The average is nearly twice the median, and the gap says more about the business than either number.
The average adult creator in a 2025 industry survey earned about $58,700 from adult work. The median creator earned $30,000.
Both figures are accurate, and they describe different people. The distance between them is the most useful thing the survey offers anyone trying to understand what a creator page represents: a few large incomes lift the average, while the middle of the field earns a good deal less.
SWR Data ran its 2025 State of the Creator survey in the fall of 2025, with more than 550 adult creators responding. The authors say it most accurately represents creators in the US and UK, and to some extent Western Europe.
Two details of method matter. The $58,700 average leaves out creators who earned nothing in the past year, which pushes it up. And the write-up does not break income out by platform, so the figures describe adult creators broadly rather than OnlyFans specifically.
The authors also flag a limit of their own. Higher-end earners are underrepresented, they say, because successful creators tend to work with managers and are harder for a survey to reach. Of the two headline numbers, the average is the one most likely to be understated.
Tenure explains much of the spread. New creators in the sample averaged $16,000. Those with five or more years in the industry averaged more than $74,000.
That is a gap of more than four to one between a creator's first year and a settled career. It also means the median can shift with how many newcomers happen to be in the sample.
Among respondents, 51 percent earned income outside the adult industry. Only 35 percent said they were entirely dependent on adult work. For those who earned exclusively from adult work, the median rose to around $50,000.
Read together, the figures describe a business with a large part-time layer. For many respondents, adult work sits alongside another job or income stream rather than replacing it.
The wider economy offers a reason this is not surprising. The Federal Reserve's household survey for 2025, released in May 2026, found that 63 percent of adults could cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or its equivalent. It also found that 42 percent were concerned about finding or keeping a job, up from 37 percent a year earlier. The Fed did not ask about adult work. The figures simply show why a second income is an ordinary choice.
The part-time layer is visible to anyone browsing. Readers who want to see how creators present a free-to-follow page can look through a directory of free amateur girls, which indexes accounts by category.
The survey figures apply to the field as a whole. They do not describe any individual page, and a listing says nothing on its own about what a creator earns.
Set against the largest earnings stories, a $30,000 median is a more modest picture. It is also a more representative one. The typical creator in this survey is part-time or newly arrived, earns somewhere below the average, and has a second source of income.
By the authors' own account the top of the market is underrepresented in their sample. The average is the figure most likely to move when it is corrected, and the median is the number that describes where most of the people who answered actually sit.