Well America, we’ve done it again. Despite much hand-wringing about needing to protect the youths from the evils of porn, and needing to “save the internet” from the thing people use it for most—other than cat pictures, obviously—Americans have spent roughly $2.64 billion on OnlyFans alone thus far in 2025. That breaks down to roughly $7.9 million per day, $237 million per month, and $91 per second, give or take. I’ll give you all a moment to be impressed at my ability to punch numbers into a calculator while I daydream about which senators who chastised our collective TikTok use were anonymously tipping their favorite creators amounts in the triple digits.
So here’s the deal: with age-verification laws being passed left and right, payment processors deciding that now was the time to clutch their pearls, and app stores in the US pretending that adult content creators don’t actually exist, the internet was supposed to be about as spicy as a New England Presbyterian potluck. Every system online was working overtime to try and make adult content harder to find and access, but we the gooners persisted. One would think we’d have figured out by now that sexual repression doesn’t actually repress shit, but I digress.
Americans have been spending on their spank-bank content like the apocalypse is thirst-powered. Since 2024, there was a 1.95% increase in OnlyFans spending despite the big “crackdown energy” we were seeing in legislative chambers. A rough numbers estimate has per-capita spending at $7.73 per American, but not every American is actually haunting the digital red-light district, so let’s say that it’s closer to $77,334 per 10,000 residents. That’s roughly what most school districts budget for 3-ish students, but the tech support looks WAY different.
Because I know you’re just as nosy as I am, we’re going to talk about which cities bear the most responsibility for bankrolling OnlyFans’ GDP. Atlanta, Georgia, is actually the global leader in OnlyFans spending, dropping $525,475 per 10,000 residents. Orlando comes in second in the nation after forking out roughly $466,430 per 10,000 residents, and Miami takes the bronze with $374,921 per 10,000 residents. Those three cities are the heavy hitters, but the national average is actually much lower (think: $77,334 per 10,000 citizens). So basically, Atlanta’s the strip-club capital and the spicy-subscription capital, and good god these guys are thirsty. Orlando gives off the vibe of being the most wholesome city on Earth, but it’s actually (secretly) one of the freakiest, and Miami is still and always where tan lines and budgets go to die.
Full disclosure: money spent on OnlyFans isn’t just for nudes and explicit content. When people spend money on OnlyFans, they’re spending money on company and connection. Creators on OnlyFans offer fitness content, chat services, PG-13 flirtation, storytelling, kink education, and custom attention that you can purchase for the low cost of a subscription fee. Courtesy of widespread loneliness, need for convenience, and dating-app fatigue, they’re making good money. Therapy can take upwards of six weeks to book, but OnlyFans creators frequently reply in 10 minutes and have a knack for reminding you that you’re more than your credit card balance.
So… what does this mean for creators? Well, while the mainstream media still tries to relegate them as “fringe” members of the working public, $2.64 billion suggests that they’re actually a vital part of the major consumer market. OnlyFans’ 20% cut still leaves billions of dollars going directly to the workers creating the content that’s being consumed—and it’s significant to note that these workers are mostly women (including single mothers), queer people, and people who have been pushed out of traditional jobs. However, there are still politicians trying to make any form of intimate digital connection go poof, so creators are still having to work around crackdowns, fun banking rules that catch them by surprise, and platform instability. But the spending shows that their audience is still showing up for them despite the hurdles. It’s almost like a hydra sort of situation, where every time a lawmaker tries to “shut it down,” three Reddit threads pop up helping fans find their faves in whatever new location they’ve had to migrate to.
Here’s the deal: sex work is mainstream work whether politicians want to admit it or not. OnlyFans has become a major coping mechanism for people dealing with stress, for those who need connection and attention, and a large source of curiosity satisfaction for people looking to learn—whether the topic of said curiosity is kink, wellness, or any other host of topics that can be tricky to Google with reliability. Digital intimacy has become an actual budget line item for many people, proving that you can yell at people to “log off” all day, but bank statements prove that people are gonna do otherwise.
Despite the best efforts of the pearl-clutchers in legislation, Americans are still spending oodles of money on OnlyFans—friendly reminder that Atlanta alone spent $525,475 per 10,000 residents, while the national total works out to that $7.9 million per day—because people need what they’re buying there. Basically, if you really want OnlyFans to go away, you’re gonna have to tackle low wages, high rent, and chronic loneliness. Until those issues are solved, that $91-per-second habit ain’t going nowhere.
