Countries Where Porn Is Illegal

Pornography is illegal in 43 countries across 4 continents, including most Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and Yemen; major Asian countries like China, North Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and South Korea; African countries including Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Botswana, and Equatorial Guinea; and European countries like Belarus and Armenia. This means that the prohibition affects more than 3.5 billion people. Even so, the global adult industry size was estimated at over US$ 58 billion. North America represents almost half of the global revenue.

The definition of pornography varies between countries. In the US, the "Miller Test", from 1973, defines obscene material using three criteria: it must arouse sexual interest, be offensive by community standards, and have no serious artistic, literary, or scientific value. In China is any material that concretely describes sexual acts or advertises undisguised sex, including books, films, audio, and images. In Indonesia, it covers any images, sketches, photos, writings, voice, sound, moving image, animation, cartoons, conversations, and gestures with sexual content that violates moral values. Countries with regulated access, such as Germany, the UK, and France, distinguish between "softcore" and "hardcore" content with different restrictions. All these differences are important to understand the different penalties applied between countries.

Constitutional law principles governing the prohibition of pornography are different between jurisdictions. Similarly, various enforcement systems range from administrative fines to the death penalty. This creates legal landscapes where religious doctrine, free speech protections, and perceptions of public morality intersect. Religious constitutional principles, as the Sharia Law in most Islamic countries, have one of the most rigorous in the world. However, six of the top eight countries pornography consumers globally are Islamic countries. Google search data shows Pakistan leads global pornography searches, followed by Egypt, Syria, and Iran.

The way a country deals with pornography reveals some aspects of its approach to internet freedom in general. Our data comes from a 2025 Internet Censorship study written by Paul Bischoff, a Privacy Advocate and VPN Expert.

The VPN (Virtual Private Network) usage indices indicate that 1.5 billion people use VPNs, over 400 million specifically to circumvent censorship. Countries with content restrictions show the highest VPN adoption rates. Indonesia leads at 55%, followed by India (43%) and the United Arab Emirates (38%). Therefore, China, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Russia restricted the use of VPNs, and Pakistan made it mandatory to register all VPNs in 2024. Another interesting aspect is that Cryptocurrency adoption accelerated when traditional payment processors excluded adult content. Pornhub accepts more than 16 cryptocurrencies after Visa and Mastercard bans, and platforms like SpankChain built Ethereum-based payment systems specifically for the industry.

One form of pornography regulation has been the adoption of age verification systems. Particularly in the United States, between 2023 and 2025, 24 U.S. states passed laws requiring government-issued ID verification for adult websites. However, some major platforms, such as Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube chosen to block entire states rather than comply with verification requirements.

Mental health correlations show significant associations between pornography use and various psychological difficulties. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) states insufficient empirical evidence exists to classify pornography addiction as a mental health disorder. But, research indicates that pornography consumption correlates with stress, anxiety, depression, and "conflicting emotional experiences" that enhance vulnerability to addictive sexual behavior. Furthermore, sexual objectification research indicates correlations between pornography consumption and attitudes toward women. Multinational studies across Germany, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States find that more frequent pornography use correlates with greater sexual objectification of others.

As the debate over access to pornography continues, countries will likely maintain diverse approaches, reflecting their fundamental cultural and constitutional structures rather than converging toward universal standards.