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Creator referral programs compared — all four pay 5%, and that tells you nothing

OnlyFans, Fanvue, Fansly and LoyalFans all pay 5% of a referred creator's earnings. Duration, cap and who funds the commission make the same headline rate worth ten times more on one platform than another.

Published 16 August 2026 Last verified 16 August 2026

Disclosure: some links on this page are referral links. If you sign up through one we may be paid a commission by the platform, at no extra cost to you. We rank platforms on their terms, not their payouts — here is how.

The rate is a decoy

OnlyFans pays 5%. Fanvue pays 5%. Fansly pays 5%. LoyalFans pays 5%.

Every comparison that leads with the commission rate is therefore telling you nothing at all. The rate is a category convention, copied the way the 80/20 split was copied. What actually determines what you earn sits in three columns nobody puts in the headline.

Platform Rate Pays for Cap Paid out of
LoyalFans 5% Reported Lifetime Reported No published cap Reported The platform's cut Reported
Fanvue 5% Official 12 months Official $50,000 per creator Official Sources contradict each other Disputed
Fansly 5% Disputed 12 months Disputed No published cap Disputed Sources contradict each other Disputed
OnlyFans 5% Reported 12 months Reported $50,000 per creator Reported The platform's cut Reported

Variable one: duration, which dominates everything

Take a creator you refer who settles at $4,000 a month — a solid, unspectacular working creator.

At 5% for 12 months, they are worth $2,400 and then nothing, forever.

At 5% for life, they are worth $2,400 a year for as long as they keep working. Five years in, that is $12,000 from the same referral, and it is still paying.

Same rate. Same creator. Five times the money, and rising. Duration is not one factor among several — it is the factor, and it is why LoyalFans ranks first on this page despite being the smallest platform of the four.

Variable two: the cap

OnlyFans and Fanvue both cap at $50,000 per referred creator — 5% of the first $1,000,000 that creator earns. LoyalFans and Fansly publish no cap.

In practice the cap binds rarely: it takes a referred creator earning a million dollars for it to matter. But note which referral it constrains. Referral income concentrates heavily in your best one or two referrals, so a cap applies precisely where the upside is, and nowhere else.

On a twelve-month program the duration binds long before the cap does anyway, which makes the $50,000 figure largely decorative on OnlyFans and Fanvue. It is the twelve months that costs you.

Variable three: who funds it — the one nobody checks

This is the column that decides what you are allowed to say.

If the commission comes out of the platform’s own cut, the creator you refer keeps their full 80% and your link genuinely costs them nothing. You can say so, and it is a strong pitch.

If it comes out of their earnings, saying that is misleading — and in an industry this networked, that is the kind of claim that gets checked.

Where each platform stands:

The Fanvue 36-month claim

Worth addressing directly, because it is everywhere.

A large number of well-ranked review sites state that Fanvue pays referral commission for 36 months. If true, Fanvue would have the best fixed-term program in the category by a factor of three.

Fanvue’s own Creator Referral and Affiliate Policy says 5% of referred creator earnings for 12 months from the referred creator’s registration date, capped at $50,000. Its help centre article says the same thing in plain language: “For every creator you refer, you earn 5% of their earnings for their first 12 months on the platform.”

We go with the platform’s documentation, because that is the version you could actually hold them to. If you have seen 36 months in your own Fanvue dashboard, we would genuinely like to see it — send us a screenshot and we will update this page.

The Fanvue affiliate programme is not what it is reported to be

A related correction. The “up to 50% of fan payments” figure attached to Fanvue circulates as though it were a program a website could join to earn half of fan spend. It is not.

It is a creator-to-creator marketplace. A “promoted creator” publishes an offer; other creators accept it and receive an affiliate link; the commission is paid out of the promoted creator’s own net earnings, at a rate the promoted creator sets, capped at 50% of fan payments and $50,000 in total per promoted creator. A creator can promote a maximum of five others at once, and you need a verified Fanvue creator account to take part at all.

