OnlyFans: Everything to Know Before Choosing Your Platform

Sep 9, 2025

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Platform & Audience

OnlyFans is the most prominent subscription-based adult content platform, boasting over 2 million creators and 170+ million users worldwide. Its the household name still when it comes to adult content. It operates like a private social feed: fans subscribe monthly (creators set rates averaging $4.99–$49.99) to access exclusive photos, videos, and posts. However, OnlyFans offers little to no internal discoverability. Meaning there’s no easy way for new users to browse or search for creators. In fact, OnlyFans’ native search tool won’t list adult creators without an exact name or link, due to its privacy/anonymity stance. This means creators largely rely on external promotion (Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to gain subscribers.

Features

OnlyFans provides a variety of monetization and engagement tools. Creators can post a feed of content for subscribers, send pay-per-view (PPV) messages, create custom content, engage in live services such as sexting, receive tips, and even live stream video content to fans. Direct messaging (DMs) is a core feature, allowing one-on-one chats and mass messaging of PPV content to all followers. While OnlyFans supports live streaming and messaging, it lacks more novel features some competitors offer (for example, it does not support multi-tier subscription levels in one profile. Because of this creators must make a separate free page for free content). Its interface is user-friendly but somewhat basic, and some users criticize the site’s content management (e.g. difficulty tracking purchased content or avoiding duplicate buys)(source: one of the many reasons I left the platform).

Payout & Commission

OnlyFans takes a 20% cut of creators’ earnings (80% to the creator). Earnings are held in a pending balance for 7 days after a fan makes a payment. Within that seven days and at any time the purchaser can reverse the payment. This is a chargeback and onlyfans will not protect or cover any chargebacks made by a purchaser. Creators can withdraw funds upon reaching a minimum of $20 in earnings. Withdrawals can be set to manual or automatic (weekly, biweekly, or monthly), and once processed it typically takes ~3–5 business days for the money to reach the creator’s bank. It is not unheard of to take anywhere from 2-5 days even longer. OnlyFans supports payout via bank transfer (ACH), international wire, certain e-wallets (e.g. Paxum), and other methods like Visa direct or virtual credit card transfer. Overall, the payout schedule is reliable, though new creators in some regions face a longer 21-day holding period for their first few months.

Content Policy

OnlyFans allows sexually explicit adult content, but with strict limitations in its Terms of Service. The platform enforces a long list of banned content categories and even filters certain words from messages/posts. For example, violent or non-consensual themes (even as roleplay) are forbidden. These include words like “rape,” “forced,” or “abduction” and even the word “meet” can trigger suspensions. Any suggestion of underage content (e.g. terms like “teen” or “young” in a sexual context) is strictly banned. Fetishes involving bodily fluids are not allowed on OnlyFans; terms like “pee,” “scat,” “vomit,” “blood,” or even “lactation” are banned in content and DMs. Extreme BDSM or harmful acts (torture, asphyxiation, etc.) are similarly disallowed. OnlyFans also prohibits content involving illegal drug use and public sex acts that could be considered indecent exposure. Something to know is that YOU are going to be held responsible for how your DMs are held to thesse terms of service. If a subscriber consistently is sending things that violate the TOS or are pushing you to do so, report, block, be done.

In 2021, OnlyFans infamously announced (and then reversed) a ban on “sexually explicit” material, causing lingering worry among adult creators. While that ban was revoked, it highlighted that OnlyFans’ policies are influenced by payment processor pressures. Today, OnlyFans still supports a broad range of mainstream adult content, but creators need to stay within the platform’s conservative content rules or risk removal.