This is a list of sites and services that don't ban their usage in affiliation to adult content. It's important to not that each site, service, platform, or business may have different limits. Additionally, some sites don't ban porn but do have "obscene content clauses". It is possible such clauses could be extended to adult content given company or governmental opinion. Other sites openly allow/tolerate porn but are known to be hostile towards it's adult creators. Any such case will be noted. Lastly, this list is meant to document what I and other creators have found out in the wild.
For a list of companies, sites, and services that have openly ban porn, check out "No Porn Allowed".
Additionally, if you have a GitHub account and want to propose an addition, click here!
Same disclaimer as before: this list is very much US centric. I am an American artist and game dev. As such, this list contains either US or Global policies. If these sites have a different stance for your country, please let me know here or on twitter (@QwaxiLixard). Moreover, I cannot exam every site that exist, so this list will always be non-exhaustive. If there is any site you feel should be added, feel free to send me a message.
Additionally, I would like to say that this list does not mean these sites are "safe forever into the future" just that you might be safe for now. I highly recommend you keep your own personal backups of any work you do and keep those backups in multiple places. Most of these place are still a company or privately owned service at the end of the day. If throwing you under the bus makes more money, be ready to be thrown under that bus. Moreover, this list can be invalidated at a moment's notice. So, any help to keep this up-to-date would be greatly appreciated.
Finally, any thing marked with :computer: are tools that provided the ability to host your own service. Some may come with optional 1st party support others may not. The value in this is that you can easily migrate between services or create your own. Also, none of this is legal advice. I'm not lawyer. I'm just tired of digging through Terms of Services and Acceptable Use Policies.
The following list the various services that exist. Each table includes a link (if allowable) to the company/site/service, what degree they tolerate/allow porn, and any potential ticking time bombs.
These are sites and services that facilitate the transfer of money between individuals.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dropp | Tentively allowed | Ambiguous policies similar to paypal. MC/Visa Crackdown. | They are the payment process for Subscrib Star. A site know for hosting everything paypal and patreon kicked off their services. I would not blame you for having... moral issues with this service. |
| PayPal | Hostily Tolerance | It's fucking PayPal | Know to be fast to ban for infractions. Make sure to use invoices at all time and disallow comment from customers. Recent changes may pose challenges for Thailand users. |
| Pay Diverse | Openly Allowed | None / Unknown | They specialize in working with "High Risk" business. They are very opaque as a company and require applying for an account. Additionally, they're US company with unknown international support. |
| Payment Cloud | Openly Allowed | None / Unknown | They specialize in working with "High Risk" business. They seem to support invoicing, however they are very opaque and require applying for an account. Additionally, they're US company with unknown international support. |
| Wave | Obscenity Clause (G. Prohibited Use) | Change of Policies Adult content is deemed obscene by US Government, Canadian Government, or Wave |
Exclusively for US and Canadian users. Support for EU and UK ended December 1st, 2020 |
These are sites and services that facilitate selling content or services.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artconomy.com | Openly Allowed | Currently relies on Stripe | Provides escrow payments for custom commissioned character art. |
| Big Cartel | Openly Allowed | Change of local laws | Big Cartel seems to take an open stance and allows you to sell anything that is legal while also banning hate speech. It is unclear where they draw the line between pornography and obscenity, however. |
Owner of the site has been MIA for quite a while. Services have degraded from abscense. |
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| Itch.io | Openly Allowed | Relies on PayPal, Stripe, and Payoneer. Payoneer is used for direct payout. | A service I regularly use for selling games and comics. They managed to dodge PayPal's scrutiny by proving they require users to sell content with each purchase. Unfortunately money has to pass through PayPal first since Payoneer and Stripe does not allow pornographic businesses. |
| Shopify | Allowed | Site is dependent on payment processors like Stripe and PayPal. | a reply to a forum question by official staff and an official blog post about selling sex toys does seem to suggest that you are allowed to sell adult content. Further more, neither their acceptable use policy nor their Terms of Service seems to have any clause about obscene or pornographic content. Maybe be a replacement for Gumroad. |
| Smashwords | Allowed in Writing Only: "What is your publishing policy regarding sexually explicit scenes, profanity or other material?" | Regulation / Policy Changes | Smashwords appears supportive of erotic writing, but even they note there is external pressure to restrict erotic content. |
