What is Swame: what the platform was, and what it has become.

Swame no longer exists as a standalone site: from late August 2025, swame.com redirected to Sheer, a platform run from the Czech Republic, and the domain now shows nothing but an empty error page. It was an exclusive content platform, presented as a "private social network", on which creators, mostly in the adult space, sold subscriptions, pay-per-view content, lives, private shows and messages to their fans. Run by a Hungarian company, it withheld 20% of the pre-tax price plus 7% banking fees. Its audience was mainly French-speaking, but creators from elsewhere used it, and many landed on Sheer. This guide describes Swame from its own terms, then what the move to Sheer changes for a creator and what remains to be settled, on tax and on contracts, for readers in the UK and the US.

What is Swame: the platform, the company, the audience

Swame described itself as a social network for posting and viewing content, buying "points", and following lives and private shows. For paid content, it called itself an online marketplace between professional creators and consumer fans. Access was for adults only, and the site displayed a warning about its sexual content.

The platform had two legal lives. Its first terms, archived in 2020, referred to the Paris trade register and to French law. The version last updated on 11 April 2023, still online in August 2025, names as operator Egyzxy Információs Technológiai Szolgáltató Kft., a Hungarian company based in Budapest, and submits the contract to Hungarian law and the Hungarian courts. The audience remained mostly French-speaking: a French home page, a reminder of French criminal law at the entrance, prices in euros. Neither a messaging app nor a classic social network, Swame was a creator platform in the same family as OnlyFans or MYM, with more room for lives and video appointments.

Is Swame closed? The move to Sheer

Public archives of the site show swame.com working normally until mid-August 2025, then redirecting visitors to Sheer from the end of that month. Sheer welcomes them with an explicit message: Swame "has joined forces with Sheer", the creators they follow are now on Sheer and their subscriptions remain active; some creators may not appear yet because they must confirm their transfer. The redirect is no longer active: in September 2026, swame.com returns only an empty page with a server error, with no link to Sheer.

Sheer is run by Media Enterprises, s.r.o., a company governed by Czech law, according to its privacy policy. As far as we know, neither Swame nor Sheer has published the legal nature of the transaction or its terms, and we do not interpret it. For a creator, the essential point is elsewhere: moving to Sheer means accepting a new contract with a different company, in another country, under different rules.

How Swame worked for fans and creators

For fans

A fan signed up with a username, an email address and a password, then followed a creator for free (public content) or subscribed to their profile. The monthly subscription, at a price set by the creator and shown in euros including tax, renewed automatically; everything else was bought individually, by card or with points bought through a third-party e-wallet, STRACEO. Fans could also book a prepaid private show, watch free, subscriber-only or pay-per-minute lives, send tips and message the creator.

For creators

To become a "Swamer", a user sent a copy of an identity document from their account, plus a photo of themselves holding that document and a card bearing "Swame", their username and the date. The platform approved or refused the request, for any reason according to its terms, and could ask at any time for further proof of age or identity. Only individuals could be Swamers.

Once approved, the creator posted in public, in private (blurred for non-subscribers) or in paid premium mode, set prices, and offered lives and private shows. Referral paid the referrer 10% of the revenue of the creator referred. The "BOOST" programme showcased selected profiles, but under the terms the subscribers it brought remained Swame's "property", and creators were forbidden to contact or solicit them directly.

Swame commission: what the terms provided

The settlement clause in the terms is the only official, dated source on the commission. It provides for:

• a flat deduction of 20% of the pre-tax price paid by the fan, to cover the site's running costs, including payment providers' fees;
• an additional deduction of 7% banking fees;
• VAT of the fan's country of residence added for customers in the European Union, paid by the fan and passed on to the relevant tax authority.

The same clause nevertheless concludes that the creator receives "80%" of the pre-tax amount, without saying what base the 7% is calculated on, and the recruitment page advertised "80% payout" without mentioning banking fees. If you were a Swamer, only your earnings statement shows what was really taken.

To get paid, the creator made a request from the dashboard: one request at a time, at least seven days apart, for a minimum of €100 including tax. The transfer was announced within seven days to an account in the SEPA area, which includes the UK; it could take longer elsewhere, which covered US accounts. If an account was suspended, the company could withhold sums due but not yet paid.

Swame, Sheer, OnlyFans, MYM: the comparison

Sheer publishes its payouts as percentages of the creator's net revenue, which vary by product, licence type and sales channel, and which it says are "subject to change at any time". For OnlyFans and MYM, we use the official figures checked for our OnlyFans, MYM, Fansly and Fanvue comparison and our guide to what MYM is.