Interesting for creators who cross-promote. Not a route to fan-side affiliate income for anyone else.

Fanvue’s agency referral tier — 5% of a referred agency’s earnings for a year plus 2.5% from agencies they refer — ran as a campaign between 2 February and 16 March 2026, not as a standing program. Confirm it is open before planning around it.

What happened to OnlyFans referrers

This is the case that should shape how you treat every program on this page.

From 2016, OnlyFans advertised its referral commission as LIFETIME, in capital letters. An archived FAQ from January 2017 reads: “You earn 5% (LIFETIME) of all income made by any user that joins OnlyFans.com via your referral URL.” The promise was written into the terms of service at clause 15.2 in around March 2018.

On 1 May 2020, an email announced three changes at once: commission would run 12 months rather than forever, it would be capped at $50,000 per referred creator, and the twelve-month rule would apply retroactively to referrals already made.

On 12 August 2026, two referrers — Alison Hardesty of Huntington Beach, California and Erika Heidewald of Manor, Texas, who between them say they recruited more than 6,700 creators — filed a class action against Fenix International Limited and Fenix Internet LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, case 8:26-cv-02189. More than $5,000,000 is pleaded at stake under the Class Action Fairness Act. The case asks whether a platform can rewrite a commission promise after the partner has already delivered the growth.

Nothing is proven and we take no view on the outcome.

Three rules that follow from this

  1. Screenshot the terms on the day you sign up, and again whenever they change. It is the only evidence you will have, and the people who most needed it in 2020 did not have it.
  2. Never let one program be your only referral income. The creators worst hit were the ones with nothing else running.
  3. Treat “lifetime” as a strong intention, not a guarantee — including LoyalFans’ lifetime, which we rank first precisely because it is currently the best available, not because it is safe.

How to rank them, if you are choosing

If you want the best terms: LoyalFans. Lifetime, uncapped, funded from the platform’s cut, and it pays on referred fans as well as referred creators. The catch is that it is the smallest platform, so each referral takes more convincing.

If you want documented terms on a platform people will actually join: Fanvue. Twelve months, $50,000 cap, credited as a separate balance not subject to platform fees. Resolve the funding question in writing first.

If you want volume: OnlyFans, reluctantly. It is what people search for and what they will actually sign up to, and its terms are the weakest here with the worst track record. Use it to pull traffic; do not depend on it for income.

Fansly: verify in your creator dashboard before you promote it at all. Terms that are not published are terms you cannot plan around.

Common questions

Which creator platform has the best referral program?

LoyalFans, on terms. It is the only one of the four whose commission is credibly lifetime with no published per-creator cap, it reportedly comes out of the platform's own cut rather than the referred creator's earnings, and it also pays a share of what referred fans spend. The trade-off is that LoyalFans is the smallest platform, so referrals are harder to convert.

How much do creator referral programs pay?

All four pay 5% of the referred creator's earnings. The differences are duration — lifetime on LoyalFans, 12 months on OnlyFans and Fanvue, disputed on Fansly — and caps, which are $50,000 per referred creator on OnlyFans and Fanvue and unpublished on the other two.

Does using a referral link cost the creator anything?

It depends on the platform, and this is the question most sites skip. LoyalFans reportedly funds its commission from its own 20% cut, so the referred creator keeps their full 80%. Fanvue's legal policy and help centre contradict each other on the point. Fansly does not document it. Do not tell a creator your link is free to them unless you can point at something that says so.

Can a platform take away a lifetime referral commission?

OnlyFans did exactly that. It advertised the commission as LIFETIME in capital letters from 2016 and wrote it into its terms, then cut it to 12 months and capped it at $50,000 in May 2020, applying the change retroactively. A class action over it was filed in August 2026. The allegations are unproven, but the sequence is why you should screenshot referral terms the day you sign up.

How many platforms should I refer to?

At least two, always. The creators worst affected by the OnlyFans change were those whose referral income came from that one program. Spreading across platforms costs you nothing — referral links are free to hold — and removes a single point of failure from your income.