Prostitution is legal in some form in more than 70 countries, but “legal” covers four very different frameworks: full government licensing, decriminalization, systems where selling is legal but organizing or buying is not, and localized legalization in specific cities or counties. The countries that allow prostitution range from Germany and the Netherlands, which license workers and businesses, to New Zealand, which treats it as ordinary work, to Sweden and Canada, which legalize the sale but prosecute the buyer. Where you are determines not just whether the work is permitted, but whether a worker can hire a driver, share a flat with another worker, advertise, or walk into a bank without having their account closed.
Countries That Fully Legalize and Regulate Sex Work
Full legalization means the government runs sex work as a licensed industry. Workers register, businesses apply for permits, and the state collects tax. The exchange is paperwork and oversight for legal standing and access to services.
Germany
Germany’s Prostitutes Protection Act took effect in July 2017. Anyone doing sex work must register with local authorities and obtain a registration certificate, and before receiving it must attend a health counseling session.1Berlin.de. Prostitution Activity/Sex Work – Apply for Registration Certificate The certificate runs two years for workers 21 and older and one year for those under 21. Health consultations renew annually for most workers and every six months for workers under 21.
Brothels, room providers, and escort agencies need a government permit before opening. Rooms must have emergency call systems, doors that open from the inside at all times, sanitary facilities, break rooms, and lockers, and they cannot double as living quarters.2Verwaltung Bund. Apply for a Permit for a Prostitution Business Vehicles used for sex work require their own permits, capped at three years.3verwaltungsportal.hessen.de. Reporting the Installation of a Prostitution Vehicle
The Netherlands
The Netherlands lifted its general ban on brothels on October 1, 2000, making consensual adult sex work legal.4La Strada Documentation Center. Lifting the Ban on Brothels: Prostitution in 2000-2001 Municipalities control zoning and licensing, operators must meet health and safety standards, and workers pay income tax. Businesses that fall out of compliance lose their permits.
Austria
Austria regulates at the provincial level. Workers register with police or local authorities depending on the province and submit to a strict testing schedule: STI testing weekly and HIV testing every three months.5UPR Info. Human Rights Violations Against Sex Workers in Austria Operating without registration or missing mandatory checkups carries legal consequences.
Turkey
Turkey operates state-licensed brothels called genelevs. Workers must be vetted and licensed by provincial authorities and undergo regular health checkups. Only unmarried women over 18 are eligible to register. The licensed system has shrunk substantially in recent decades, and most sex work in Turkey now happens outside it.
Senegal
Senegal is a rare example of regulated, legal sex work in a low-income country. Female sex workers register with a health facility, attend monthly checkups focused on STI testing and treatment, and receive free condoms. Stigma remains high, and many workers do not register.
Countries That Have Decriminalized Sex Work
Decriminalization does not create a separate licensing bureaucracy. It removes the criminal penalties and lets sex work fall under the same employment, health, and safety laws as other jobs.
New Zealand
New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act of 2003 made it the first country to fully decriminalize sex work nationally. The law protects human rights, promotes occupational health and safety, and bars anyone under 18. Up to four workers can operate together without a special license; a certificate is only required when someone manages or supervises others. Street-based workers are subject to the same public order rules as everyone else. Disputes go through labor tribunals and civil courts.
Belgium
Belgium decriminalized sex work in 2022 and went further than most countries by writing labor protections into the law. The definition of pimping was narrowed so that drivers, accountants, and other support staff can be legally hired without facing criminal liability. Belgium is the only country offering this level of formal employment protection alongside decriminalization.
Parts of Australia
Selling sex is not itself illegal anywhere in Australia, but each state and territory treats the surrounding activities differently.6Australian Institute of Criminology. Prostitution Laws in Australia New South Wales is closest to full decriminalization, though some restrictions remain on street soliciting in residential areas. Victoria uses a licensing model requiring town planning permits for brothels. Queensland, Western Australia, and the remaining jurisdictions sit between those approaches.
Countries Where Selling Is Legal but Related Activities Are Not
This is the most common legal framework worldwide and the one that generates the most confusion. The individual act is permitted; nearly everything that supports or organizes it is not. Running a brothel, managing another worker, soliciting on the street, or advertising can all be crimes even where the sale itself is lawful.
United Kingdom
Buying and selling sex are both legal in England and Wales. The surrounding activities are not. Keeping a brothel carries up to seven years in prison. Controlling or exploiting another person’s prostitution carries up to seven years. Persistently soliciting in public is a criminal offense, defined as doing so at least twice in three months.7UK Parliament. PRO0236 – Evidence on Prostitution A landlord who knowingly lets premises for use as a brothel faces up to six months. The practical result: a sex worker can work alone indoors but cannot legally share a flat with another worker for safety, because two people selling sex from the same premises meets the legal definition of a brothel.
Spain, Italy, and Brazil
All three countries occupy similar ground. Selling sex between consenting adults is not a crime. Brazil’s 1940 Penal Code has never criminalized the sale itself, but separate provisions make brothels, profiting from another’s prostitution, and facilitation illegal. Spain has no law criminalizing individual sex work, but pimping is a criminal offense and brothel operators can be fined for operating without the correct license. Italy follows the same pattern. In all three, sex work happens openly while formal labor protections remain out of reach because the business structures around it stay criminal.