| Artistree | Obscenity Clause | Relies on Stripe and Paypal | Allows and welcomes adult art with the exception of obscene works. Their TOS defines pornography as real people engaging in sexual acts on camera. |
These are sites and services that facilitate creating content subscriptions.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| JustFor.Fans (No link; see comment) |
Openly Allowed | Trustability | This site is very opaque and doesn't even feature a real landing page. No terms of service or anything. Might be best to avoid. I don't trust sending people here |
| Pixiv Fanbox | Allowed with Restrictions | Japanese Censorship Laws | Post must comply with Pixiv's requirements and Japanese Censorship requirement. |
| Liberapay | Tentatively Allowed | Built on Stripe and Paypal | It's a small service but is seemingly backed by a company I trust (Bitwarden). Does not come with features like Patreon or SubscribStar. Mostly just a tip jar. |
| OnlyFans | Hostily Allowed | VISA, MasterCard, and OnlyFans itself | Much the same as Patreon, OnlyFans has also rocked the boat recently with little regard for sex workers |
| Patreon | Hostily Allowed | VISA, MasterCard, and Patreon itself | Patreon is listed as Hostily Allowed do to the growing instability of using the platform. This comes from growing pressure from VISA and MasterCard attempting to restrict adult content. |
| SubscribeStar Adult | Openly Allowed | None? | Surprisingly supports direct payouts using bank information. |
Title is self explanitory. Additionally, most instances on the fediverse allow sexual content. Check out some furry focused ones: https://furryfediverse.org/.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreamwidth | Openly Allowed | N/A | Limited image photo hosting. However, they have appeared in court to help protect their users.. I can't think of any stronger allowment than that. |
| Pillowfort | Allowed if marked | N/A | Site relies 100% on community funding. You can signup by wait list of 5$ fee. |
| Itaku | Allowed if marked, No IRL content | N/A | Funding, if you like the site support it on Patreon |
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Itch.io | Openly Allowed | Relies on PayPal, Stripe, and Payoneer. Payoneer is used for direct payout. | A service I regularly use for selling games and comics. They managed to dodge PayPal's scrutiny by proving they require users to sell content with each purchase. Unfortunately money has to pass through PayPal first since Payoneer and Stripe does not allow pornographic businesses. |
| Steam | Allowed | Potential change of policy. | Games cannot contain images of real people. Content must be appropriately labeled and age-gated. Additionally, content cannot violate laws in which its avalaible. Cannot publish content that is "patently offensive" or "intended to shock or disgust". |
These are sites and services that allow you to host images for distributing and embedding
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catbox | Allowed | Funding | This is a popular hosting site for porn creators looking to upload .webms or .mp4s. However, they rely on funding from users which doesn't fully cover the cost. |
| Newgrounds | Allowed, if marked | None | Multimedia Gallery Site, Allows static art, movie format, and games. One of the oldest continuously-operating Gallery Sites, fully independent. |
| PornHub | Dubious Porn Site | VISA, MasterCard, and MindGeek itself. | After their most recent scandal and history of problematic behavior, PornHub is labeled as dubious. Additionally, they have incurred the ire of VISA and MasterCard. |
| RedGifs (No link do to GitHub) |
Pornographic Site | Questionable funding | Multiple pornographic video/gif hosting sites have died in the past. The future of RedGifs is uncertain. |
| Squidge Image Hosting | Allowed | None; Squidge.org is a non-profit affiliated with OTW. | Squidge.org is a non-profit designed for fandom hosting but allows original works associated with online communities like furry. Its image hosting service specifically has an obscenity clause. |
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Picarto | Openly Allowed | None / Unknown | Streams must be marked as NSFW. See Section 14 of their TOS |
| Piczel.tv | Openly Allowed | None / Unknown | Streams must be marked as NSFW. See Section 9 of their TOS |
| Pomf.tv | Allowed, no IRL content | None / Unknown | Allows all adult art. Also offers individual user galleries. |
These are sites and services that help automate sending emails to customers and fans.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Convert Kit | Obscenity Clause | Adult content is deemed obscene by US law or Convert Kit | Section 8 Termination Policy of their TOS has an obscenity clause |
| Goodbit | Allowed | None / Unknown / Change of Policy | Has no anti-porn clause and no obscenity clause |
These are sites and services that facilitate the hosting of source code repositories for developers.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitLab | Obscenity Clause | Porn being deemed obscene by US Law or GitLab's opinion. | I use this for hosting backup of my game and tracking changes. They don't openly ban adult content, but I don't dare make anything public. |
| 💻 Gitea | Self-Hosting | None | One of many self-hosting git service toolkits |
| 💻 Gogs | Self-Hosting | None | One of many self-hosting git service toolkits |
These are sites and services that let you organize your notes and planning.
