Creator protection and appeals
Last updated . Changelog at the bottom.
Every number on this page is read from the code that enforces it. Where we don't do something yet, we say so instead of writing around it. If a line here ever stops matching the app, the app is wrong and we fix the app.
We're small. 16 creators with an active tier, no payout cleared yet, one person reviewing appeals. Read the whole thing before you move anything over.
The numbers
One fee, applied to everything. The right column is the constant in our code that sets each value.
| Term | Value | Where it's enforced |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | 10% of every sale | PLATFORM_FEE, credits.ts |
| You keep | 90% of subscriptions, tips, gifts, PPV, private shows, stream tickets and marketplace sales | CREATOR_SHARE, credits.ts |
| Referral | 5% of a referred creator's gross, paid from our 10%. The referred creator still keeps 90%. | REFERRAL_RATE, credits.ts |
| Credit value | 1 credit = 10¢ to buy and 10¢ to cash out. Every pack is the same price per credit; there is no bulk discount. | CREDIT_USD_RATE, CREDIT_PACKAGES, credits.ts |
| Minimum payout | $10 | MIN_PAYOUT_USD, payout-methods.ts |
| Card hold | Earnings funded by a fan's card purchase are withdrawable 7 days after that purchase. They show as pending until then. | CARD_HOLD_DAYS, spend.ts; earnings.ts |
| Marketplace hold | 3 days after a sale is marked delivered | MARKETPLACE_HOLD_DAYS, payout-methods.ts |
| Instant payout fee | 1.5%, only if you choose Stripe's instant rail. Standard payouts carry no fee from us. | INSTANT_PAYOUT_FEE_PCT, payout-methods.ts |
| Fan refunds | A fan can refund unused card credits for 7 days. Credits already spent on you are not refundable by the fan. | refund.ts; api/wallet/refund |
| Payout rails | Bank account via Stripe Connect, USDC on Solana, or manual (PayPal, Cash App, bank) | PAYOUT_METHODS, payout-methods.ts |
Payouts, as they stand today
No creator has been paid out yet. That is the single most important sentence on this page, so it is near the top. The payout code exists and has been exercised end to end against production with the provider calls dry-run, but the first real dollar has not left the building.
- The bank rail (Stripe Connect) is inert until we flip it on. It is off as of this date.
- The USDC rail is inert until the hot wallet is funded and its key is set. It is off as of this date.
- Every withdrawal request today lands in a queue a human works by hand. There is no timer on it.
- A request reserves the exact amount in one database transaction so it cannot be withdrawn twice. If the provider call fails, the reserved amount goes straight back to your available balance.
We will not write "fast payouts" anywhere on this site until a payout has actually cleared and we can quote a measured time.
What a chargeback does to your balance, step by step
Card processors shut down platforms whose dispute rate climbs. So every dispute signal is handled the second Stripe sends it, by code, not by someone reading an inbox. Here is exactly what happens to you.
- 1. Early fraud warning. The card network tells Stripe a charge is about to be disputed. We refund the fan ourselves (a refund is not a dispute), remove whatever credits from that purchase the fan still holds, and freeze the earnings that purchase funded on your side. Frozen means held, not removed: the rows stay in your ledger, marked with the reason and the purchase they trace to.
- 2. Dispute opened. Same freeze. We also assemble an evidence pack from our own records (purchase time, IP, the fan's verification status, their spend history, which of your earnings are frozen) and store it on the purchase so the dispute can be answered. The dispute shows up on the admin dashboard as a needs-attention item.
- Which earnings get frozen. Only earnings paid by that fan, created at or after that purchase, oldest first, until the running total covers the credits the purchase bought. Never more than the purchase was worth. Earnings from other fans are untouched.
- 3a. Dispute won. The frozen rows unfreeze and become withdrawable again under the normal holds.
- 3b. Dispute lost. The frozen amount is removed from your credit balance. The removal is guarded so your balance can never go below zero, and a ledger row explains what was removed and which purchase it traces to. If you had already spent or withdrawn part of it, only what remains comes off.
What we do not do: absorb lost chargebacks. Today a lost dispute comes out of the earnings it funded, with the cap and the paper trail above. We are not promising forgiveness we have not built. What we are promising is that the rule is written here, dated, and the same for everyone.
Explicit content, and which money can buy it
Fans hold two separate balances. Credits bought with a card can never pay for an explicit item; the database update that debits an explicit purchase only touches the adult balance, so there is no path for card money to reach explicit content. Adult credits come from crypto today. CCBill is coded but has no account, so it is not a live funding source yet.
This is what counts as explicit on your side:
- Anything you flag explicit when you create it (a PPV message marked sensitive counts).
