Summary

  • Ofcom's 23 October update says it has issued the first 2026/27 online-safety invoices and published an alphabetical list of the legal entities that notified it they were liable.
  • The rate is 0.02232% of qualifying worldwide revenue. Ofcom has published neither each payer's revenue figure nor the amount on its invoice.

The names have been pinned to the noticeboard. The bills are still in envelopes. On 15 October, Ofcom's industry bulletin gave the rate and said a payer list was coming. Its fee page, updated on 23 October, says the invoices are out and links the alphabetical roster. The original PDF contains 45 legal-entity names. It supplies no individual totals. Ofcom says the precise qualifying revenue and fee paid by each provider will stay unpublished.

The common price is not hidden. Section 9 of Ofcom's 2026/27 tariff tables sets the online-safety charge at 0.02232% of qualifying worldwide revenue, or QWR. Each £1 billion of QWR therefore gives £223,200 at that rate. That is tariff arithmetic, not anyone's observed bill. The percentage comes from Ofcom's estimated online-safety regulatory cost divided by the combined qualifying-revenue base of liable providers. A public rate can sit beside private invoices because the revenue of each listed legal entity is not in the public file.

There are two gates before the multiplication. A provider's QWR must reach £250 million. It is exempt from fee duties for a year if its UK referable revenue from the relevant parts of regulated services is below £10 million. QWR concerns revenue from the relevant parts of regulated services, not the parent company's entire global turnover. For the first 2026/27 charging year, the qualifying accounts are from calendar 2024. Thus the roster published this October is a statement about legal entities invoiced against an earlier revenue period, not a live ranking of who is largest today.

The publication also has a practical edge. Ofcom says total fees are set to meet, without exceeding, its online-safety regulatory costs; over- or under-recovery is carried into a later charging year. The tariff tables allow monthly instalments automatically when a fee exceeds £75,000. The list itself explains that a missed or misstated notification can lead to a later levy and adjustment. Those rules make the roster a starting record rather than the last page of the accounts. They do not reveal which envelope is thickest.

Official sources