

The 48hourslogo FAQ answers the question directly under the heading “What about logo copyright?” and says: “After you have declared your winner, the design copyright is automatically transferred to you from the designer and you can download your copyright certification from your logo download page.” That is an explicit transfer, tied to a specific trigger event, with a document you can save.

The company also maintains a dedicated copyright page at 48hourslogo.com/copyright. I opened it. It is published in Chinese, and it describes the same two things the English FAQ does, an automatic transfer of the winning design to the buyer and a downloadable transfer certificate. If your attorney wants the assignment language in English, the FAQ is the page to hand them, not that one.

What LogoNerds publishes

LogoNerds answers the same question in its FAQ, and the answer is one sentence: “LogoNerds does not retain any rights once your final logo has been delivered.” Read on its own, that sounds like a clean handover.

Then you open the LogoNerds terms of service and find a sentence that does not say the same thing. Under “Trademarks and Service Marks” it reads: “No trademarks, copyrights, or service marks in or to any Final Designs for all services offered through LogoNerds.com are being conveyed under these Terms and Conditions.” The Ownership section adds that LogoNerds keeps the right to display your artwork in its portfolio, its reseller portfolios and its advertising, and that any concept you did not select “remain the full property of the designer.”

I am not going to tell you those two statements are irreconcilable, because they are not necessarily. “We retain no rights” and “no copyright is conveyed by this contract” can both be technically true in a world where the parties never executed a written assignment at all. But that is exactly the problem. The U.S. Copyright Office is blunt about the mechanism in its FAQ on assignment and transfer of copyright ownership, which states: “Yes. Like any other property, all or part of the rights in a work may be transferred by the owner to another.” It also states: “There are no forms provided by the Copyright Office to effect a copyright transfer.” In plain English, the transfer happens in your paperwork, not theirs, and LogoNerds does not publish paperwork that performs it.

What this actually means for a trademark filing

A trademark and a copyright are not the same thing, and the USPTO explains the difference on its trademark, patent, or copyright page. You can absolutely register a design mark you did not personally draw. What a clean copyright assignment buys you is the ability to answer “where did this come from and who owns it” without a shrug, which matters when a competitor challenges you, when an acquirer does diligence on your store, or when you want to record a transfer later.

Both vendors also disclaim any duty to check your logo for conflicts. LogoNerds’ terms say it “is not responsible for assuring the originality of any work delivered, and that it is your full responsibility to research all artwork received before using it in any way.” Run your own search in the USPTO trademark search system before you commit, whichever service you use. This article is general information and not legal advice, and trademark and copyright practice varies by jurisdiction, so talk to an attorney before you file anything.

Deliverable file formats, and why vector is the real gate

Here is the practical version of this axis. A high-ticket supplier’s dealer packet, a trade show banner vendor and a box printer will all ask for vector. A 300dpi JPG will not survive being blown up to a 10-foot booth graphic.

48hourslogo publishes its deliverables as a tooltip on each package card on its pricing page. I hovered all three. Every package, including the $129 Budget tier, lists the same four items under “Logo Package Files”: High Resolution JPG, Transparent PNG, Vectored PDF, and Vector Source File. The tiers differ on brand assets, not on file formats.

LogoNerds splits its formats into two named buckets in its FAQ. Web ready formats “include jpg, gif and a transparent png.” Print ready formats “include ai (editable), eps, tiff, jpg 300dpi.” A separate FAQ entry confirms the vector question directly: “Yes, we provide you with scalable vector files (AI, EPS & PDF if Requested) NOTE: These formats are included with the business logo and character logo packages.”

Read that note carefully, because it is the buying decision. The $27 Professional Web Logo package lists only web ready formats on the order page, which means no AI and no EPS. If you buy LogoNerds’ cheapest package for a store that sells $3,000 saunas, you have bought a JPG. The $47 Professional Business Logo is the entry point where vector appears.

Package	Price	Vector included?	Stated turnaround
48hourslogo Budget	$129	Yes, Vectored PDF and Vector Source File	48 hours contest duration
48hourslogo Standard	$199	Yes, same file list	Up to 3 days
48hourslogo Premium	$299	Yes, same file list	Up to 5 days
LogoNerds Professional Web Logo	$27	No, web ready formats only	3-5 business days
LogoNerds Professional Business Logo	$47	Yes, ai and eps in print ready formats	3-5 business days
LogoNerds Character Mascot Design	$97	Yes, per the vector FAQ entry	7 business days

Those six rows are every package the two vendors publish on their own order and pricing pages, counted against the live pages on 15 September 2026.

