On a budget? Want to enjoy free live cam shows without spending any cash? We’re going to compare two of the best sites for adult webcams that require no payment whatsoever: MyFreeCams and Chaturbate.
That’s right: the ultimate free live sex spots are going head to head.
In the camming space, websites rank from ‘freeloader paradise’ through to ‘don’t visit unless you’ve got money’: Chaturbate and MFC are at the extreme end of the market where you’re not hassled to spend money and can get a quality experience all the same.
Contributing on these sites is optional, and we’re going to assume for the purposes of this comparison that you’d rather keep as much of your hard-earned cash as possible.
So the question is: if we could only pick one of these websites to visit for free cam action, which would we go with and why? Let’s compare Chaturbate vs MyFreeCams.
Chaturbate vs MyFreeCams: Which Is The Best Free Cam Site?
These are two giants of the camming world — they need no introduction. So we’ll get straight to the juicy head-to-head.
Let’s start by tackling the all-important first impressions.
Landing Page
First impressions matter – who wins out between Chaturbate (https://chaturbate.com) and MFC (https://myfreecams.com) when it comes to the homepage of the platform?
We’re looking at several things here: loading times, cam preview setup, navigation options and information to name but a few. If you read our review of MyFreeCams, you’ll know that we’re deeply critical of its aesthetic and structure: they haven’t kept up with the times at all. Quite ugly, difficult to use and in need of an update.
Here’s how MyFreeCams looks to the naked eye:
And here’s a look at Chaturbate for comparison:
Chaturbate isn’t without its own issues: the most important of which is the lack of immediate objective filtering.
You’ll notice in the above screenshot that there are tags you can select at the top of the site, but these require the model to manually input those categories in their titles – not all do. This creates a situation where if you click on Asian, BBW or MILF, you’re not guaranteed to see all of the girls that fit that characteristic.
Both websites have acceptable thumbnail displays, but MFC only shows you the username and nothing else. Preview panes at Chaturbate include the hours online, number of viewers and age – as well as their custom title.
There are improvements that both could make on their landing pages, though neither are categorically awful. The advantage goes to Chaturbate here: more information, better filtering and quicker loading times.
Winner: Chaturbate
Performers
If we look at the numbers real quick, Chaturbate offered us 5,315 live cams when we just visited: MFC was sitting at 814. There’s a clear advantage for quantity at Chaturbate, but MyFreeCams isn’t exactly devoid of streamers. Close to 1,000 live shows is sufficient for most intents and purposes. We ought to talk about a clear difference between these sites though: the talent pools.
MFC is somewhat unique as a platform, since it’s one of the only big adult camming platforms that only offers female camgirls. Chaturbate offers you women, men, trans and couples – you’ll only get the ladies at MFC.
You won’t even find trans girls at MFC, so if this type of thing is a deal breaker for you – it’s clear which one is going to be your go-to spot for free cams.
Performer demographics are relatively consistent across Chaturbate and MFC when we look at the full breadth of their talent pools.
We do believe that My Free Cams has a slight skew toward younger models – or rather, fewer women over the age of, say, 50 – but both have ample numbers of young, delicious girls for you to watch. Both are somewhat different from other platforms with a slight bias away from Latinas – particularly Colombians. They’re still here, but they’re a smaller percentage of the overall platform.
We hate to keep describing things as ‘unique’, but it’s entirely appropriate to mention a small culture, if you will, of highly elite and motivated camgirls on MFC that take their job incredibly seriously and provide shows unlike anything you’ve seen elsewhere.
The above screenshot is one example: we’d say that around 50 or so camgirls here have expensive setups, great cameras, lots of props and more to create artistic and sensual experiences that put standard cam shows to shame. They’re not for everyone, but the top girls at MyFreeCams are pretty much unbeatable.
It’s really close: we’re giving the win to MFC here, but if you care about couples and trans shows, Chaturbate is the better choice.
Winner: MyFreeCams
Stream Quality
We care more about objective quality than the average review platform: let’s compare the cam show metrics of Chaturbate and MFC.
These are both relatively typical example streams from their respective platforms. Chaturbate offers 1080p at 5 Mb/s, MFC offers 720p at 1.9 Mb/s. This is a massive win for Chaturbate.
In our review of MyFreeCams, we did confirm that 1080p shows are possible here – it’s just that very few camgirls actually have it as an option.
We’re not sure why this is the case, but most of Chaturbate’s top girls are in 1080p at 5 Mb/s – whereas MFC girls are in 720p. When you do find 1080p on MFC, the bitrate is around 3 Mb/s. The win here would go to Chaturbate anyway, but we really want to stress that you’re unlikely to find too many full high definition cam shows on MFC: it’s a bit of a problem.
Audio bitrates are relatively similar. There’s a very marginal advantage to Chaturbate’s sound data rates, but we’d guess that it’s pretty much impossible to tell the two apart.
Winner: Chaturbate
Interactive Toys
We’re looking at these two spots from the perspective of a free user, but it’s worth touching on interactive toys if you do want to get involved.
The good news is that both platforms offer toy activation for singular tokens, and the tokens cost just a few cents each. This means that for a couple of pennies, you can interact with a camgirl. This is in stark contrast to a spot like Streamate, where you’ll have to spend a minimum of a dollar to get the toys going.
One of our biggest criticisms of both platforms is a lack of a dedicated toy activation interface. They both utilize their chat areas, or on-screen overlays, to convey information regarding toys – we really dislike it.
We know that OhMiBod and Lovense both offer decent integration and detailed documentation of how to get everything up and running: both of these sites should be making it as convenient as possible to activate toys and to see what you get for each token donation amount. Right now, neither is better than the other.
We’re calling this equals pequals.
Winner: Tie
Navigation & Layout
The year 2005 called: they want their website design back!
