# PRESS RELEASE

**For immediate release, October 2026**

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# PROSTITUTION IS WORTH ABOUT £3.9 BILLION A YEAR TO THE UK ECONOMY, 40% LESS THAN THE OFFICIAL FIGURE

## Official statistics put it at £6.5 billion, based on a 2004 count of London adverts, a client review website and the idea that every sex worker sees 25 clients a week. Erobella has rebuilt the estimate with a more accurate headcount, its own survey of sex workers and prices from 30,000 live listings.

Prostitution has been part of UK GDP since 2014, when EU rules made every member state count it. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) puts household spending on it at £6.55 billion in 2025, in figures revised on 30 September. That's 0.22% of GDP, and almost as much as households spend at the dentist.

New analysis by Erobella's Data & Research team shows how that figure is made, and what happens when its inputs are brought up to date. The answer is **about £3.9 billion a year**, with a likely range of £3.0 billion to £4.7 billion. The full analysis, with a calculator for readers to build their own estimate, is at [erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp](https://erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp/).

**The official figure isn't a measurement.** The ONS multiplies four assumptions together. It starts with about 58,000 sex workers in 2004, based on a charity ringing round London adverts. It assumes each one sees 25 clients a week for 40 weeks a year, and charges £55 a visit. That price was taken from Punternet, a website where clients review sex workers. The ONS itself calls one of these assumptions "weak".

Brought up to 2025, the model says about 68,500 sex workers each see 1,000 clients a year and take £96,000. When Erobella asked sex workers about their week, the answer worked out at about 360 bookings a year.

## Key findings

- **Prostitution is worth about £3.9 billion a year to the UK**, on Erobella's central estimate. The likely range is £3.0 billion to £4.7 billion. The official figure of £6.55 billion is 1.7 times higher.
- **That's still big business.** £3.9 billion is nearly twice Greggs' sales, which were £2.15 billion in 2025, and about the same as the BBC's licence fee income. The official figure is about the same as Greggs, Wetherspoon and Netflix UK put together.
- **The official numbers don't add up.** They imply 68 million paid visits a year, or 2.6 for every adult man in the UK. Around nine in ten men say they've never paid for sex. The ONS reference list cites Punternet's Wikipedia page.
- **Erobella kept the ONS formula and updated the inputs.** It used 102,000 sex workers from Erobella's headcount study, 9 bookings a week from its own survey of sex workers, the same 40 weeks, and £105 a visit, three quarters of a typical advertised hour.
- **Sex workers have 9 bookings a week on average**, Erobella's survey found. Those who do it full time reported about 12, and those who do it now and then about 4. The ONS assumes 25 for everyone.
- **Sex workers work about 40 weeks a year**, the survey found, the same as the ONS assumes.
- **That works out at £37,800 a year in takings for each sex worker**, before costs. The ONS model implies £96,000.
- **An hour costs £140.** That's the typical advertised price for an hour across 7,052 UK listings on Erobella that show one. A half-hour costs £80, two hours £260 and a night £1,000. It's about £40 more if the sex worker travels to the client.
- **Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham are the most expensive areas, at £200 an hour.** Leicester, Coventry, Sheffield, Hull, Derby and Milton Keynes are among the cheapest, at £120.
- **London has 29% of all listings.** It has 94 listings for every 100,000 people, more than twice the UK average of 43. Wales has 23.
- **London's share is worth about £1.2 billion a year**, when our estimate is shared out by where listings are and what they charge. The North West's share is £418 million, the South East's £400 million, Scotland's £250 million and Wales's £103 million.
- **Midnight is the busiest hour.** Of 8.2 million views of UK listings in the past year, 6.1% came between midnight and 1am. Just over a quarter came between 10pm and 3am.
- **The UK counts more of it than most countries.** Italy records 0.19% of GDP and the Netherlands 0.08%. France won't count street prostitution, saying coerced sex isn't a transaction. The US, Canada and Australia leave it out.

## Five ways to size prostitution in the UK

| Estimate | £ billion a year | How it's worked out |
|---|---|---|
| Erobella low case | 3.0 | 102,000 workers, 7 clients a week, 40 weeks, £105 a visit |
| **Erobella central** | **3.9** | **102,000 workers, 9 clients a week, 40 weeks, £105 a visit** |
| Erobella high case | 4.7 | 102,000 workers, 11 clients a week, 40 weeks, £105 a visit |
| Model for the ONS, 2015 | 5.1 | 72,800 workers on full-time hours |
| ONS, 2025 | 6.55 | 2004 count grown with the male population, 25 clients a week |

