How we research and rank
How we source, date and rank every figure on this site — and how we handle the fact that we are paid by some of the platforms we review.
The conflict, stated plainly
This site earns money when someone signs up to a creator platform through one of our links. That is a real incentive to recommend whichever platform pays us most, and pretending otherwise would be the least trustworthy thing we could do. Instead, here is the method we hold ourselves to, so you can check whether we are following it.
Every number is sourced and dated
Fee splits, payout thresholds and referral terms all carry a citation and the date we last checked it against that source. Where the platform publishes the figure in its own terms, help centre or legal pages, we mark it Official. Where it is only available through consistent third-party reporting, we mark it Reported. Where sources contradict each other, we mark it Disputed and show the more conservative number.
That last category matters more than it sounds. Fanvue's referral duration is widely republished as 36 months by review sites that copy each other. That was the term for creators who registered before 9 April 2026; Fanvue's current policy pays 12 months on anyone referred since. We go with the platform's current terms and date the change, because the number you can hold them to is the one in force when you refer someone.
We rank on terms, not on payouts
Our platform ordering reflects the deal a creator gets — the split, the payout mechanics, the referral duration and cap, and who funds the commission. It does not reflect what we are paid. The clearest evidence is that OnlyFans, the largest and most searched platform on this site, sits last in our ranking, and that we recommend it anyway on the pages where it genuinely is the right answer.
We treat "lifetime" as an intention, not a guarantee
OnlyFans advertised a 5% referral commission as LIFETIME, in capital letters, from 2016, and wrote it into its terms of service. In May 2020 it cut that to 12 months and capped it at $50,000 per referred creator — retroactively, according to a class action filed in August 2026. Nothing in that case is proven. But it is the reason no page here treats a current commission structure as a permanent one, and why we tell creators to screenshot terms on the day they sign up.
How the price guides work
No platform publishes what creators charge for a custom video or a sexting session, so no market range on a price guide can ever be marked Official. Each range is built from published guides and surveys, every figure that fed it is listed on the page in the source's own units, and the range is marked Reported when those sources broadly agree and Disputed when they contradict each other, in which case we show the end of the range the majority supports.
Platform limits — the floor and cap you can set — are treated like fees: Official when the platform publishes them, Reported when only third parties do. Agency guides are labelled as agency guides, because they describe managed creators with large audiences and run high.
Where we cannot find a citable figure, the page says "not enough public data" rather than averaging the nearest numbers and presenting the result as a rate. The phone call guide currently says exactly that. A number we made up would be indistinguishable from the sites these pages exist to improve on.
What we do not do
- We do not run paid placements. No platform can buy a position, a badge or a kinder verdict.
- We do not publish fabricated earnings screenshots, invented creator testimonials, "results" we cannot evidence, or price ranges we cannot cite.
- We do not hide the disclosure. On every page carrying referral links it sits with those links, alongside the first set of them, as well as in the footer of every page.
- We do not link to a platform's referral program without saying what it pays and who funds it.
Limits worth knowing
Some terms are only visible inside a verified creator account, and platforms change them without notice or announcement. Fansly in particular does not publish its referral terms on a public page, which is why its figures are marked disputed. Treat what your own dashboard says as authoritative over anything on this site, and tell us when the two disagree — corrections are welcome and we publish them.
Re-verification schedule
Every platform page is re-checked against its sources at least quarterly, and immediately when a platform announces a change. The date on each page is the date of the last check, not the date of the last cosmetic edit.
Between audits, an automated job re-reads each platform's public terms, payout and policy pages twice a week and flags any change in wording for a person to review. Changes that move a figure are logged, dated and sourced on the terms tracker, which you can follow by RSS.
See also our full affiliate disclosure.