We’re talking specifically about MyFreeCams here: it lacks a lot of features and tools that would greatly enhance its accessibility. It has failed to adopt a new design that keeps up with modern trends and this has had a major impact on its success – at least, that’s our take on MFC’s recent decline in popularity.
The problem with MyFreeCams is that it has a lot of sorting and filtering, but a lot of it is rather trivial or useless. It’s also easy to get overwhelmed. Take a look at its main navigation option menu:
We don’t see much value in region filtering, especially with specific options for the UK and Australia (why are Canada and America lumped in together, but not Europe and the UK?). You’ve also got a bunch of random highlighted rooms with icons: who’s actually bothering to mess with those settings?
Too much bloat for our liking.
Loading times on both platforms were great, a definite advantage for Chaturbate, though. This is slightly unfortunate for MFC: it just so happens that out of all the biggest webcam platforms, Chaturbate loads the quickest!
One area where MyFreeCams does win out slightly is the ability to go full-screen on a mobile device. Mobile Chaturbate cannot do this, so you have the ugly address bar at the top (as seen above). Check out MyFreeCams’ mobile design in general, though:
It’s not bad or hard to use, it’s just ugly.
Winner: Chaturbate
Free Show Environment
Some platforms have relatively strict rules about what camgirls can do in public chat: Streamate only allows botton-half nudity in its paid channels, for example.
We’re happy to report that MFC and Chaturbate have no limitations and both are filled with plenty of girls masturbating – completely out in the open – for you to watch and enjoy. Some girls do use public chat as a way to tease and solicit private shows, but the most popular streams are typically fully public, fully nude and absolutely awesome.
Neither require you to sign up for an account. You won’t be able to type in most chats if you don’t, but you won’t be hassled to create an account every two minutes, or be cut off from watching after a certain period of time. There are some small advantages that come with creating a profile, but nothing on either service will make you feel obligated to do so.
It’s hard to quantify pace, typical show experiences and so on in any objective capacity. We’d lean toward Chaturbate being slightly more sexual and erotically focused: some girls on MFC like to chat, and there’s a definite market for a sort of GFE here. Remember that Chaturbate also has couple shows whereas MyFreeCams doesn’t: this means you can find hardcore action if you want it.
Winner: Tie
Pricing & Billing
We know, we know – you don’t want to spend any money!
People change, and you might win the lottery: you’d like to know what the deal is when it comes to billing on these platforms in that instance, right? Besides, we really think that because both have toy activation available for a single token, there are plenty of cheap cam thrills to be had here.
10 to 20 bucks a month can go a long way.
MFC allows you to buy tokens with: credit/debit card, PayPal
Chaturbate allows you to buy tokens with: credit/debit card, paysafecard, wire transfer and cryptocurrency.
Tokens start out at around 10 cents each on MFC and Chaturbate, but you get discounts with larger packages. MFC’s is $599.99 for 7,575 tokens and Chaturbate’s is $319.98 for 4050 tokens. Remember that models set the prices for everything, so what you get for a token on each service – and with each girl – will vary.
MFC utilizes a range of payment processors: some are discreet, some aren’t. Our transaction on Chaturbate (pictured above) was relatively trivial to track, provided you have Google and can type in “mmbill.com” – you’ll quickly find out what the purchase was.
Based purely on its extensive payment options, we’re going with Chaturbate here.
Winner: Chaturbate
Miscellaneous Factors
Both platforms have a way for you to buy videos and photos from a particular performer. You can also tip various amounts to get Snapchat, Instagram and other social media access.
MyFreeCams’ approach is a little more developed and mature than Chaturbate’s: it has something called MFC Share that also has tiered memberships, benefits and so on. Camgirls on MFC regularly host raffles for in-person meetups too – you could win a date with your favorite streamer!
From time to time, we run into bugs on MyFreeCams, particularly on the homepage. For some reason, it can return a number of broken cams or feeds that aren’t working. Here’s an example:
It’s not terribly common, but when it does crop up – it’s really annoying. The top three cams in this instance were broken: chances are, those are the best girls on the platform! It’s super duper important for us to see those.
Chaturbate has some cool extensions and add-ons that camgirls can elect to add to their streams. Some of them just provide basic features we think Chaturbate should have anyway, though. Still, it’s nice that a streamer with knowledge of coding could create their own extension and have it running.
Most of the time, they use this space for donation goals.
Winner: Tie
Our Verdict: Chaturbate Is Better Than MFC
Around a decade ago, MyFreeCams was a lot more popular than it currently is – it had more camgirls performing too. Competition was less fierce then and platforms weren’t adopting top-end qualities like they are now. It’s worth reiterating that despite having a few 1080p streams, most of the camgirls at MFC run their shows in 720p at a relatively average bitrate.
So Chaturbate has the quality and quantity covered: what does MFC do better? Its trump card is pretty much the high production value of some camgirl shows, but these are far less common than they used to be. We’re also taking away some points for their policy against couples and trans girls.
Not only is Chaturbate currently better than MFC, but the trajectories of both platforms are headed in the opposite directions.
MFC is still worth a visit, but we think most free camming addicts will prefer Chaturbate.
To get started on either platform:
For our extensive reviews (where we spent money testing each site):
Got a different opinion to ours? Think MFC should get the nod over Chaturbate? Let us know your thoughts and reviews on each of these cam site juggernauts.
When looking at the traffic metrics, one thing that should be stated: Chaturbate offers a whitelabel while MyFreeCams doesn’t. Therefore, the traffic stats for CB is much greater, as Alexa, SimilarWeb and other similar networks can’t account for the whitelabeled traffic that a network has going. Granted; CB’s whitelabel isn’t used by the big names that Streamate has rocking, but they actually offer a whitelabel, while MFC doesn’t.
Good comparison!