OnlyFans Three Times Bigger Than MindGeek

The real shift was from anonymous, ad funded porn traffic to verified, creator led spending. OnlyFans makes money when a fan pays a specific creator every month, buys an extra video, or sends a paid DM, then keeps a cut. That model scaled to about $1.3B of revenue in 2023 and $1.4B in 2024, while Aylo, formerly MindGeek, stayed around $450M and carried the baggage of payment shutdowns tied to user generated moderation failures.

• OnlyFans is structurally richer than a tube site because each customer action is a transaction, not just a page view. A subscriber can pay monthly, tip, unlock messages, and buy one off content, which turns fan attention into repeat spend instead of low CPM advertising.
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• The payment gap mattered. Visa says it suspended MindGeek sites with user generated content in December 2020 and had not reinstated them as of August 4, 2022. Mastercard says it terminated use of its products on Pornhub in December 2020 and later suspended TrafficJunky, MindGeek's ad arm.
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• This also changed where creators wanted to work. On Pornhub, value came from uploading clips into a giant free library. On OnlyFans, a creator owns the customer relationship, gets paid directly, and can upsell through feed posts and DMs, which is why the business grew into the clear category leader.
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Going forward, the biggest platforms in adult content should keep looking less like media sites and more like payments and software rails for individual creators. OnlyFans already proved that verified identity, tighter moderation, and direct monetization can compound into both larger revenue and stronger resilience with banks and card networks.