The fall is undeniable. According to the Financial Times, the UK’s top porn sites are experiencing a drastic drop in traffic. A drop measured three months after the implementation of the Online Safety Act, a text supported by the British government to better govern the country’s digital space and protect minors.
The results are clear. Visits to porn sites in the UK have fallen by almost a third since the law was introduced, according to official data from Ofcom, France’s equivalent of Arcom. It’s even worse for Pornhub. The most visited pornographic site in the country registers 77% fewer visitors.
Pornhub particularly affected
This drop can be explained by the requirements of the Online Safety Act. Since July, the text has imposed age verification systems when entering sites that offer adult content. The goal? Prevent minors from accessing sexual content. To be able to browse these sites, Britons must prove that they are of legal age. Various authentication methods are offered, such as selfie, ID or credit card number.
The ten most visited sites in the UK, which account for a quarter of all visits to adult sites in the country, have checks in place. While most rely on facial recognition or credit card verification, Pornhub has chosen to go through a series of emails and SMS messages to verify the age of its internet users. A method that may have deterred more than one Internet user from accessing the site. “We were shocked,” Alex Kekesi, community and brand manager of the Aylo group (Pornhub), told the American media.
A decline that is far from being offset by the use of VPNs, these tools that allow Internet users to hide and choose their location to avoid age verification regulations. While the number of daily active VPN users doubled to 1.5 million in July, the figure fell to 1 million by the end of September, according to the regulator. For his part, Aylo assures that he has not noticed an increase in traffic abroad.
If Pornhub suffers the biggest drop, all sites will be affected. Most Britons preferred to turn to lesser-known alternative sites not subject to the restrictions imposed by the Online Safety Act, rather than providing their personal data.
Go to alternative sites
Especially since each blocked illegal site seems immediately replaced by others, often hosted abroad and accessible with a single click.
Aylo met with representatives of the British government this week to highlight this dysfunction. The group calls for stricter rules. It proposes that user age be controlled at the device or operating system level, rather than depending on individual websites.
For its part, Ofcom ensures that more than three quarters of daily traffic to the 100 most popular adult sites are subject to age verification.
“Adult services have been well prepared for their new obligations and the rules are clear about what is required. Sites that do not comply with them and put children at risk can expect to be subject to enforcement measures,” recalls the media regulator. In total, the agency has opened investigations into 62 services for possible non-compliance with the requirements of the Online Safety Act.
What about France?
But then, can we make the same thing in France? Because also in France, since July 15, pornographic content must no longer be accessible to minors on the web. Sites must implement an effective age verification system, while respecting anonymity.
Until now, it was enough to click “yes” on the question “are you an adult?” Result: 28% of minors consulted X sites in 2022, an increase of 36% in five years, according to an Arcom study.
Despite numerous reluctance and various twists and turns, all the giants in the sector have complied with the law, each in their own way. Pornhub, Youporn and Redtube, all owned by the Aylo group, have simply suspended access to their sites from France, denouncing the ineffectiveness of the filtering methods and their danger in terms of confidentiality.
So it’s no surprise that site attendance has dropped significantly. Until then, Pornhub was the leading adult site in France with an average of 11.3 million unique monthly visitors between January and May 2025, according to Médiamétrie data, which we were able to consult. But its attendance plummeted to 8.2 million visitors on average between August and September 2015. A loss of 28%. Enough to place the site in third place among the most visited adult sites in France.
Especially since the time spent on site is very short. Logically, most of the 8.2 million monthly visitors, trapped on the home page, quickly leave the page.
The same observation for Youporn, which recorded a drop of 8% between the two periods, going from 4.2 million monthly visitors between January and May 2025 to 3.2 million between August and the end of September.
But sometimes, one person’s misfortune turns another person’s happiness. Because this drop in traffic has benefited certain competing sites. Thus, XVideos and xHamster registered a significant increase in traffic. xHamster thus goes from 5.9 million monthly visitors before the implementation of the law to 8.2 million on average between August and September 2025. An increase of 40%.
For its part, attendance at XVideos increased by 88%, with 8.4 million monthly visitors on average in the period between last August and September. Enough to take the adult site from third place on the podium of most visited adult platforms… to first. As a reminder, the two sites have implemented age control for users across different platforms… after being notified by Arcom. So respecting the law is good.
Source: BFM TV