- Your first explicit sale marks your account as an explicit creator. From then on, new media you leave unflagged is treated as explicit, and tips, gifts, DM-request fees and private shows to you draw from adult credits only. You can still list SFW items by flagging them not explicit. Only an admin can clear the explicit-creator mark.
- Companionship bookings are always explicit. Physical goods in the marketplace never are.
- Selling anything explicit requires video verification first. The create call is refused otherwise.
- Buying anything explicit requires the fan to have completed a one-time 18+ opt-in.
The practical effect: an explicit creator's income depends on fans holding adult credits, which today means crypto. We say this plainly because it is the biggest difference between selling explicit and non-explicit content here right now.
Suspensions and appeals
What triggers a suspension
Four automatic triggers exist in the code. Everything else is a human decision that requires a written reason. There is no scoring model that suspends accounts.
| Trigger | What happens | Notice first? |
|---|---|---|
| A DM containing an outside payment method (Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, Zelle, a wallet address, bank details) or dangerous content | Message blocked, stored for review, account suspended immediately with the matched terms written as the reason | No |
| Sharing contact details in a DM (phone, email, social handle, "text me") | First offense: blocked with a warning. Second: blocked, account flagged for review. 3rd: suspended, with the count and the last match written as the reason | Yes, two warnings |
| Contact details in a profile field, listing, tier, post, broadcast, review, event, stream title, goal, wishlist item — or in the text of an uploaded photo | The save is refused and nothing is stored. The first 2 refused saves in a rolling 24 hours are free; every further one counts as a warning, and the 3rd warning suspends, with the surface and field written as the reason | Yes, 2 free attempts a day |
| An ID check returns a document showing under 18 | Suspended, flagged to an admin to ban or unsuspend | No |
| An admin suspends you | A reason is required or the request is refused. The reason is stored on your account, logged, and sent to you as a notification that links to the appeal page | The reason arrives with the suspension |
| An admin bans you or your device | A ban also suspends the account. A device ban records the browser fingerprint; a banned device is signed out on its next page load. Both are logged | No |
Every suspension, automatic or human, writes a plain-text reason and a timestamp onto your account. A suspended account cannot send messages. We do not delete accounts automatically.
How to appeal
- Sign in and open crave.dating/suspended. If an admin suspended you, the notification you received links there. After an automatic suspension you will see the error in chat and need to open that page yourself; there is no automatic redirect yet.
- Write at least 10 characters explaining your side and submit.
- Only a suspended account can file, and only one appeal can be pending at a time.
- An admin sees your appeal text next to the stored suspension reason, the date, and your warning count, in a queue filtered to pending appeals.
- The decision is approved or denied, with an optional note. Approved restores your account in the same request. Denied leaves the account suspended; you can file again since only a pending appeal blocks a new one.
Appeal statuses are pending, approved and denied. Reports filed against a member have their own statuses: pending, reviewed, actioned and dismissed.
What gets logged
Every write an admin makes from the back office appends a row to an audit log: who, which action, which account, the reason, and when. Suspensions, unsuspensions, bans, device bans, appeal decisions and payout actions are all in it. The log is append-only; the admin UI has no path to edit or delete a row.
Your content, takedowns and records
These are already written down elsewhere and we won't restate them here. Copyright and takedown requests, including the 48-hour path for non-consensual imagery, are in the DMCA policy. Record-keeping for explicit content is in the 2257 statement. Ownership and licence terms are in the terms of service. Fan-side refunds are in the refund policy.
Your data
You can delete your account yourself from Settings. It asks for your password, then removes your messages, matches, posts, listings, orders, transactions, payouts, appeals, reports, verifications, support tickets and the account row in one database transaction. If any step fails, nothing is deleted.
There is no self-serve data export yet. If you need a copy of your data before deleting, ask through the support form and a human will pull it by hand.
What we don't do yet
The honest list. Each item is either not built or not switched on as of the date at the top.
- No chargeback forgiveness. A lost dispute comes out of the earnings it funded (section above).
- No payout SLA. No payout has cleared yet, so there is no measured time to quote.
- No published support hours. One person reads appeals and the payout queue, with no timer in the code.
- CCBill is integrated in code but has no merchant account, so adult credits are crypto-only today.
- The Stripe Connect bank rail and the USDC rail are both switched off until the first payout is run by hand.
- No self-serve data export.
- No automatic redirect to the appeal page after an automatic suspension.
- No notification when an appeal is decided; you find out by signing in.
