Creator Dashboards: Gross vs Net, Platform by Platform
Four of the platforms here use a word on their earnings screen to mean something other than what it says. If you have ever built a revenue forecast that turned out flattering, one of these is probably why.
OnlyFans
Maloum
Fanvue
Brezzels
4basedReading an earnings dashboard should not require a decoder ring. On several of these platforms it does.
The four naming problems, ranked by how much money they can cost you
1. OnlyFans: the figure that reads like a total is net
The chart shows two figures, labelled GROSS and NET.
The one that reads like a running total is the net one, after commission. It is not a sum of anything.
This is the most consequential one in the set, because "total" is the field a person naturally reaches for, and reading it as gross inflates your apparent margin by the full 20%.
2. Maloum: its “net” is before fees
Maloum labels a figure net, and its payout page treats that as the total before the platform fee. The fee is displayed as the gap between it and your payout amount.
Illustrative amounts on a EUR 100 gross at the stated 20% commission. The point is which field means what.
So on Maloum, the word "net" points at roughly the same thing OnlyFans calls "gross". Two platforms, two different words, and they overlap in the middle.
Your actual take-home is payout amount. Per-transaction rows do expose the full waterfall — gross, VAT, payment fee, payout — so once you know the column names the detail is there.
3. 4based: three numbers, one visible
On 4based the price you type is ex-VAT, the fan pays 21% more, and you keep 70% of what you typed:
Confirmed in the platform's own price panel. The unlock chip in the conversation shows 5.00 — neither what the fan pays nor what you keep.
Which platforms tell you the truth plainly
Two of them, and they deserve credit for it.
Fanvue puts three separate fields on every ledger row: gross, your net, and Fanvue's own income. Very few platforms show you their own take per transaction. It makes reconciliation trivial.
Brezzels goes further and exposes the whole waterfall: buyer gross, VAT amount and rate, payment fee amount and rate, the shareable amount, and your share. Most platforms show two ends and hide the middle. Brezzels shows the middle.
Fansly deserves a mention too — its statement view has explicit GROSS and NET columns with no ambiguity at all. It is the boring, correct way to do this.
The summary table
| Platform | The field to trust | What to ignore or double-check |
|---|---|---|
| OnlyFans | The GROSS and NET labels | The word "total". It is net. |
| Fansly | The GROSS and NET columns | Nothing — this one is unambiguous |
| Fanvue | The per-row creator net column | Nothing. Fanvue also shows its own cut |
| Maloum | The payout amount | Anything labelled net — that is pre-fee |
| Brezzels | Your share, per row | Nothing, but the category list is empty until your first sale |
| 4based | The net figure on the Dashboard | The unlock chip — that is your ex-VAT input |
The other reason your numbers do not tie
Even after you read the right field, several platforms have structural reasons your figures will not reconcile cleanly:
- OnlyFans statistics carry a documented 24-hour delay on some figures. Today's numbers are not final today, and the platform says so in its own copy.
- OnlyFans holds funds in a 7-day rolling pending window. Your available balance and your earnings for the week are never the same number, by design.
- Maloum's payout statement is headed with the current month, but the list below it is not actually limited to that month.
- Fansly counts payment-created subscriptions as active. A subscription mid-payment is in your active number.
- Fanvue's cancelled count is period flow; its expired list is current stock. Different metrics, deliberately, and they will not tie.
None of these are faults. They are all things that make an honest number look wrong.
What to actually do about it
Pick one field per platform and always use that one. Write it down. The list above is the shortcut.
Never add figures from two platforms together without checking they mean the same thing. One platform's total is before its cut, another's is after, and a third has VAT folded in. Added up raw, they produce a number that matches nothing.
Reconcile against the statement, not the chart. Where a platform has both, the chart rounds and simplifies and the statement does not. When they disagree, the statement is the one that matches your bank.
Treat commission headlines with suspicion. Maloum's 20% absorbs VAT; 4based's 30% sits on an ex-VAT base with 21% added for the fan; MYM's rate varies by revenue type and takes a bank fee off first. Three platforms, three meanings of "our commission is X%".
If you are running several platforms, the honest answer is that none of them will do this comparison for you — which is the specific reason a single view across accounts exists. HoneyChatting connects OnlyFans, Fansly, Fanvue and Maloum today, and normalises earnings across them rather than leaving you to reconcile four dashboards by hand.