## The price of an hour, by area

| Council area | Live listings | Hour, client visits | Hour, sex worker travels |
|---|---|---|---|
| Westminster | 1,868 | £200 | £268 |
| Kensington and Chelsea | 490 | £200 | £300 |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | 215 | £200 | £300 |
| Tower Hamlets | 574 | £160 | £220 |
| Camden | 466 | £160 | £200 |
| Liverpool | 626 | £150 | £180 |
| Edinburgh | 369 | £150 | £200 |
| Cardiff | 347 | £150 | £180 |
| Birmingham | 1,274 | £140 | £180 |
| Manchester | 939 | £140 | £180 |
| Glasgow | 644 | £140 | £200 |
| Leeds | 630 | £140 | £180 |
| Bristol | 407 | £140 | £180 |
| Nottingham | 383 | £130 | £180 |
| Newcastle upon Tyne | 352 | £130 | £180 |
| Brighton and Hove | 300 | £130 | £180 |
| Leicester | 452 | £120 | £170 |
| Coventry | 322 | £120 | not enough data |
| Sheffield | 317 | £120 | £165 |

*Median advertised prices on Erobella on 26 September 2026, where at least 40 listings give a price. The full list is at [erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp/#price](https://erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp/#price).*

## Where it happens

| Region | Live listings | Per 100,000 people | Hour, client visits | Share of our estimate, £m a year | Views per listing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | 8,573 | 94 | £150 | 1,200 | 104 |
| North West | 3,199 | 41 | £140 | 418 | 230 |
| South East | 3,301 | 34 | £130 | 400 | 204 |
| West Midlands | 2,786 | 45 | £130 | 338 | 135 |
| East of England | 2,413 | 37 | £130 | 293 | 116 |
| Scotland | 1,913 | 35 | £140 | 250 | 361 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 2,035 | 36 | £130 | 247 | 276 |
| South West | 1,946 | 33 | £135 | 245 | 421 |
| East Midlands | 1,818 | 36 | £120 | 204 | 232 |
| North East | 864 | 31 | £130 | 105 | 334 |
| Wales | 735 | 23 | £150 | 103 | 316 |

*The share of our estimate divides the £3.9 billion by each region's share of listings and its median hourly price. It's an estimate, not a regional measurement. Views cover the 12 months to 26 September 2026.*

## Comment

Brenda Jensen, Head of Data & Research at Erobella, said:

> "The official figure isn't a measurement. It's four assumptions multiplied together, and three of them date from 2004. Put in what sex workers told us about their week, and the number falls by about two fifths.
>
> "That doesn't make it small. Nearly four billion pounds is almost twice what Greggs takes in a year. But the official figure counts every sex worker as if they saw a thousand clients a year. The people we asked see about 360. The ONS revised its figures on 30 September and this one barely moved. The inputs behind it need a proper look."