Against OnlyFans' terms effective 1 November 2026
OnlyFans' facts below come from published summaries of its terms, each linked and checked on 2026-10-31. Crave's column repeats what the code enforces. Where OnlyFans is the better deal, the row says so.
| Term | OnlyFans | Crave |
|---|---|---|
| Fee | 20% of the total user payment | 10%, creator keeps 90% |
| Suspension trigger | "Have or may have breached" the terms, plus conduct "reasonably likely to cause loss or reputational harm" | Four automatic triggers listed above; everything else needs a written reason that is stored and logged |
| Notice before suspension | General promise to notify removed in the November 2026 terms | Not guaranteed either. Contact-detail violations get two warnings first; payment-method and dangerous-content violations do not. Every suspension carries a written reason you can read |
| Chargebacks | Chargeback amount plus associated fees deducted from pending or future earnings | Frozen while open, removed only if lost, capped at the disputed purchase, never below zero, no fee added. Not forgiven |
| Holds | Up to 7 days, "or longer if we identify potential risk", plus a discretionary reserve | 7 days on card-funded earnings, 3 days on marketplace sales, both fixed constants. No reserve |
| Minimum payout | $20 for most methods (third-party audit) | $10 |
| Payout speed | 10 to 14 days to bank (third-party audit). OnlyFans has paid creators for years | Unknown. No payout has cleared. OnlyFans is the better choice on this row |
| Termination and pending money | May terminate at any time without notice; pending payments forfeitable | A ban requires a stored reason and is logged. When a member is banned, the credits other members paid them in the last 14 days for message requests, roses and PPV unlocks are refunded to those members, to the same balances they came from, up to $200 per banned member; anything over that is listed for manual handling. The matching earnings are frozen and removed from the banned member's balance, never below zero. Referral commissions already paid out on those spends are not clawed back, and lifting a ban does not reverse the refunds. Frozen or held money otherwise follows the rules above |
| Disputing a decision | In writing, within six months | Appeal form on the suspended page, no deadline, one pending at a time |
Sources, checked 2026-10-31: Fonce Agency terms diff, Riverfront Times, terms.law ToS Watchdog, Vice Snob fee audit. We built Crave; read the table with that in mind.
Questions creators ask
- What does Crave take from a sale?
- A flat 10%. You keep 90% of subscriptions, tips, gifts, pay-per-view purchases, private shows, stream tickets and marketplace sales. If someone referred you, their 5% comes out of our 10%, never out of your 90%.
- When can I withdraw?
- Once your available balance reaches $10. Earnings funded by a fan's card purchase become withdrawable 7 days after that purchase. A marketplace sale becomes withdrawable 3 days after it is marked delivered.
- Has Crave actually paid a creator yet?
- No. As of the date on this page, no creator has been paid out. The payout code and the admin queue exist; the first payout has not cleared. We will change this answer when it has.
- What happens to my earnings if a fan charges back?
- The earnings that purchase funded are frozen, not removed, while the dispute is open. If the dispute is won they unfreeze. If it is lost they are removed from your balance, never below zero, with a ledger row that explains it. We do not currently absorb lost chargebacks.
- Can card money buy explicit content?
- No. Credits bought with a card can never pay for an explicit item. Explicit items can only be paid with adult credits, which today means credits bought with crypto. CCBill is coded but has no account yet.
- What gets an account suspended automatically?
- Four things today: a message containing an outside payment method or dangerous content (immediate); a 3rd blocked message for sharing contact details after two warnings; contact details in a profile field, listing, tier, post, broadcast, review, event, stream title or in the text of an uploaded photo — the first 2 refused saves in a day are free, every further one counts as a warning and the 3rd warning suspends; and an ID check that shows a document under 18. Everything else is a human decision with a written reason.
- How do I appeal a suspension?
- Sign in and open crave.dating/suspended. Write at least 10 characters explaining your side and submit. One pending appeal at a time. An admin approves it (your account is restored on the spot) or denies it with a note, and either decision is written to the admin audit log.
- Is there a support SLA or response time promise?
- No. Nobody staffs one yet, so we do not publish one. Appeals and payout requests are reviewed by hand and there is no timer in the code.
Changelog
Every edit to this page gets a dated line here. If a number changes in the code, the line says which one.
- : first published. Fee 10%, minimum payout $10, card hold 7 days, marketplace hold 3 days, no payout cleared yet, no chargeback forgiveness. Published the day OnlyFans' new terms took effect.
- (later the same day): the ban row now describes what the code does on a ban — payers refunded for the last 14 days up to $200, matching earnings frozen and clawed back, referral commissions untouched, unban does not reverse refunds (ban-refunds.ts). Automatic triggers corrected from three to four: refused profile / listing / post / photo-text saves count after 2 free attempts a day (content-violations.ts). The creator count in the intro is read live instead of a typed number.
Questions about a specific line? Use the support form and quote the section heading. For what sells in each marketplace category, see the creator categories.
Create a creator account