Pornhub to restrict access for UK users from next week – with one exception
Pornhub will restrict access to new users in the UK from February, citing a “failing system” created by the Online Safety Act.
Canadian adult entertainment company Aylo, which owns Pornhub, YouPorn and Redtube, has confirmed that new registrations in the UK will be blocked from February 2.
However, existing, age-verified UK users will continue to have access.
The decision follows rules introduced under the Online Safety Act (OSA) last July, which require strong age checks on pornography sites to prevent children from accessing harmful material.
Aylo criticized the OSA, stating that it “makes the internet more dangerous for minors and adults” and “endangers the privacy and personal data of UK citizens”.
He added that he would “no longer participate in the failed system created in the UK as a result of the introduction of the OSA.”
Research suggested earlier this month that almost half of adult pornography users have accessed sites without age checks since new verification rules came into force.
A survey by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF) found that since the law changed in July, 45 per cent of 1,469 people who used pornography had accessed websites without age checks to avoid entering personal information.
Alex Kekesi, Aylo’s vice president of brand and community, said: “Our sites hosting legal and regulated porn will no longer be available to new users in the UK, but thousands of irresponsible porn sites will still be easy to access.
“Despite the law’s clear intent and commitment to enforcement to restrict minors’ access to adult content, our experience after six months of implementation strongly suggests that the OSA has failed to achieve this goal.
“In our view, we cannot continue to operate with a system that fails to deliver on its promise of child safety and has the opposite effect.
“We believe that in practice this framework redirects traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet and also compromises the privacy and personal data of UK citizens.”
Ms Kekesi said Ofcom had been “given an impossible task” and that it was “a challenge too great for any regulator to implement within the parameters of the Act”.
He added: “Our data and experience suggest that effective enforcement is not possible, circumventions are common, privacy is compromised, and new, unregulated sites are rapidly filling the gaps left by responsible operators.
“In other jurisdictions, Aylo has often been one of the only major platforms to comply, only to see traffic redirected to even larger, non-compliant sites.
“While larger operators are compliant, we believe the OSA creates an ecosystem where the vast majority of sites with age-inappropriate content are left unchecked.
“Users are turning to sites that lack uploader verification measures and do not moderate content, resulting in an increased risk of exposure to dangerous or illegal content.”
As of 27 January 2026, 68 of the top 100 pornography services in the UK had age checks in place.
A spokesman for Ofcom said: “Porn services have a choice under the Act between using age checks to protect users or blocking access to their sites in the UK.
“There is nothing stopping technology providers from developing solutions that work at the device level, and if they can prove this is highly effective we would encourage the industry to move in this direction.
“Our job is to enforce the rules as they are. We have introduced flexible and proportionate age security rules and have seen widespread adoption.
“We have taken strong and swift action against non-compliance, launching investigations into more than 80 porn sites and fining one porn provider £1 million – with more to come.
“We will continue our dialogue with Aylo to understand this change.
“Any changes to the law regarding device-based age assurance are a matter for the government.”
