Contract Comparison

Use the table below to decide which type of contract is right for you. For a more detailed explanation, see the Collection contracts section below the table.

	Collection contracts	Contracts for NFT products
Used for	NFT collection drops	Building NFT-enabled apps
Minting done by	First buyer	Developer
Minting transaction fee paid by	First buyer	Developer
Cost to launch a 5,000 NFT collection	FREE	$0.075 per minted NFT (see Pricing)
Number of NFTs	Max # of NFTs fixed when contract created	NFTs can be added any time
Tradable on marketplaces (e.g. OpenSea)	✅ After first user has paid & minted the NFT	✅ Immediately after minting
Whitelist/Pre-sale	✅	Possible with custom code
Royalties	✅	✅
Implementation
Deploying a contract	REST API call: Deploy an NFT collection contract	REST API call: Deploy a contract for NFT products
Minting an NFT	Web3 call to on-chain contract	REST API call: Customizable minting
Minting method usually called from	Collection website	Any app or script

Collection contracts

In contrast to contracts for NFT products, collection contracts have the following important features and limitations.

Number of NFTs

The total number of NFTs is fixed upon contract deployment (see max_supply argument).

Minting

Once a collection contract is deployed, before NFTs can be traded on marketplaces like OpenSea, they must be minted.
NFTs in the collection are minted at time of first purchase, for a cost of mint_price.
The minting call must be made directly against the contract; this cannot be done through NFTPort. The developer typically creates a minting website for buyers where they can mint by signing transactions and paying with their Metamask wallet.

Minting price and transaction fee

The minting transaction fee (gas fee) is paid by the first buyer of the NFT, not the developer.
The balance of prices paid for NFTs is available for the owner of treasury_address to withdraw.
Both the minting price and transaction fee are paid in the chain's native token (MATIC for contracts deployed to Polygon).