How Much of a Cut Does OnlyFans Take vs Other Platforms?

OnlyFans takes 20% of every fan payment and pays creators 80%, according to OnlyFans' terms of service. In 2026 that's the norm, not the outlier: Fanvue, Fansly, LoyalFans, and Passes also keep 20%. Patreon charges new creators a 10% platform fee plus payment processing. An owned site removes the platform share but adds processing, software, moderation, and support costs.

So the honest answer to how much of a cut OnlyFans takes vs other platforms is that switching tenant platforms rarely changes your margin. Moving from OnlyFans to another 80/20 service changes the product and the audience, not the fee.

Related Fanvue vs Fansly for AI Creators (2026)

The fee scales linearly. At $10,000 in monthly gross fan payments, OnlyFans' share is $2,000. At $50,000 it's $10,000, and at $100,000 it's $20,000. Every dollar of subscriptions, pay-per-view, tips, and paid messages processed through the platform carries the same 20%.

How much of a cut does OnlyFans take vs Fanvue, Fansly, Passes and Patreon?

Fanvue's standard creator earning rate is 80% of gross, a 20% platform fee, and the older 85% rate for new creators has ended, per Fanvue's creator earnings and payouts terms. Fanvue also applies a standard 7-day pending period to earnings, which it can extend to 28 days. Fansly and LoyalFans both use the same 80/20 split.

Passes is the one most often misreported. Plenty of comparison sites list a 10% fee, but Passes' creator terms state plainly that it takes a 20% fee of all credit and debit sales. If you're choosing Passes for a lower cut, check the current terms first.

Patreon works differently. Creators who published a page after August 4, 2025 pay a standard 10% platform fee plus applicable payment and other fees and taxes, while earlier creators may keep legacy 8% or 12% plans. Patreon is built for memberships rather than adult content, so its lower fee isn't available to every creator.

Policy risk is part of the price. In August 2021, OnlyFans announced it would ban sexually explicit content from October 1, then suspended the plan six days later. Nothing in a 20% fee protects you from that kind of change, because the platform, not you, controls the account.

Payout timing is a second, quieter cost. A 20% fee is visible; money sitting in a pending balance isn't. Fanvue's 7-day standard pending period, extendable to 28 days, means a creator growing quickly always has part of last month's revenue tied up. If you run payroll for chatters, editors, or a manager, model the cash gap as well as the fee.

Subscriber access is the third cost, and the hardest to price. On every tenant platform in the table, the fan's account, payment method, and message history live with the platform. When you leave, you take your content and your reputation, but not a billing relationship you can renew with one email.

The real comparison isn't 20% versus 10%; it's renting distribution versus owning the cash flow, the customer data, and the risk.

What an OnlyFans cut costs compared with an owned site

Here's a worked example with stated assumptions. A creator has 2,500 subscribers at $19.99, or $49,975 a month, plus $12,000 in pay-per-view and tips, for $61,975 in monthly gross. OnlyFans keeps $12,395, and the creator receives $49,580.

An owned site replaces the platform share with its own cost stack. For mainstream content, Stripe's standard US card pricing is 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. Stripe doesn't accept adult content, so mature-content sites use high-risk processors at higher rates. The table assumes 10% for that case, plus 1% refund leakage and $4,000 a month in software, support, and moderation.

Under these assumptions, ownership adds about $5,900 a month for a mainstream brand but only about $1,600 a month for a mature-content brand. In the high-risk case, a 5% drop in sales volume after migration cuts net to about $48,400, below the OnlyFans payout. Volume, not the fee, decides the outcome.

The mainstream case looks better because processing is cheaper, but it only applies if your content fits a mainstream processor's rules. A podcast, coaching, or education brand can keep most of the 20% it would have paid a tenant platform. A mature-content brand keeps far less of it, so the strategic argument for ownership rests on audience control and risk, not fee savings alone.

ARPU moves the math more than the fee does. Across the Highlife platform, average revenue per subscriber is $30.23 per month when subscriptions, tips, unlocks, and upsells are combined. Raising ARPU spreads fixed operating costs across more revenue per fan, which is why owned platforms invest in upsell flows rather than fee shopping. You can model your own numbers with our OnlyFans earnings calculator.

Which platform fee is best for a creator-founder?

You should treat a platform fee as a distribution expense when the platform supplies real discovery, and as an infrastructure expense when it mostly supplies checkout and software. OnlyFans, Fansly, and Fanvue are efficient starting points because the account, checkout, and moderation framework already exist.

If you're choosing between tenant platforms, compare the things that actually differ: audience behavior, creator tools, payout timing, and content policy. The 20% fee is a constant across most of them, so it shouldn't be the tiebreaker.

Consider an owned subscription site when your audience already converts, revenue is predictable, and your brand exists beyond a profile page. Highlife isn't the right fit for a hobbyist with a small audience who wants zero setup. For an established creator, compare our creator platform calculator results with any proposal before you commit.

1. Split your current gross into subscriptions, pay-per-view, tips, and paid messages before comparing platform percentages.
2. Calculate net revenue after the platform share, processing, refunds, support, moderation, and acquisition spend.
3. Put a dollar value on subscriber ownership by estimating reactivation revenue and the cost of rebuilding your audience elsewhere.
4. Stress-test any move at 5%, 10%, and 20% lower sales volume for the first six months.
5. Move only when the downside case still beats your current tenant payout.

How much of a cut does OnlyFans take vs other platforms? The 20% answer is accurate and almost universal among tenant platforms in 2026. The question worth your time is what you'd keep if the billing relationship were yours. If the answer is meaningful at your volume, talk to Highlife about launching your own subscription site.