| Company/Product | Degree of Support | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| :computer: Joplin | Tentatively Allowed Self Hosting |
Change of Policy None, you own this solution |
Joplin is a rich text editor that allows you to synchronize your notes with a variety of cloud storage backends. Including ones you own/control. Site has no TOS or Use Policy. |
| Evernote (Only Private Notes) | Tentatively Allowed | Change of Policy | Evernote allows for private notes to contain "objectionable content", however public notes cannot |
| Simplenote | Tentatively Allowed | Change of Policy | Simple note provides a minimalistic synchronization service between devices. Their TOS is extremely brief. |
| Standard Notes | Allowed | N/A | Policy does not prohibit adult content. It does prohibit content that violates US law. However, notes are E2E encrypted so they can't know the contents without you leaking them. |
These are services that let you host wiki sites for cateloging community curreated information.
| Company/Product | Degree of Support | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miraheze | Anything allowed by UK Law | Changes to UK Law | None |
These are sites and services that let individuals or groups communicate with others or their members.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💻 Element | Their TOU doesn't mention anything regarding pornographic content. | None that I can think of other than a change to the TOU. | The homeserver is open source and self-hostable. |
| Discord | Allowed | Discord | I was expecting to place discord into the Openly allowed category, but up until 2018 their TOS disallowed pornography. |
| Telegram | Allowed | External Regulation | Telegram's iOS application has restrictions around NSFW channel. Additionally, their payment API is unable to be used. |
| 💻 Matrix | Self-Hosting | None | Secured with End-to-End encyption. Free and Open Source. Your space can be owned by you. |
These are sites and services that provide web-based ability to back up files and data.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dropbox | Allowed | None / Unknown / Change of Policy | Neither the TOS or the Acceptable Use Policy mention porn being banned. Additionally, they lack an obscenity clause |
| MEGA | Obscenity Clause (15.7.4) | Porn being deemed obscene by New Zealand Law or MEGA's opinion. | A lot of creators use them for hosting porn. They are likely safe for the time being. |
These are sites and services that provide cloud-based writing tools for collaboration, sharing, or storage.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grammarly | Allowed | None / Unknown / Change of Policy | Grammarly does not have an anti-porn clause nor an obscenity clause in their TOS. Tho, the proofreading AI can be a bit untrustable. |
| ProWritingAid | Allowed | None / Unknown / Change of Policy | ProWritingAid does not have an anti-pron clause nor an obscenity clause in their TOS. |
These are sites and services that enable building cloud based applications, services, or facilitate hosting of websites.
| Company/Product | Degree of Usage | Potential Time Bombs | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | Allowed (?) | None / Unknown / Change of Policy | Surprising Amazon doesn't even include an obscenity clause in their AUP. It is refreshingly short. |
| Capsul | Openly Allowed | None | Capsul is hosted by a hacker collective, who operate as a non-profit in the united states. A portion of the money they make goes out to other, hacker groups. They're sweet folks. |
| Cloudflare | Allowed | None / Unknown / Change of Policy | Acceptable Hosting Policy |
| Linktree | Tentatively Allowed | Change of Policy | Section 7 Acceptable Use, Clause (K) states you cannot include sexual content on your page itself nor your account itself. Links to and from an NSFW Twitter should be fine, but describing what you create wouldn't. Link to TOS |
| NearlyFreeSpeech.net | Openly Allowed | None | They will host anything, as long as it's legal, but unfortunately this DOES include fascists etc. They try to make up for this by spending all the money they make from such projects on organizations which oppose the goals of them. You can read up on this in their FAQ: search for "MFFAM" |
| Neocities | Allowed | None / Unknown / Change of Policy | While obscenity is mentioned, it is only with regards to state mandated obscenity laws. Should be fine for US usage for the time being |