For creators · 18+

OnlyFans Calculator: Tax, Earnings and Fees, and What a Month Actually Leaves You

Every other OnlyFans calculator multiplies your revenue by 0.8 and calls it income. That skips the two deductions that decide whether the month worked: self-employment tax at a flat 15.3%, and the price ceilings OnlyFans publishes on what you can charge in the first place. This one runs all three.

What the numbers really are The tax nobody calculates

Last updated August 2026. Adults 18+ only. Platform fees quoted from the OnlyFans Terms of Use and Help Center, tax rates read from irs.gov and ssa.gov on 19 August 2026. This is published-rate arithmetic, not tax advice.

20%

Taken from every fan payment, per the OnlyFans Terms of Use

15.3%

Self-employment tax, charged on 92.35% of your profit

$3 to $100

The published band for a pay to unlock message or post

Calculator

Earnings, fees and tax

Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Paying subscribers

Price each ($)

Unlocks per month ($)

Tips per month ($)

Platform fee

Your rate (%)

Expenses per month ($)

Income tax bracket

The bracket you pick is applied to all profit, so the figure does not model the standard deduction. A creator whose only income is this page will usually owe less income tax than shown, and the self-employment line will not change.

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Adults 18+ only. Verification required.

How much does OnlyFans take, and what is left after tax?

OnlyFans takes 20% of every fan payment. Its Terms of Use say so in one sentence: "Our Fee is calculated as 20% of the total Fan Payment and will be deducted from each Fan Payment." The phrase that matters is "each Fan Payment", because the fee is applied per transaction as it lands, not to a monthly total after your costs. A $9.99 subscription nets $7.99. A $100 unlock, the largest single sale the platform allows, nets $80.

The 80% you keep is gross receipts, not income. Subtract your business expenses to get profit, then the IRS takes self-employment tax at 15.3% on 92.35% of that profit, and federal income tax applies on top at your marginal rate. Nothing is withheld for you, so the whole bill has to be funded out of payouts you have already received and probably already spent.

Worked through: a creator grossing $5,000 a month with $500 of monthly expenses keeps $4,000 after the platform fee, has $3,500 of profit, owes about $494 a month in self-employment tax, and, in the 12% bracket, roughly another $390 in income tax. The month ends at about $2,600. That is 52% of what fans actually paid, and it is the number worth planning around.

The published OnlyFans numbers every calculation starts from

These are not estimates. Each one is published by OnlyFans in its Terms of Use or Help Center, and each was checked against the source. The ceilings are the part most earnings estimates ignore, and they cap the top of any projection you build.

What	Published figure	Why it changes your math
Platform fee	20% of every fan payment	The Terms of Use state that "Our Fee is calculated as 20% of the total Fan Payment and will be deducted from each Fan Payment". Subscriptions, unlocks and tips are all cut at the same rate.
Subscription price	$4.99 to $50 per month	A free page is also allowed at $0.00. The widely repeated $49.99 ceiling is a rounding somebody invented; OnlyFans publishes $50.
Pay to unlock message or post	$3 to $100	Identical limits for a locked message and a locked post. A $100 unlock is the largest single sale OnlyFans permits, and it nets $80.
Tips	$3 to $100, then $200	The $200 ceiling only applies after four months on the platform. Tips are cut 20% like everything else.
Payout minimum	$20	Your balance has to reach $20 before you can withdraw it, which matters far more to a creator earning $150 a month than to one earning $5,000.
Pending period	Roughly 7 days	Money you earned today is not money you can withdraw today. Plan the tax set-aside around when funds clear, not when the sale happens.

The unlock ceiling is the one that quietly shapes a business. A creator who wants to sell a $250 custom cannot do it in one transaction, so the sale gets split across several unlocks, which multiplies the chargeback exposure on a single order. The published limits are set out in full on our OnlyFans PPV pricing page.

The tax nobody puts in an OnlyFans tax calculator

Self-employment tax is the reason a creator's take-home surprises them in April. It is flat, it starts at $400 of net earnings, and it is charged before income tax rather than instead of it. Every figure below was read from irs.gov and ssa.gov on 19 August 2026.

