FetLife Review 2026: Free Kink Social Network, Web-Only and Not for Dating

FetLife is built around profiles, groups, events, writings, pictures and messaging. Its help center says it is a social network rather than a dating site, and it has no age or sex search filters by design.

That shapes who it suits. People looking for local munches, workshops, discussion groups and long-form writing get the most from it, while people who want matches and swipes are better served elsewhere.

Wikipedia reports about 12.6 million registered users. FetLife's own advertising page says about 100,000 new members join each month, which is the company's claim and not an independently verified figure.

Free members get profiles, groups, events, writings, pictures and messaging. The Australian eSafety Commissioner's guide and FetLife's help center both list these as the core social features.

Paid membership is called "support". The eSafety guide says it enables features such as extended activity timelines and video access, and a help article confirms videos are a supporter perk. 2026 release notes also add supporter-only post scheduling.

Vice reported in 2022 that support costs about $5 a month. The support page needs a login, so the longer plans below come from a third-party review site and are unconfirmed.

• 6 months: $30 (reported)
• 12 months: $60 (reported)
• 24 months: $120 (reported)
• Lifetime: $240 (reported)

The help center says billing is in US dollars, in euros for most of Europe, and in Canadian dollars for Interac e-Transfer. It mentions ACH, Interac and Bitcoin, but current card and PayPal acceptance could not be confirmed.

FetLife is not ad-free. Its ads page sells advertising slots from $500 a month, and Vice described its revenue as advertising plus the $5-a-month subscriptions.

The privacy policy says personal data is not sold or shared with third parties for commercial purposes. It also says FetLife refuses law-enforcement requests without a court order.

There is no FetLife app in Apple's App Store or Google Play. A help article says the app stores do not allow adult apps and that FetLife does not have an app on any app store.

What FetLife offers is the "Official FetLife App", an installable web app (PWA) with push notifications. The help center explains how to install it from a mobile browser.

Apps using the FetLife name in the stores are not made by the company. Google Play currently lists one from an unrelated developer that calls itself an independent informational guide and shows ads.

The terms of use say people under 18 may not access FetLife, and the eSafety Commissioner lists the minimum age as 18. Some older write-ups say 21; that is wrong.

The privacy policy says signup checks date of birth and verifies a mobile number by one-time SMS. Optional profile verification by government ID or a selfie matched to a profile picture has existed since December 2022.

FetLife says verification is required by the banking system to help combat child sexual abuse material and revenge porn. It can ask for proof of age if a member may be underage and uses machine-learning review of uploads, including age estimation.

FetLife's trust page lists takedown on request for anyone pictured, stripped photo metadata, no downloads, authenticator-app 2FA, a bug bounty on HackerOne, and a 24/7 moderation team. It also lists Take It Down and StopNCII as partners.

The privacy policy says the live database is not encrypted at rest, though verification pictures and backups are. It uses Google reCAPTCHA.

These are the company's own statements. The transparency page also records the December 2022 move of profile verifications into the moderation queue, and later guideline changes that raised report volumes.

Any social network with sexual content carries risk from impersonation and scams, so vetting people and meeting in public first remain sensible. How consistently abuse reports are handled could not be checked from documents.

In July 2016 FetLife closed new signups and went invite-only for a time, as Broadly reported. Signups are open today.

In January 2017 a card network pressured FetLife's bank to stop processing. FetLife then deleted hundreds of groups and thousands of fetish categories, including blood, needles, non-consent, drug and alcohol play and race play. Vice reported it, and the EFF criticised the move as censorship.

In July 2022 FetLife added an option to filter "commercial profiles", such as profiles linking to OnlyFans. Vice reported that some users said they had been flagged as sex workers.

No regulator action or confirmed data breach was found in this research. Compliance with the UK Online Safety Act and US state age-check laws is not stated anywhere that could be checked.

This review is built from documents, not use of the service. In October 2026 the FetLife terms of use, privacy policy, trust, transparency, ads and release pages, and its help-center articles were read. FetLife blocks direct fetches, so pages were read through a reader proxy.

Records came from Vice, Broadly, the EFF and the Australian eSafety Commissioner, and prices from a third-party review site where the official page needs a login.

No account was created, no support plan was bought and the platform was not used. Sub-scores therefore rest on documented features and third-party records, so confidence is lower than for a tested review.

FetLife suits community and events. Dating-first services handle matching differently, and the main live options are below.

• Feeld: a UK dating app for open-minded and kink-curious people, with a free tier and one paid plan. See the FetLife vs Feeld comparison.
• Alt.com: a web-only alternative-lifestyle personals site with a free membership and reported paid tiers from $19.95 a month. See FetLife vs Alt.com.
• KinkD: a mobile-only swipe-style kink dating app on iOS and Android.
• Fetish.com: a kink social network and dating site with an app on iOS and Android.

More options are in best FetLife alternatives and sites like FetLife. To remove an account, see how to delete a FetLife account.