Other Countries Using This Model
The framework extends across dozens of countries, including India, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Kenya, Argentina, and Chile. Japan is a particular case: its 1956 Anti-Prostitution Law nominally prohibits the practice, but enforcement focuses on organized exploitation and a large commercial sex industry operates through legal gray areas. The common thread is that workers are not treated as criminals while the law makes it hard for them to work with the protections normal business structures provide.
The Nordic Model: Legal to Sell, Illegal to Buy
The Nordic model inverts the usual criminal liability. Selling sex is legal; paying for it is not. The stated goal is to shrink the market by targeting demand rather than the people the law treats as vulnerable.
Sweden
Sweden created the approach in 1999 as part of a broader legislative package on violence against women. On January 1, 1999, Sweden became the first country to criminalize buying sexual services while keeping the sale legal.8Office of Justice Programs. Evaluation of the Swedish Legislation Criminalising the Purchase of Sexual Services The purchasing offense carries a fine or imprisonment of up to one year.9Legal Information Institute. Brottsbalk (Criminal Code)
Other Nordic Model Countries
Norway and Iceland adopted nearly identical laws in the following years. France joined in 2016, penalizing the purchase of sex and pimping while abolishing the older solicitation offense; sellers face no criminal penalties, and sex work income is taxable. Ireland followed around the same time. Israel implemented its Prohibition of Consumption of Prostitution Services Act in July 2020, using administrative fines rather than criminal prosecution for first-time offenders.
Canada
Canada adopted a Nordic-style model through the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which received Royal Assent on November 6, 2014. The law created a purchasing offense making it illegal to obtain sexual services for payment or to communicate for that purpose.10Department of Justice Canada. Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act The framework treats prostitution as sexual exploitation and aims to make every transaction illegal from the buyer’s side.11Department of Justice. Prostitution Criminal Law Reform: Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act Advertising sexual services is also criminalized.
Localized Legalization
Some countries prohibit sex work nationally but allow specific local jurisdictions to permit it. Legality depends entirely on geography.
Nevada, United States
Prostitution is illegal throughout the United States except in parts of Nevada. Under state law, counties with a population of 700,000 or more cannot grant licenses to operate brothels. Counties below that threshold may choose to allow them.12Nevada Legislature. Nevada Revised Statutes Title 20 – NRS 244.345 Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, cannot license brothels; several rural counties do. Workers in licensed Nevada brothels face the strictest testing requirements of any jurisdiction: weekly specimens tested for gonorrhea and chlamydia, and monthly blood draws for HIV and syphilis. A worker cannot begin employment until lab results confirm the absence of all four infections, and a positive result requires immediate cessation of work.13Nevada Department of Health and Human Services. Regulations – Prostitution
Mexico
Mexico’s rules vary by municipality. Some cities establish zonas de tolerancia, designated districts where regulated sex work businesses can operate. Outside those zones, the same activities are prohibited. Enforcement varies dramatically from one municipality to the next.
Countries Where All Prostitution Is Illegal
A reader shouldn’t assume these frameworks cover everywhere. A significant number of countries criminalize both buying and selling. Most nations in the Middle East and North Africa prohibit all commercial sex under religious law, civil codes, or both. China’s Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security makes buying and selling sex unlawful, along with sheltering or facilitating prostitution. South Korea criminalized all aspects of the sex trade in 2004. Vietnam, Pakistan, Sudan, and the Maldives all treat commercial sex as criminal for everyone involved, typically through laws that also prohibit sex outside of marriage. Penalties range from fines to imprisonment and, in some cases, corporal punishment.
Health Testing Rules Vary Widely
Regulated systems almost universally impose mandatory health testing, but the frequency differs enormously. Austria requires weekly STI testing and quarterly HIV screening.5UPR Info. Human Rights Violations Against Sex Workers in Austria Nevada matches that pace with weekly gonorrhea and chlamydia testing and monthly HIV and syphilis blood draws under licensed health care supervision.13Nevada Department of Health and Human Services. Regulations – Prostitution Germany requires annual health counseling for most registered workers and every six months for workers under 21.1Berlin.de. Prostitution Activity/Sex Work – Apply for Registration Certificate Senegal mandates monthly checkups. Turkey requires periodic examinations in licensed brothels.
Decriminalized systems like New Zealand’s take a different route. Sex work falls under general workplace health and safety law. Workers are encouraged to use barrier protection and access health services, but the government does not set a mandatory testing schedule. Which approach produces better public health outcomes remains actively debated.
What U.S. Citizens Should Know Before Traveling
Visiting a legal sex worker abroad as an adult is not a federal crime. Where U.S. law does reach across borders is when minors are involved. Under 18 U.S.C. ยง 2423, any U.S. citizen or permanent resident who engages in illicit sexual conduct with a person under 18 in a foreign country faces up to 30 years in federal prison, whether or not they traveled for that purpose.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2423 – Transportation of Minors The statute has extraterritorial jurisdiction, so the crime does not need to occur on U.S. soil for prosecution.
U.S. citizens earning income abroad from any source, including legal sex work, must report that income to the IRS. The United States taxes worldwide income. Qualifying taxpayers living abroad may exclude a portion of foreign earnings, but the exclusion does not eliminate self-employment tax obligations.15Internal Revenue Service. Foreign Earned Income Exclusion Workers in the legal sex industry also face practical banking problems: financial institutions frequently close accounts or file suspicious activity reports for people connected to the adult industry, even when the underlying activity is fully legal where it happens.