Rule	Figure	Source, quoted
Self-employment tax rate	15.3%	IRS: "The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%. The rate consists of two parts: 12.4% for social security ... and 2.9% for Medicare".
Share of net earnings it applies to	92.35%	IRS Topic 554: "Generally, the amount subject to self-employment tax is 92.35% of your net earnings from self-employment".
Filing threshold	$400	IRS: you must pay self-employment tax if "net earnings from self-employment ... were $400 or more". There is no small-earner exemption above that.
Social Security wage base, 2026	$184,500	SSA contribution and benefit base table. Above it the 12.4% half stops. The 2.9% Medicare half applies to everything.
Additional Medicare tax	0.9%	IRS: applies above $200,000 single, $250,000 married filing jointly, $125,000 married filing separately.
Deduction you get back	Half the SE tax	IRS: "You can deduct the employer-equivalent portion of your self-employment tax in figuring your adjusted gross income". It reduces income tax, never the SE tax itself.

Two details are worth internalizing. First, the 92.35% adjustment means the effective self-employment rate on profit is about 14.13%, not 15.3%. Second, the IRS page that publishes the rate has not been updated for the current wage base, so the $184,500 figure in the table comes from the SSA's own contribution and benefit base listing instead. Below that number you pay the full 15.3%. Above it, only the 2.9% Medicare portion continues, plus 0.9% more once you clear $200,000 single or $250,000 filing jointly.

None of this is withheld. The platform pays you gross of tax, which is why creators who treat a payout as spendable income end up funding a five-figure bill out of next year's earnings. The mechanics of paying it through the year are covered in our guide to quarterly estimated taxes for creators, and the forms you will actually receive are explained in the 1099 and W-9 guide.

What the same $5,000 month leaves on each platform

Platform fee only, before expenses and before tax, so the columns are comparable. Rates marked unverified could not be confirmed from the platform's own published documentation, so treat those rows as reported rather than established.

Platform	Published cut	$5,000 gross leaves	Rate confirmed?
OnlyFans	20% on everything	$4,000	Yes, from the source
Fansly	20% on everything	$4,000	Yes, from the source
Fanvue	15% for 12 months, then 20%	$4,250	Yes, from the source
Clips4Sale	40% on clip sales, 20% on tips	$3,000	Yes, from the source
iWantClips	40% clips, 30% PPV messages, 20% tips	$3,000	Yes, from the source
ManyVids	Reported 40% on vids, 20% on customs and tips	$3,000	No, reported only
LoyalFans	Reported 20%	$4,000	No, reported only
JustForFans	Reported 20%, 15% for exclusive performers	$4,000	No, reported only

A clip store taking 40% is not automatically worse than a subscription site taking 20%. Clip buyers arrive searching for a category and pay without following anybody, so the higher fee buys distribution a subscription platform does not provide. The comparison that matters is fee times the sales each place can actually produce for your niche, which is the argument laid out on our OnlyFans competitors page.

How to build an earnings estimate that survives contact with reality

1. Start from renewals, not signups

A subscription platform pays you on rebills, and rebills fall on each fan's own anniversary date. A month with 40 new subscribers and 40 lapsed ones is a flat month. Estimate from the number of fans who will still be paying in 30 days.

2. Model unlocks separately

For most working creators the locked message, not the subscription, is the larger line. One $60 unlock is worth six $9.99 subscriptions, and it does not renew, so it has to be earned again next month. Model it as sales per month, not as a rate.

3. Put real expenses in

Lighting, camera, costumes, lube, laundry, the phone plan, the accountant, the promo budget, the percentage of rent for a room used only for shooting. Every one of them reduces both the income tax and the self-employment tax, which is why the expense box moves the take-home number more than most people expect.

4. Set the tax aside on payout day

Not at year end. Move the set-aside the day the payout clears the seven day hold, into an account you do not spend from. Creators who miss quarterly deadlines are usually not short of money in April; they are short of money that is still there in April.

Where this platform sits in the same calculation

We will not put a made-up rate in the table above to make ourselves look better. What we can say is what the fee is attached to. On OnlyFans the 20% buys you an audience that already has a card on file, and a policy that bans specific legal kinks: urine, feces, extreme bondage and anything reading as non-consent. If your work sits in one of those categories, the effective cut is 100%, because the account gets removed and the catalog goes with it.

