XVideos

XVideos
Website type
Pornographic video sharing
Available inEnglish, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Afrikaans and others
HeadquartersPrague,
Czech Republic
Country of origin
France
OwnerWGCZ Holding
Founder
Websitewww.xvideos.com
AdvertisingYes
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
Launched1 March 2007; 19 years ago (2007-03-01)
Current statusOnline
Written inHTML, JavaScript, PHP

XVideos (stylized as XVIDEOS) is a Czech-French Internet pornography video sharing and viewing website. Founded in Paris in 2007, the website is now registered to the Czech company WGCZ Holding. As of October 2025, it is the 30th-most-visited website in the world and the third-most-visited pornography website after Pornhub and xHamster.

WGCZ Holding also owns Bang Bros, Penthouse magazine, Private Media Group, XNXX, DDF Network and Erogames and has a controlling interest in the productions gathered under the Legal Porno brand.

History

Former XVideos logo

XVideos was founded in Paris in 2007 by the French owner, Stéphane Michael Pacaud. XVideos serves as a pornographic media aggregator, a type of website which gives access to adult content in a similar manner as YouTube does for general content. Video clips from professional videos are mixed with amateur and other types of content. By 2012, XVideos was the largest porn website in the world, with over 100 billion page views per month.

Fabian Thylmann, the owner of MindGeek (now Aylo), attempted to purchase XVideos in 2012 in order to create a monopoly of pornographic tube sites. The French owner of XVideos turned down a reported offer of more than US$120 million by saying, "Sorry, I have to go and play Diablo II."

In 2014, XVideos controversially attempted to force content providers to either pledge to renounce the right to delete videos from their accounts or to shut down their accounts immediately. The company is now owned by both Stéphane Michael Pacaud and his sister, Malorie Debroah Pacaud.

Web traffic and ranking

As of August 2021, XVideos was the most-visited porn website and the seventh-most-visited website in the world, as ranked by Similarweb.

XNXX, another site owned by WGCZ Holding, was the tenth-most-visited website overall and the second-most-visited website in the adult category by 2021, although competitor Pornhub was ranked one slot above XNXX by 2024. Both XVideos and XNXX were also the world's most-visited websites for virtual reality videos in 2021.

In 2015, XVideos became involved in a legal case against MindGeek (currently known as Aylo).

In a 2021 article, journalists Jakub Zelenka and Lukáš Prattle investigated abuse from XVideos brand, Legal Porno. Testimonies, both publicly available and obtained for the article, included women being uninformed about the films intent and having to engage in dangerous and complicated practices. Health concerns also appeared, such as one participant going to the hospital and many struggling with bowel movements afterwards.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Les sites internet les plus visités au monde" [The most visited websites in the world]. fr.statista.com (in French). Claire Jenik. November 2019. Archived from the original on October 18, 2019. Retrieved November 25, 2019.
  2. 1 2 Woods, Ben (February 2016). "The (almost) invisible men and women behind the world's largest porn sites". thenextweb.com. Amsterdam: The Next Web B.V. Archived from the original on December 30, 2017. Retrieved October 30, 2016.
  3. ↑ "xvideos.com whois lookup". who.is. Archived from the original on June 26, 2019. Retrieved January 7, 2017.
  4. ↑ "Could XVideos Cause The End Of All Adult Production?". 15 October 2022. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
  5. ↑ "Knocking on the door of a porn empire". 19 January 2023. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
  6. ↑ "The porn empire next door". 11 March 2022. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
  7. 1 2 "'BangBros' Owner Buys Penthouse Biz For $11.2 Million". The Blast. 5 June 2018. Archived from the original on 3 July 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2018.
  8. 1 2 "xvideos.com Traffic Statistics". SimilarWeb. April 2020. Archived from the original on 2021-12-22. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
  9. ↑ Mark Kernes (5 June 2018). "Penthouse Bankruptcy Auction Results in New Ownership". avn.com. Archived from the original on 3 July 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2018.
  10. ↑ Gustavo Turner (2 January 2020). "Private Media Group Acquired by XVideos Parent Company WGCZ". XBIZ. Archived from the original on 16 December 2020. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  11. 1 2 Tsika, Noah (October 3, 2016). Pink 2.0: Encoding Queer on the Internet. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. pp. 61–62. ISBN 978-0253023230. Archived from the original on January 24, 2023. Retrieved November 22, 2020.
  12. 1 2 3 "Naked capitalism". The Economist. September 26, 2015. Archived from the original on February 12, 2018. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  13. ↑ Yagielowicz, Stephen (April 4, 2012). "Report: The Internet Really Is for Porn". XBIZ. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  14. ↑ "XVideos.com Tube Site Accused of Strong-Arming Uploaders". AVN. August 13, 2014. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  15. ↑ "Online porn websites promote 'sexually violent' videos". BBC News. 5 April 2021. Archived from the original on 8 April 2022. Retrieved 25 April 2021.
  16. ↑ Kristof, Nicholas (16 April 2021). "Why Do We Let Corporations Profit From Rape Videos?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2021-04-16.
  17. ↑ Zelenka, Jakub (2021-01-13). "Xvideos vlastní bratr se sestrou. Na miliardovém obratu se podílí i reklamka a dům u Václaváku". Deník N (in Czech). Retrieved 2026-04-06.
  18. ↑ "xnxx.com Traffic Statistics". SimilarWeb. August 2021. Archived from the original on 2022-03-07. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
  19. ↑ "These are some of the most popular virtual reality (VR) porn websites in 2022 - News Asia Today". 2021-10-15. Archived from the original on 2022-01-20. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
  20. ↑ "MindGeek S.a.r.l. et al v. WGCZ S.R.O. et al". Justia Dockets & Filings. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
  21. 1 2 Zelenka, Jakub (2021-02-01). "„I was bleeding and ended up in hospital." Women accuse producers of Xvideos of violent porn shooting". Deník N (in Czech). Retrieved 2026-04-06.