Turnaround, measured the way it actually runs

Both vendors advertise a number that describes only part of the job, so compare the whole clock, not the headline.

48hourslogo’s contest duration is the concept stage only. The pricing page says so in a note under the duration control: “For logo concept stage only. You will have up to ONE additonal week to work on logo revisions before selecting the winner.” The typo is theirs. So a Budget contest is 48 hours of submissions plus up to a week of revisions with your finalist. The FAQ adds that “logo revision can take as long as you need” and that you can still request revisions after declaring a winner.

LogoNerds quotes 3-5 business days for first concepts, and its FAQ defines the clock: “Business days are Monday – Friday 9am-5pm EST. The LogoNerds team is not available over the weekend or over any major holidays.” Each revision round then takes 1-3 business days, and a full redesign request adds another 3-5 business days because the process starts over. Order on a Thursday and your first concepts realistically land the following week.

The honest summary: 48hourslogo is faster to first concepts by a wide margin, and both are open-ended after that. If you are sequencing a launch and your logo is blocking your business formation and branding work, that gap matters.

Worried $129 is too much before you have made a sale?

LogoNerds starts at $27, and its $47 Professional Business Logo is the cheapest package here that ships editable AI and EPS files, with 6 concepts and a maximum of 6 free revisions per its terms of service.

See LogoNerds packages →

Revision limits and what triggers an upcharge

This is the part nobody reads until they are annoyed. Both vendors advertise revisions in a way that sounds unlimited and is not.

LogoNerds’ order page says “Free Revisions” on all three packages. The terms of service define what that means: “Free revisions entitles you to a maximum of 4 revisions for our professional web logo package and 6 revisions for our professional business logo and mascot design packages.” There is also a satisfaction guarantee, but it is narrow. It “entitles you to 1 free redraw if you are not completely satisfied with your first set of logo concepts and must be requested within 72 hours of receiving your order,” and the terms add that the “Guarantee is only offered on web logo and business logo packages.”

Three more LogoNerds clauses are worth knowing before you buy. You get 5 calendar days to respond to each notification or the project is deemed complete. Finals are delivered for one concept only, and additional concepts cost $17 each. If you ask for changes after finals have been requested or delivered, there is “an additional fee of $17 to continue revising and to again reformat the final files.”

And this one is a genuine trap for anyone who buys a logo months before launching: “Once a project is deemed completed, all logo design files are held for a period of no more then 10 days after which time LogoNerds will remove all completed files from its servers.” The typo is theirs. Download everything the day it lands and back it up somewhere you control.

48hourslogo’s upcharges are different in kind. Revisions with your finalist are not metered. What costs extra are contest options, published on the pricing page: a Private Upgrade at $30 to hide the contest from the public and search engines, a Featured Upgrade at $20, and a re-list at $20 if you are unhappy at the end of the concept stage, which the FAQ says puts your contest back on top for another 48 hours. The matching brand identity bundle shows a regular price of $149 with a sale price of $139, includes two items of your choice, and charges $50 for each additional item.

The Private Upgrade is the one high-ticket sellers should think about. By default your brief and every submitted concept are public and indexable. If you are working a niche quietly and do not want competitors reading your positioning, that is a $30 line item, not an optional nicety.

Refunds, side by side

48hourslogo publishes a staged refund schedule in its FAQ. Before you select a finalist designer you are eligible for a 60% refund. After selecting finalists it drops to 30%. Once you have selected the winning design you are not eligible for a refund, though the FAQ says you can still make a request for special circumstances.

LogoNerds publishes a narrower window. Its terms grant a refund “less an administration fee of $20 for web and business logo packages and $50 for character design packages,” and only if you request it within 3 days of the initial concepts being sent and have not asked for a redraw or revisions. Ask for one revision and you have spent the refund. On the $27 package, a $20 administration fee leaves you $7 back.

