OnlyFans economics statistics

TL;DR

• Paying intensity = 132M / 437M = 30.2%. Seven in ten registered fan accounts did not transact in FY2025.
• Creator activity rate = 2.5M / 5.0M = 50%. Using registered accounts as the denominator halves every average.
• GMV / active fan = $58.83 / year ($4.90 / month). That is the realised spend yield, not a list price.
• Payout / active creator = $2,520 / year. Payout / registered creator = $1,260. Unconditional median registered creator = $0.
• The $7.21 “average subscription” and the $58.83 all-in yield cannot both describe a 12-month retained subscriber. That is the tenure puzzle.

Formulas

Paying intensity = active fans / registered fans = 132,000,000 / 437,000,000 = 30.21%

Effective marketplace ratio = active fans / active creators = 132,000,000 / 2,500,000 = 52.8

Fan spend yield = GMV / active fans = 7,765,000,000 / 132,000,000 = $58.83

Active creator mean = payouts / active creators = 6,300,000,000 / 2,500,000 = $2,520

Platform leverage = GMV / employees = 7,765,000,000 / 47 = $165.2 million

If a tracker still prints “81.6 fans per creator” from FY2024 cumulative accounts, they are a year late and one definition off. The live marketplace in FY2025 was 52.8 active fans per active creator.

The tenure puzzle

Sacra and older industry notes still circulate ~$7.21 as average monthly subscription. Twelve months of that is $86.52 — already larger than the entire FY2025 spend yield per active fan ($58.83), before tips, PPV, or chat. Three interpretations, and they are not mutually exclusive:

1. 132 million is unique payers, not concurrent MRR. Many people paid once. Tenure is a couple of months, not a year.
2. List price is not realised price. Discounts, trials, and $4.99 floors pull ARPU down.
3. Spend is barbelled. A thin layer of whales generates most GMV; the median active fan spends far below $4.90 a month.

A fourth, louder claim — that ~90% of creator earnings come from chat, PPV and custom work — makes the puzzle worse, not better. If subscriptions were only 10% of $7.765B, subscription GMV per active fan would be $5.88 a year: five weeks at $7.21. That is possible, but it should be labelled as a hypothesis, not a census. OnlyCrawl’s conservative read: subscriptions are not the economic core, and average tenure is short. The feed is the hook. The inbox is the till.

ARPU is falling even as GMV rises

FY2024 GMV $7.22B on 377.5M registered fans was $19.13 per registered account. FY2025 GMV $7.765B on 437M is $17.77. Fan accounts grew 16%; GMV grew 7.6%. That dilution is the mature-platform signature: more logins, less money per login. On the active base the picture is stricter and more useful — $58.83 — but we do not have an FY2024 active-fan denominator to compare. If you only remember one growth warning, remember this: headcount growth is outrunning spend growth.

Inequality, restated on the right denominator

Trackers have long said the top 1% of creators take ~33% of payouts and the bottom 50% take ~2%. Those shares were rarely applied to an active base. FY2025 restatement:

The $180 “median” that still circulates is almost certainly conditional on receiving a payout. Mixing that number with a five-million denominator is how the internet invented a labour market that does not exist. 5,076 lifetime millionaires are 0.20% of FY2025 active creators and 0.10% of registered accounts. Get-rich-quick is a marketing sentence. The filing is a power law.

FAQ

Is $2,520 the average OnlyFans salary?

No. It is FY2025 creator payouts divided by active creator accounts. It is not a wage, not median, and not net of management, ads, or tax.

Why is profit per employee a statistic?

Because 47 staff and $714M pre-tax profit is the industrial fact hiding inside an adult website. External moderators (~1,500) are the labour the headcount conceals. See the ownership page.