How OnlyFans Built a Robust, Privacy-First Age Assurance System with Ondato
OnlyFans is a UK-based adults-only digital media platform with over 4.6 million creator accounts and 377 million fan accounts worldwide. The platform’s mission is to empower its community of creators and fans.
OnlyFans is an inclusive platform with a diverse creator community, including artists, musicians, comedians, athletes, and adult content creators. OnlyFans creators are free to create and share content with their fans as long as it complies with the company’s Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.
This commitment to freedom of expression is balanced with rigorous safety standards: all creators and fans must be 18+ years old to access, view, or post content on the platform.
This is the story of a successful partnership between Ondato and OnlyFans that began in 2020 and continues to shape how the platform balances safety, privacy, and creator experience.
The Challenge
Since its inception, OnlyFans has grown rapidly, welcoming over 4.6 million creator accounts – a number that continues to grow each year.
But with this growth comes responsibility, which is why OnlyFans has invested heavily in safeguards to protect its users and the wider community. As such, OnlyFans does not allow any user to share content on the platform without first verifying their age and identity through a comprehensive onboarding process.
That’s why finding a reliable age verification partner was a critical priority.
“User safety has and will always be foundational to how OnlyFans operates. That means ensuring that every creator is verified as over 18+ and interacting in a safe, compliant environment,” said OnlyFans.
Operating globally adds another layer of complexity. OnlyFans works across multiple jurisdictions, each with its own regulatory requirements. While laws differ from market to market, the platform’s standards remain the same – safety, security, and legality for all creators and subscribers. Meeting those standards required a solution that could support compliance across all their global operations.
The Selection: Why Ondato?
For OnlyFans, choosing an identity verification partner was ultimately about finding a solution that could strengthen trust between them and their users. The platform’s success depends on balancing a seamless creator experience with strict data protection and user safety.
As they put it, “creator trust is built on two things: the quality of their experience on the platform and the integrity with which their data is handled.” This principle guided the entire vendor selection process.
Operating in the creator economy comes with unique privacy challenges. OnlyFans does not monetize user data and uses it solely to run the platform and ensure the safety of its community. As a result, privacy-focused functionality, such as secure verification processes and minimized data exposure, was a critical requirement.
While looking for an IDV and age verification solution, OnlyFans had a clear goal in mind – to prevent unauthorized access without compromising user anonymity or trust.
“We value our commitment to the creators who trust us to protect their businesses and their identities,” said OnlyFans.
Ondato stood out by aligning with these priorities. Rather than offering a one-dimensional solution, it delivered a balanced approach that enabled secure access control while maintaining a seamless onboarding experience.
The Customization
We worked closely with the OnlyFans legal and compliance teams to provide a solution with easy-to-understand and transparent information about the nature of the data we were collecting from users and how that data would be used by Ondato and by OnlyFans.
Alongside OnlyFans developers, we adapted the infrastructure of our solutions to ensure the security of the onboarding process while maintaining user satisfaction.
We protect our data servers and information infrastructure with 24/7 monitoring, comply with legal and regulatory obligations, including the GDPR, and are ISO-certified (ISO/IEC 27001:2013).
Another requirement from OnlyFans, as a global platform, was the ability for the solution to scale and adapt to rapidly changing regulatory environments around the world.
This is how they describe our cooperation in this area: “With Ondato, we are able to maintain a consistent and highly effective baseline across the entire platform while having the flexibility to pivot for local laws.”
The Implementation
The implementation of Ondato’s solution at OnlyFans was designed to be both phased and scalable. The engagement began with a focus on the European market, where regulatory requirements around identity verification and age assurance are particularly stringent, before expanding to support global operations.
From the outset, alignment between the two teams played a critical role.
Early in the process, we managed to streamline integration and reduce friction for the OnlyFans technical team. The implementation process was structured to fit into the company’s existing workflows, allowing teams to move quickly without compromising on compliance or performance.
A key factor behind this smooth rollout was the close collaboration between the teams. As OnlyFans noted, “our Legal and Technical teams have a great working relationship with the Ondato teams.” This cross-functional alignment ensured that both regulatory and technical considerations were addressed in parallel.
One of the standout “wins” during integration was Ondato’s flexibility. This was particularly important in the area of age assurance, where legal requirements continue to shift across jurisdictions.
OnlyFans highlighted: “Their readiness to work directly with our internal teams to design new product features or adjustments is key to complying with developing laws in the age assurance space.” Ondato’s adaptability allowed OnlyFans not only to implement the solution efficiently but also to future-proof it against upcoming regulatory changes.
Overall, the implementation was less about a one-time integration and more about building an ongoing partnership that is capable of evolving alongside both the platform’s growth and the global compliance environment.
The Results
Following Ondato’s solution implementation, OnlyFans achieved a stable balance that allowed it to expand, stay secure, protect its customers’ data, and build user trust.
“We operate at scale with confidence in our verification processes, and have been for several years,” said OnlyFans.
This stability has provided a strong operational foundation for meeting the evolving global regulatory expectations for identity and age verification.
A key outcome of the Ondato-OnlyFans partnership has been improved platform integrity. OnlyFans is able to “keep unauthorized individuals off the platform while giving legitimate creators the confidence to build their businesses in a secure environment.”
Such strong access control without disrupting legitimate users is a significant win resulting from our cooperation.
Importantly, adding strong age verification controls didn’t come at the expense of the company’s growth. “Our user base has continued to grow post-implementation, proving that safety does not have to come at the cost of expansion,” added OnlyFans, demonstrating that robust verification and age assurance can, in fact, help the platform grow, rather than limit it.
And the best thing is that the effectiveness of this approach has also been publicly recognized, with OnlyFans’ model being cited in UK policy discussions.
In 2026, The Financial Times cited OnlyFans as a primary example of how the industry can successfully navigate the transition to highly-effective age assurance, quoting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Secretary for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall, who urged tech companies that: “OnlyFans-style age checks should be social media standard.”
Partnership at a glance
When describing our cooperation, OnlyFans said: “Creators come to OnlyFans because they want a space where they can control their content, their audience, and their monetization in a safe and moderated environment, and our partnership is key to that.”
“Ondato’s tools have reinforced the technical certainty of our onboarding processes and allowed us to have a robust system in place that can navigate global regulation with precision and flexibility.” – OnlyFans
Right now, OnlyFans and Ondato enjoy a stable partnership that, among other things, reinforces the privacy-focused foundation of user safety and helps the platform grow.
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If your platform is navigating similar challenges around identity verification, age assurance, or compliance at scale, Ondato can help.
Get in touch to explore how we can support your growth while keeping your users safe.