## Notes to editors

1. **The official figure.** ONS Consumer Trends, series MNC8, "12.2 Prostitution". This is household spending at current prices: £6,546 million in 2025, £6,290 million in 2024, £5,929 million in 2019 and £4,064 million in 2020. These figures were released on 30 September 2026. The ONS says they are consistent with Blue Book 2026, due on 30 October 2026. They replace the June release, which put 2025 at £6,655 million. April to June 2026 was £1,708 million, up 5.0% on a year earlier. The next update is on 22 December 2026. The share of GDP uses ONS series YBHA, £3,044,594 million in 2025.
2. **How the ONS works it out.** Abramsky and Drew, "Changes to National Accounts: Inclusion of Illegal Drugs and Prostitution in the UK National Accounts", ONS, 29 May 2014. The paper sets out the method as "No. of active prostitutes (Eaves) x No of client episodes per week (Smekens & Verbruggen) x 52 x Average Charge Per Client (Punternet)". The headcount grows in line with the number of men aged 16 and over, which the paper calls "a weak assumption". The 52 weeks became 40 in Blue Book 2016. The 2025 figures for the ONS model are Erobella's own sums, based on those assumptions, ONS population figures and the 2025 total. They are 68,500 workers, £96 a visit, 68 million visits a year and £96,000 per worker.
3. **Erobella's estimate.** It uses the same formula with 2025 inputs.
   - **Workers:** 102,000, from "Estimating the Total Number of Sex Workers in the United Kingdom" by Weitzer, Bennett, Jensen, Macioti, Yang, Kiki and Shave. It was published as a preprint in August 2025 and summarised at [erobella.com/lust/en/numbers-sex-work-in-the-uk](https://erobella.com/lust/en/numbers-sex-work-in-the-uk/). It combines earlier estimates and gives a range of 75,000 to 130,000. Erobella's Head of Data & Research is a co-author.
   - **Clients a week:** 9 in the central case, 7 low and 11 high, from Erobella's survey (note 4). The low and high cases are the survey's margin of error.
   - **Weeks:** 40, the same as the ONS. Survey respondents said they work 40.6 weeks a year on average.
   - **Price:** £105 in all three cases, three quarters of the median advertised hour on Erobella (£140). Erobella's listings give medians of £80 for a half-hour, £260 for two hours and £1,000 for a night. No one records how long bookings last, so three quarters of the hourly price allows for shorter bookings, discounts, parlours and the street. A 2022 study of AdultWork by Yasseri, Sanders and others found a median of £120 an hour for women, and Brooks-Gordon and others put street prices at £20 to £40 in 2015.
   - **Result:** 102,000 × 9 × 40 × £105 = £3.86 billion. Low case £3.0 billion (7 a week), high case £4.7 billion (11 a week). The headcount study's range of 75,000 to 130,000 workers gives £2.8 billion to £4.9 billion. Like the ONS figure, this is spending on in-person sexual services. It isn't sex workers' income after costs, and it leaves out the legal online adult industry.
4. **Erobella's survey.** "Your working week" was an online survey run from 7 to 9 October 2026. It asked: "In a typical week when you're working, how many bookings do you have?" 100 active sex workers answered, after one duplicate was removed. The mean was 9.1 bookings a week (95% range 7.3 to 10.9), the median 5 and the most common answer 4. 59% had 6 or fewer and 25% more than 10. 56% said sex work was their main income; they averaged 11.6 bookings a week, against 4 for the 17% who do it now and then. Respondents averaged about £2,300 a month from sex work, including online work. Only totals are published.
5. **Checks against the headcount study.** The study's gender mix is 73.5% women, 19.4% men and 3% trans. Weighting Erobella's prices by that mix gives £133 an hour and £75 a half-hour, and a realistic mix of bookings comes to £100 to £130, so £105 sits at the cautious end. The study puts 35% to 40% of sex workers in London and the South East. Those regions have 39.6% of Erobella's listings.
6. **Erobella's listing data.** These are totals from 30,014 live UK listings on Erobella on 26 September 2026. 7,052 show a price for an hour and 8,603 show some hourly price. No individual listing is identified. Prices are asking prices, mostly from people working for themselves, so they reflect the upper half of the market rather than parlours or the street. Areas are matched from each listing's location. Listings per 100,000 people use ONS mid-2025 population estimates. Views, 8,202,639 over the 12 months to 26 September 2026, are counted per view, not per person.
7. **Comparisons.** Greggs total sales were £2,151 million in the 52 weeks to 27 December 2025. Netflix Services UK revenue was £2,056 million in 2025, from its Companies House accounts. J D Wetherspoon revenue was £2,128 million in the year to 27 July 2025. ONS Consumer Trends for 2025, released on 30 September 2026, records £9.29 billion on hairdressing and grooming, £7.20 billion on beer bought in shops, £6.72 billion on vets and pet services, £6.72 billion on dental services, £5.18 billion on books, £4.74 billion on newspapers and £2.91 billion on illegal drugs. Other figures: Premier League clubs' revenue £6.8 billion in 2024-25 (Deloitte), tobacco duty £7.57 billion in 2025-26 (HMRC), BBC licence fee income £3.88 billion in 2025-26, NHS dentistry in England £3.11 billion in 2023-24 (NAO), UK cinema box office £997 million in 2025 (BFI) and fish landed by UK boats £1.16 billion in 2024 (MMO).
8. **Other countries.** Istat, Italy, October 2025: €4.8 billion household spending and €4.1 billion value added in 2023. CBS, Netherlands, May 2024: €0.7 billion value added in 2021. INE, Spain, 2014: 0.35% of GDP in 2010. SCB, Sweden: SEK 520 million in 2006. INSEE, France, and the French government's answer to parliamentary question 5437, March 2018. Destatis, Germany, WISTA 2/2015. BEA, United States, 2020 working paper. The full list is on the page.
9. **Critics quoted on the page.** Sir David Spiegelhalter, The Conversation, 27 October 2014. Brooke Magnanti, The Baffler, 9 June 2014.
10. **Limits.** The 102,000 headcount combines earlier estimates rather than making a new count. It includes people who work part time or now and then. The bookings figure comes from an online survey of 100 active sex workers; the range is its margin of error. The price is three quarters of advertised hourly rates, because no one records how long bookings last. Listing prices come from one site, mostly from independent sex workers. The regional figures share out a national estimate. None of this measures coercion or trafficking. National accounts only count deals both sides agree to, and so does this model. The full method is at [erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp/#method](https://erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp/#method).
11. **Sources and licence.** Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Erobella's dataset is free to download as CSV and JSON at [erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp/#press](https://erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp/#press) under CC BY 4.0. It covers the ONS series, the model inputs, prices by region and council area, and the comparisons.
12. **Reuse.** All findings, tables and charts are free to publish in print or online with a credit to **Erobella** and, online, a link to [erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp](https://erobella.com/research/sex-work-gdp/). The page includes a calculator so readers can build their own estimate.
13. **About Erobella.** Erobella is the UK's fastest growing adult website and a progressive brand. Its Data & Research team publishes original studies on sex, sexuality and sexual health, including its annual survey of sex-worker wellbeing, the Liberal Cities Index, Out on Campus (an index of LGBTQ+ inclusion at more than 1,700 US colleges) and the Sex Work Statistics series. All are free to read at [erobella.com/research](https://erobella.com/research/).

**Press contact:** Dara Weston, PR Manager, Erobella: [dara@erobella.com](mailto:dara@erobella.com)

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