Contest versus assigned designer, and who each model suits

Crowdsourcing buys you breadth. 48hourslogo tells you what to expect on each tier: roughly 20 designs on Budget, roughly 40 on Standard, roughly 60 on Premium. You are choosing from a field instead of reacting to one team’s interpretation of your brief. The tradeoff is that you are managing a process, leaving feedback under entries, and picking finalists.

An assigned designer buys you a conversation. LogoNerds gives you 3 concepts on the $27 package and 6 on the $47 package, and its FAQ says it uses no clip art and no templates: “All logos are custom designed using illustrator – the industry standard.” If you already know exactly what you want and just need someone competent to draw it, a smaller set from one team is less work than triaging 40 entries.

There is a second-order effect worth naming. In the contest model, only the winner gets paid, which means designer effort concentrates where the prize is. In the assigned model you are one job in a queue. Neither is inherently better. They fail in different ways, and I have seen both work for stores in the high-ticket niches I track.

Price, last, because it matters least

On sticker price this is not close. LogoNerds’ entry package is $27 and 48hourslogo’s is $129, a difference of $102. Compare the two packages that both ship vector and the gap narrows to $82, which is $129 for 48hourslogo Budget against $47 for the LogoNerds Professional Business Logo.

Now put that next to what you sell. If your average order value is $2,500 at a 20% margin, you clear $500 per sale. The entire difference between these two logo purchases is a sixth of one sale. Choosing on an $82 delta and ending up with a mark whose assignment you cannot document, on a store you intend to sell one day, is the definition of stepping over dollars to pick up dimes.

Both are cheap relative to what a studio charges. Neither is a real financial decision for a store built around high-ticket dropshipping. Decide on the paperwork.

The verdict

For a high-ticket store owner who intends to put this mark on a dealer application, print it on packaging, and possibly file it, I recommend 48hourslogo. The reason is narrow and specific: it publishes an explicit copyright transfer triggered by declaring a winner, it gives you a downloadable copyright certification, and it ships a vector source file on every tier including the $129 entry package. LogoNerds is cheaper and its FAQ says it retains no rights, but its own terms of service say no copyrights are being conveyed by that contract, and I would rather buy the version with the certificate.

Buy LogoNerds if you are price-constrained and the logo is going on a site and a business card rather than into a trademark filing, and if you buy it, buy the $47 Professional Business Logo, not the $27 one. The $27 package does not include vector, and a store selling four-figure products will need vector within a month. Whichever you pick, download your files immediately, and read the revision caps before you start giving feedback.

If neither model appeals, the third option in this cluster is an automated generator, which is a different tradeoff again. I run that comparison against the contest model in 48hourslogo vs SmashingLogo, including what each company’s terms say about who ends up owning the mark.

The logo is the easy decision. The store is the hard one.

A $129 mark will not fix a niche that cannot support $1,000 to $5,000 order values or suppliers who will not approve you. If you would rather have the whole thing built and launched for you, including branding, that is what my done-for-you service does.

See the done-for-you store build →

What I would do on a Monday morning

If I were starting a high-ticket store this week and had to have a mark by Friday, I would post a 48hourslogo Budget contest on Monday with the $30 Private Upgrade, because the concept stage closes in 48 hours and I do not want my niche brief indexed. I would spend Wednesday and Thursday running revisions with one finalist, declare a winner Thursday night, and download the vector source file and the copyright certification the same evening.

If my budget genuinely would not stretch past fifty dollars, I would buy the $47 LogoNerds Professional Business Logo, write the brief unusually carefully because I only get 6 revisions, respond inside the 5-day window so the project is not auto-completed, and pull every file off their servers within a day of delivery rather than relying on the 10-day retention.

What I would not do is buy the $27 package for a store selling four-figure products. You will pay the difference later in redraw fees, and you will pay it at the worst possible moment, which is the week a supplier finally approves your dealer application and asks for brand assets in 24 hours.

Both of these companies have been doing this a long time. 48hourslogo’s site says more than 50,000 projects completed since 2009. LogoNerds’ footer says over 70,000 projects completed and carries a copyright line running from 2007. Longevity is not a guarantee of quality, but it does mean neither one is going to disappear mid-project. Pick on the paperwork, not the portfolio, and go build the store. More of how I think about this is on Ecommerce Paradise.

Trevor Fenner

Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.