What Percentage Does OnlyFans Take? The Full Fee Breakdown

OnlyFans takes 20% of everything you earn, and you keep 80%. The same rate applies to every kind of income on the platform. There aren’t any tiers, and it isn’t open to negotiation.

Knowing the number is the easy part. What that 20% means in practice, how it compares with other platforms and how to plan around it take a bit more explaining.

The 20% breakdown by revenue stream

The percentage is the same everywhere, but it’s worth seeing how it plays out for each type of income:

• Monthly subscriptions. A subscriber pays their monthly fee, OnlyFans takes 20% and 80% goes into your balance. If your subscription is set at fifteen pounds, you get twelve pounds per subscriber per month.
• Tips. When a fan tips you on a post or in your DMs, the same 80/20 split applies. A ten pound tip puts eight pounds in your pocket.
• Pay-per-view (PPV) messages. You send locked content with a price on it. When the subscriber unlocks it, you keep 80% of that price.
• Paid posts. Posts behind an extra paywall on top of the subscription work the same way.
• Livestream tips. Tips you get during live broadcasts have the same 20% taken off.
• Referral bonuses. If you refer another creator through the OnlyFans referral programme, you earn 5% of their earnings for the first 12 months, capped at $50,000 per referred creator. OnlyFans doesn’t take its 20% from this, because the referral bonus is separate.

Why does OnlyFans take 20%?

The 20% pays for a lot of things that would cost you far more to handle on your own:

• Payment infrastructure. That means taking card payments from around the world, handling different currencies, and dealing with failed payments and chargebacks. Payment processing alone usually costs a few percent of every sale for a business that handles its own, and adult businesses often pay more.
• Content hosting and delivery. Storing and streaming video is expensive. If you hosted gigabytes of new video every month yourself, the bills would add up fast.
• Platform development. Messaging, subscription management, analytics, discovery features and the mobile apps all need building and maintaining.
• Trust and safety. This covers age verification for subscribers, identity checks for creators, content moderation, DMCA handling and legal compliance in lots of countries.
• Customer support, for subscriber payment problems, creator payout issues, disputes and general questions.

Add up what it would cost to replace all of that yourself, and 20% looks competitive. If you’re earning a few thousand pounds a month, you’d struggle to get the same services for less.

How OnlyFans compares to other platforms

This is what creators keep on the main platforms:

Platform	Creator keeps	Notes
OnlyFans	80%	Flat rate, all inclusive
Fansly	80%	Same structure as OnlyFans
Patreon	90%	For creators joining since August 2025, plus payment processing
YouTube	55%	Ad revenue only
Twitch	50%	Subscription revenue for most streamers
Instagram (Subscriptions)	100% (currently)	Limited features, app store fees can apply, may change

Patreon looks cheaper on paper. But its 10% platform fee for new creators (earlier creators may still be on older plans) comes before separate payment processing fees, and those narrow the gap a lot. On small payments like tips, Patreon’s per-transaction fees can even make it more expensive than OnlyFans in practice.

Strategies to maximise your take-home

The percentage is fixed, so put your effort into growing what you earn before the fee comes off. The more you earn, the more your 80% is worth.

Diversify your revenue streams. Don’t rely on subscriptions alone. Build income from tips, PPV content and paid messages as well, so one quiet stream doesn’t sink your month.

Optimise subscription pricing. Price too low and you need huge numbers of subscribers. Price too high and people won’t subscribe. Look for the price where plenty of people still sign up and each one adds something worthwhile. Try our pricing calculator to work it out.

Use tip menus effectively. A clear tip menu gives fans reasons to spend on top of their subscription. Make it easy to read and tempting. Use our tip menu builder to put one together.

Focus on retention. A subscriber who stays for twelve months pays twelve times as much in subscriptions as one who stays for one. Put effort into keeping the fans you’ve got, instead of always chasing new ones.

Increase per-subscriber revenue. Once someone’s subscribed, every extra purchase (PPV, tips, custom content) goes through the same 80/20 split. Growing what each subscriber spends over the time they’re with you is where a lot of income growth comes from.

Tax: the other percentage you need to know

After OnlyFans takes its 20%, you still owe tax on what’s left. In the UK:

• You pay no Income Tax on the first part of your earnings (your Personal Allowance)
• Basic rate tax is 20% on earnings above your Personal Allowance
• Class 4 National Insurance adds 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, and 2% above that

So in practical terms, a UK-based creator might keep:

• 80% after OnlyFans (the platform fee)
• Then Income Tax and National Insurance on your profit, which usually takes between 10% and 35% of what’s left (depending on your total income and expenses)

That means your take-home from what subscribers pay is often somewhere between 50% and 70%, once platform fees and tax are both counted. Our tax calculator gives you an estimate based on your own expected earnings.

That’s why pricing matters so much. Set your prices knowing that a third or more of each sale often goes on fees and tax.

Can you reduce the 20% fee?

No. OnlyFans doesn’t offer lower rates for high earners, long-standing creators or anyone else. The 20% applies to everyone. Some creators have speculated about special rates for top earners, but OnlyFans has never publicly confirmed anything like that.

The only exception is referral income. You earn 5% of a referred creator’s earnings for twelve months (up to the $50,000 cap), with no extra platform deduction taken from that bonus.

Is it worth it?

For a lot of creators, yes. The alternative is building your own website and handling your own payments, content delivery, DMCA enforcement and customer service. That costs a lot of money or a lot of time, and often both.

OnlyFans gives you a platform fans already know (and some of them browse it), a payment system subscribers are happy to use, and the infrastructure you need to run a content business.

The 20% is what it costs to use all of that. Plenty of creators think it’s worth paying, especially when they’re starting out.

For more on how the fees work in practice, see our companion post on how much OnlyFans takes. And to model your potential earnings with the fee included, use our earnings calculator.