This is an explicit-first platform. Hardcore is the product rather than an exception, every performer is verified, 2257 records are held against the upload, and the rules that apply to your account are published rather than discovered during an appeal. Run the numbers with that in the frame: a fee you can predict on a catalog that stays online beats a slightly smaller fee on a catalog that can be deleted by a policy you did not know existed.

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Questions creators actually search before running the numbers

How much does OnlyFans take from your earnings?

Twenty percent of every fan payment. The Terms of Use put it as "Our Fee is calculated as 20% of the total Fan Payment and will be deducted from each Fan Payment", so the cut applies separately to a subscription, an unlock and a tip as each one lands rather than to a monthly total.

How much can you make on OnlyFans?

There is no published average, and any specific figure you see is one agency describing its own creators. What is fixed is the ceiling on each sale: $50 a month per subscriber, $100 per unlock, $200 per tip after four months. Your realistic range is subscriber count multiplied by those caps, times 0.8.

How much can you make on OnlyFans per month?

Take your paying subscribers, multiply by your subscription price, add the unlocks and tips you can honestly expect, then remove 20%. From that, remove self-employment tax at 15.3% of 92.35% of your profit, plus income tax. A $5,000 gross month with $500 of expenses leaves roughly $2,600 to $3,000 after federal tax for most single filers.

How much can you make on OnlyFans starting out?

In month one, most creators are working with a handful of subscribers, which means the $20 payout minimum matters more than the 20% fee. Four subscribers at $9.99 is $39.96 gross and $31.97 after the fee, so the first practical milestone is clearing the withdrawal threshold, not the tax threshold.

How much can you make on OnlyFans a day?

Daily earnings on a subscription platform are mostly an artifact of when renewals fall, because subscriptions rebill on each fan's own anniversary date rather than on the first of the month. Unlocks and tips are the part you can actually influence day to day, and both are capped at $100 per transaction.

How much tax do you pay on OnlyFans income?

Self-employment tax of 15.3% applies to 92.35% of your net profit, and federal income tax applies on top at your marginal rate. The IRS threshold is low: net earnings of $400 or more trigger the self-employment tax. Set aside roughly 25% to 30% of profit as a working figure and reconcile it quarterly.

Is OnlyFans income taxed as self-employment income?

Yes for almost every creator. You are running a business as a sole proprietor, you report the income on Schedule C, and you calculate the tax on Schedule SE. The platform sends no withholding and takes nothing out for tax, so the entire liability is yours to fund from what lands in your account.

Does OnlyFans take 20% of tips?

Yes. The 20% fee is described as applying to the total fan payment with no carve-out for tips, so a $50 tip nets $40. The same is true of pay to unlock messages and posts, which is why the largest possible single sale on the platform, a $100 unlock, nets $80.

What is the OnlyFans fee calculator actually calculating?

Most of them calculate gross revenue times 0.8 and stop. That is the platform fee only. A number you can plan around also has to remove business expenses, self-employment tax at 15.3% of 92.35% of profit, and federal income tax at your marginal rate. The gap between the two figures is usually 25% to 30% of profit.

How much should I set aside for taxes as an OnlyFans creator?

Self-employment tax alone is about 14.1% of profit once the 92.35% adjustment is applied, so 25% to 30% of profit is a common working set-aside for a creator in the 10% or 12% federal bracket. Higher earners should use their actual marginal rate. Move it to a separate account the day the payout clears.

Do I pay tax on the 20% OnlyFans keeps?

No. The platform fee is a business expense, so your taxable income is what you received, not what fans paid. If your 1099 or platform statement reports gross fan payments, deduct the fee on Schedule C rather than reporting the smaller number and leaving the difference unexplained.

What is a realistic OnlyFans earnings estimate for a new creator?

Build it from the caps rather than from a headline. Twenty subscribers at $12 is $240 gross, $192 after the fee, and roughly $135 to $150 after tax on a full year at that rate. Unlocks move that number far faster than subscriber count does, because each one can be worth eight times a subscription.