OnlyFans brings more revenue per employee than NVIDIA, Apple, Tesla etc. combined [OC]

49 comments

1. Full report on OnlyFans valuation and its crazy financials [here](https://assets.multiples.vc/content/OnlyFans-8B-Valuation-Deep-Dive-May-2025.pdf).

   The data was compiled by us using public companies database [Multiples.vc](http://multiples.vc/) as well as public sources (Yahoo, Reuters, LinkedIn, TechCrunch).

   For a fair disclosure, OnlyFans has 42 FTEs but does hire hundreds of contractors worldwide, mostly to their safety & compliance teams. This chart takes into account FTEs only, across all companies.

   Disclaimer: I’m a founder of [Multiples.vc](http://multiples.vc/), we’re a tech valuation multiples database.

2. Now run the same numbers counting all their “content creators” as employees.

3. Are you counting the people selling amateur porn as employees? Seems like apples to oranges.

4. They’re in talks to be bought by a consortium led by Forest Road Company (who has Kevin Mayer on their board, which is interesting) for $8bn. Crazy

   Edit: spelling

5. This is idiotic. They are counting the creator revenue and just the employee base.

6. Hiring contractors over employes doesn’t make you any more efficient though

7. Does OnlyFans count the gross amount they get from subscribers as revenue? I’m sure their auditors have looked at it but it reminds me of the accounting controversy with [groupon ](https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2012/04/03/groupon-accounting-scandal-and-were-surprised/)back in 2011. They were including amounts received that were due immediately to retailers as revenue and got in trouble for it.

8. All this chart is really telling us is that they have shifted all of their work to independent contractors (and obviously content creators.) It doesn’t really say anything about the profitability or revenue of the company at all. And it’s also almost certainly a bad thing that they shift all of this work to contractors, who are usually less well compensated for their work.

   The chart calling this “revenue efficient” is a really effed up description of what’s going on here.

9. what was the original concept of onlyfans? just a way to support creators?

10. For those of you who are referencing the lack of creator costs, the way this makes sense in my head is to think of OF like eBay or Amazon and not like an actual store. Onlyfans is only the platform and that platform makes bank.

11. revenue isn’t as meaningful as profit, but I imagine OF is still quite high in that regard.

12. Surprised Valve isn’t on this list because of Steam.

    Edit: Nevermind, Valve is still a private company.

13. So what’s preventing competition? Seems like an obvious target.

14. Gabe Newell would like to have a word with you

15. People keep accusing this chart of comparing apples to oranges, so let’s compare apples to apples. OnlyFans is a livestreaming site. So is Twitch. How do they compare?

    Twitch had $1.8 billion in revenue last year, and after several rounds of layoffs their workforce numbers around 900ish employees. That’s $2 million per employee, less than a tenth of what OF brings in per employee.

16. Cursor at #3 is kinda crazy

17. Valve is arou d 19mil without this gross revenue divided across perminant employee nonsense shown here. Pretty sure OF is actually quite a bit below 19mil when the data is anaylsed correctly.

18. They’re understaffed and it explains why their site is slow as shit

19. This is only for companies with public financials.

20. OF allowed every single trailer trash a chance, and the belief, that someone was actually interested in them enough to pay for it.

21. Tether brings in over 80 million per employee so it’s technically the most profitable in that regard

    https://www.chaincatcher.com/en/article/2168481

22. Pretty sure Tether blows this out of the water. But then again im assuming onlyfans is fully legal

23. Weird that valve is not cracking the list, they have so few employees and make so much money

24. Huh, I thought Steam was the leader, now I’m wondering how they compare. (I mean, they both have millions of content creators which don’t count as employees, obviously)

25. I wouldn’t have used the phrase “and no one comes” in the same sentence referring to OnlyFans.

26. Now add in Netflix employee data.

27. Porn makes a lot money…..news at Eleven!

28. This just feels a massive ad for your website and you’ve intentionally chosen an apples and oranges comparison as rage bait to boost engagement.

29. platforms is the most profitable, to be more precise, monopolistic platforms

30. Marketplaces can generate massive revenue with little effort from employees, especially when they don’t deal in physical goods.

31. Well yeah. When everyone actually producing and marketing your product is a contractor, you can make a lot of money with very few W-2 employees. Their actual employees are what. A C-suite, a small legal team, a database admin, and a front end guy?

32. Pretty sure they net a lot less, though. They’re basically a pass-through for contractors. They take a 20% cut, which is much lower than Twitch/Youtube/TikTok

33. I shudder to think how many hackers are constantly probing their infrastructure for access points.

34. Revenue per employee is a dogshit metric when 90% of their staff is contractors.

    YT would top that list too if it weren’t part of Alphabet.

35. sorry but is this comparison solely big tech? there are a ton of public companies between amazon and nvidia and infinitely more private companies. palantir for example, or maybe a private tech service with passover like valve or even PH for a more real comparison

36. Have the employees of the other nine considered taking the jump and making some real money? The couch is calling

37. Yeah but don’t ever use OF. It’s nearly all scammers and the company doesn’t care

38. What constitutes an “employee” though? Surely the average for content providers isn’t $37M and without content providers they don’t have a company.

39. This got me curious, so I looked up the NBA and got about 10m per employee.

    This assumes my super quick googling reached the correct numbers, though.

40. They sure promote here enough. Seems like half the bots here are a marketing team for OF.

41. OP, could you explain your choice to compare OnlyFans to tech companies?

    This seems like showing the top speeds of various football players, and then sticking Usain Bolt on the list too.

42. Too bad it is only public companies. The swiss/dutch company [Vitol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitol) would blow them out of the water with a revenue of 200 million per employee. (331 billion revenue with 1600 employees)

43. >OnlyFans brings more revenue per employee than NVIDIA, Apple, Tesla etc. combined

    Combined is actually less impressive than NVIDIA alone, because it’s a per-employee statistic. Including the other companies would just lower NVIDIA’s average.

44. I mean… I don’t think OnlyFans needs many employees. They don’t “make” anything like Nvidia or Apple do. That’s why their revenue per employee is so high, most of the revenue comes from independent creators and they have few employees. It’s kinda like a bank in a sense, they simply intermediate a service.

45. This isn’t a valuable way to measure success. This is just per employee. So what if OF makes a boatload per employee, we need the costs of running OF. How much are they paying to process payments, run the site, fix bugs. A valuable way to measure success is profit vs cost. How much does each dollar they spend generate in revenue?

46. “I think we should be able to watch a LITTLE porn at work!”

47. Per employee is a fairly meaningless statistic here.

48. Craigslist is missing from this chart. ($13M per employee)

49. The real answer is Tether. ~100m rev/employee.

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