Pornhub says UK visitors down 77% since age checks came in

Pornhub says the number of UK visitors to its website has fallen by 77% since July, when the Online Safety Act introduced stricter age checks for sexually explicit sites.

He argues that sites that ignore the new requirements benefit.

The BBC was unable to independently verify Pornhub's claim, but Google data shows searches on the site have nearly halved since the law came into force.

This could be a result of people cutting back on porn use, but could also be partly explained by people visiting the site using alternative means, such as a VPN, which masks the user's location.

Pornhub is the most visited porn site in the world and the 19th most visited site on the entire network. according to Likeweb website.

Under the OSA, anyone accessing such websites in the UK must now prove they are over 18 years of age through age verification, such as facial identification.

The firm's announcement is the latest evidence that people in the UK are changing the way they use the internet since the Online Safety Act came into force.

Visits to porn sites overall in the UK fell by almost a third in the three months from July 25, Ofcom said.

The regulator said the new law achieves its main goal of preventing children from “easily stumbling upon porn without looking for it.”

“Our new rules end the age of the age-neutral internet, when many sites and apps failed to carry out meaningful checks on whether children were using their services,” the watchdog said.

Ofcom told the BBC it believed the number of people using VPNs for general use reached 1.5 million a day in July after the law came into force, but has since fallen to around one million.

Meanwhile, Cybernews research counted more than 10.7 million VPN app downloads in the UK from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in 2025.

“It is likely that people who do not want to confirm their age or identity to access sexually explicit content, for example for privacy reasons, are using VPNs to get around this issue,” Dr Hanne Stegeman from the University of Exeter told the BBC.

“Because the location of website visitors is typically determined by IP addresses, it is possible that these numbers are inaccurate when a portion of visitors are using a VPN.”

And Cybernews cybersecurity researcher Aras Nazarovas told the BBC that BBC staff in the UK “can and do use” VPNs.

“Since age verification began, VPN apps have risen to the top of the UK App Store, with at least one provider seeing a 1,800% increase in downloads,” he said.

“So some of Pornhub's 'missing' UK audience hasn't disappeared – it's being reclassified as non-UK traffic.”

But he said he believed the “rest” were indeed “users who had migrated to sites that did not require age verification.”

Alex Kekesi, chief executive of Pornhub's parent company Aylo, told the BBC the new rules were unenforceable.

She said Ofcom faced an “insurmountable challenge” in trying to force the estimated 240,000 adult platforms – which attract eight million users a month in the UK – to follow the rules.

This compares with the regulator taking action against fewer than 70 sites for non-compliance.

Ofcom says it prioritizes inspections of sites based on how risky they are and the number of users.

And Ms Kekesi said some pornography sites benefited from the rule-breaking. The BBC has not independently confirmed this information.

“There are a number of sites that have seen their traffic increase exponentially, and those are sites that are not compliant,” she said.

Ms Kekesi is also concerned about the content of some of these sites.

She told the BBC about one that appeared to encourage users to seek out content featuring girls under the age of consent.

Ailo says he has shared details about this and other sites with Ofcom.

The regulator has defended the way it enforces the new rules, saying increased traffic to sites could be a factor triggering the probe.

“Sites that fail to comply and put children at risk could face enforcement action,” BBC News reported.

Ofcom data shows the top 10 most popular sites all use age guarantees. These sites account for a quarter of all visits to adult websites across the UK.

He adds that more than three-quarters of the daily traffic to the top 100 most popular sites comes from age-guaranteed sites.

The government also defended the regulator and said protecting children online was a “top priority” for ministers.

“Where the evidence suggests further intervention is needed to protect children, we will not hesitate to act,” the statement added.

Ms Kekesi spoke to the BBC while in the UK for a meeting with Ofcom and government officials, where she outlined Pornhub's arguments that age verification should be done at the device level, rather than on individual websites.

She said the UK stood out for convincing the platform to introduce age verification.

A number of jurisdictions have tried to force Pornhub to verify the age of its users, but the site's response has been to block users rather than comply.

Ms Kekesi said the UK was different in that it allowed sites to offer a range of different solutions, meaning Pornhub could use methods such as email verifications that did not require the collection of biometric data.

She denies that the threat of huge fines for non-compliance was the main motivation for compliance, pointing to a contrast with France – its second-largest market – where it cut off access rather than agree to what regulators demanded.

Ian Corby of the Association of Age Verification Providers rejected calls to move to device-based verification.

But he added that the group shared a desire for a “level playing field”, which means age checks should be “robust and not superficial or rigged”.

Chelsea Jarvie, founder of a cybersecurity company which has been researching age assurance methods for PhDs at the University of Strathclyde, told the BBC that both approaches to age verification will be needed – with neither platform-based nor device-based age verification being a “silver bullet”.

“For someone to truly be safe online, we need different levels of control throughout the browsing journey,” she said.