The percentage is not everything: currency, payment timing and governing law weigh as much on what you actually receive. For a UK or US creator, a platform in Hungary or the Czech Republic also means a contract under a foreign law, and a dispute in a foreign court. If you do not want to stay on Sheer, other exclusive content platforms exist, such as Maloum, run from Vienna, or Reveal, run from Lyon; the same questions of contract and tax arise, depending on the operator's country.

How is Swame income taxed in the UK and the US?

Swame's closure erases nothing: sums received in 2025, then on Sheer, are self-employed income, taxable where you live.

In the UK, it is trading income. The £1,000 trading allowance covers very small amounts; above it, you register for Self Assessment by 5 October after the end of the tax year in which you started, and pay income tax and Class 4 National Insurance on the profit. Convert each euro payout into sterling for your records. Our guide to OnlyFans tax in the UK applies to every platform.

UK VAT. Swame and Sheer are established in EU member states. Under the general rule for business-to-business services in VAT Notice 741A, a UK creator's supply to such a platform is made where the customer belongs, so it is outside the scope of UK VAT and does not count towards the £90,000 registration threshold; if you are registered anyway, it still appears on your VAT return. Swame's terms, however, described each sale as a direct contract between fan and creator, while the Court of Justice of the EU held in 2023 (Fenix International, the OnlyFans case) that a platform taking part in the supply of electronic services is presumed to act in its own name. Have an accountant confirm the analysis.

In the US, the income goes on Schedule C, with self-employment tax of 15.3% once net earnings reach $400, and figures translated into dollars at the rate prevailing when you received them. A Hungarian or Czech platform issues no Form 1099: your statements are the record. Our guide to OnlyFans taxes in the US sets out quarterly payments and deductions.

Platform reporting. An EU platform reports its EU-resident sellers to its own tax authority under DAC7: Hungary for Swame, the Czech Republic for Sheer. For creators in the UK or the US, whether anything reaches HMRC or the IRS depends on other exchange arrangements, and a site's disappearance does not make income already received any less taxable.

Legal points to watch for creators and agencies

The account was personal, and still is

Swame's terms set three rules: one account per person, an account in the name of the person who appears in the content and receives the payments, and a personal account that no third party should log into. They added that using an agent or an agency does not change the creator's personal responsibility. For an OFM agency, running a Swame account therefore meant operating an account the contract did not allow to be shared. Your agency contract must say who accesses what, on which platform, and who answers for a breach: the clauses to check in an agency contract set out the list.

Confirming your transfer to Sheer means accepting different terms

Sheer's terms, read on 12 September 2026, include in particular:

• an exclusive licence option: for content published under it, the creator transfers full and exclusive ownership to Sheer; Sheer pays an advance based on projected sales (not offered to new accounts), and the creator cannot withdraw the content until earnings have covered the advance;
• price parity: non-exclusive content sold through memberships must not be priced higher on Sheer than the same or similar offer elsewhere;
• a financial sanction: for a breach of the non-exclusive rules, Sheer reserves the right to lower the payout to 20% net for a year, then remove the membership content;
• termination: Sheer can close an account at any time and for any reason.

The exclusive licence and price parity had no equivalent in Swame's terms. If you also run an OnlyFans or MYM account, check that your prices and offers stay compatible with the parity clause.

Balances, statements and personal data

We found no published information on what happened to unpaid balances when Swame closed. If you had a balance, claim it in writing from the operator and keep proof of sending. For your statements, Swame's terms provided for business data to be kept for five years after the end of the relationship, and Article 15 of the GDPR, which binds EU-established companies, gives you a right of access to your personal data. The move to Sheer changes the company processing your data: you can ask which data were transferred.

What we see in practice

When a platform closes or merges into another, problems tend to arrive in the same order: statements never exported, income never declared that a tax authority may nonetheless learn about, and new terms accepted in one click without measuring their effect on other accounts. All three can be fixed, in that order, preferably before someone else asks the question. Our page for creators explains how we handle these files.

The short version

Swame was an adult content creator platform, run from Hungary, paying in euros after withholding 20% of the pre-tax price and 7% banking fees. It joined Sheer at the end of August 2025 and its site is no longer active. If you sold content there: get your statements back, declare your 2025 income, read Sheer's terms before confirming or keeping your transfer, and update your agency contract.

This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice for your situation. Figures about Swame come from its archived terms; figures about Sheer from its pages as read on 12 September 2026.

Your contactOlivier MaciejewskiFounder of OFM Legal · Former international business lawyer (HEC Paris, Arendt, Clifford Chance) · Official MYM partnerHis background Updated October 23, 2026

This article is general information and does not replace advice tailored to your situation. OFM Legal is not a law firm: court proceedings are handled by our partner lawyers.

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