Kink: the BDSM specialist since 1997, with its consent rules in writing.

What is Kink?

Kink is one of the oldest names in online porn. Peter Acworth, then a finance PhD student at Columbia University, started it in 1997 with a single bondage site, moved it to San Francisco in 1998 and began producing his own scenes. It trades through Cybernet Entertainment LLC.

From 2006 Kink filmed in the San Francisco Armory, a historic building it bought for $14.5 million. It stopped shooting there in January 2017 and sold the building in 2018 for $65 million, and its operations have since moved to Las Vegas. Acworth stepped back as CEO in 2018 and returned in 2021.

How Kink works

Kink is a network of channels, each built around a different fetish or BDSM theme, such as bondage or domination, made by its own studios and partners. As of 2022 it listed more than 90 channels, 27 of them Kink exclusives.

Scenes show fetish and BDSM play between consenting adult performers, often followed by a short post-scene interview. Gay content now lives on a separate paysite, KinkMen, which went standalone in October 2022. It’s niche by design: if you don’t share the interest, there’s little here for you.

What’s free and what isn’t

Full scenes need a paid membership that renews until you cancel, and Kink has also sold single scenes on demand since 2008. One user reported that a premium subscription came with a trial for another site that later turned into a monthly charge, so check what’s ticked at checkout.

Where you live matters too. Twenty-seven US states have passed age-verification laws for porn sites, and since 25 July 2025 UK law has required “highly effective” age checks, so expect to prove your age, or find access limited, depending on where you are.

How it’s made, and the red flags

Kink is unusually open about its rules. Its published Performer Rights and Responsibilities promise a detailed description of each shoot in advance, a fresh limits checklist for every scene, a house safeword (“red”) plus a non-verbal signal, pro-rated pay for stopping early, and a post-scene interview that won’t affect pay or future work.

Those rules followed trouble. Kink was fined by California’s workplace safety regulator in 2014 and 2016 after complaints about condom use, settled HIV-related lawsuits from former performers in 2017 and 2018 while disputing the claims, and settled a 2013 suit by cam performers. In early 2016 it cut ties with James Deen after assault allegations against him and rewrote its performer rules.