The Best Trans Pornstars, Ranked

Career

Williams — no relation to, and no connection with, the American television presenter of the same name — worked from 2000 to 2019, one of the longest documented runs in this category. She won AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2009 and XBIZ Transsexual Performer of the Year the following year, the first performer to take both bodies’ top annual title back to back, and AVN inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2014. She has also directed. She is on record defending the industry’s old category vocabulary, arguing the terms were adopted so that customers could identify what they were buying — a position most of the performers who came after her do not share, and one worth reporting accurately rather than quietly dropping.

Signature: The longest documented career in this category, and the first performer to hold the AVN and XBIZ top titles in consecutive years.

Beyond performing

• Directing credits

Career

Jay built an audience on her own site and webcam work before either award body noticed, then won AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year in consecutive years, 2011 and 2012 — the first performer in the category to do so. Four years after her second win, with her studio output long behind her, AVN voters gave her the fan-voted Favorite Trans Performer award at the 33rd ceremony. The second half of her career has been audio: The Bailey Jay Show ran from 2010 to 2021, and she has since co-hosted The Trans Witching Hour, Blood Lust and Sugar and Spice with the actress Jen Richards, plus a Patreon-only show. She has been married to the photographer Matthew Terhune since 2011.

Signature: The first performer to win this category two years running, and the only one on this list whose second act is a fifteen-year podcasting career rather than a studio.

Beyond performing

• ts-baileyjay.com, her own subscription site
• Thee Invisible Cabin, a Patreon-exclusive podcast

Mainstream credits

• The Bailey Jay Show (2010–2021)
• Sugar and Spice, co-hosted with Jen Richards
• Vice Media presenter (2014)
• Inside Amy Schumer (2015)
• Return to Return to Nuke ’Em High (2017)

Career

Darling was adopted at two and raised in Valencia, California, and began living as a woman at fifteen. She entered adult film around the turn of the millennium and won AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2006, but her longer contribution was as an owner: Gia Darling Entertainment produced the Transsexual Heart Breakers series, which ran to more than thirty volumes, at a point when almost no trans performer controlled her own catalogue. AVN inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2011 — a body whose stated criteria require at least ten years in the industry — and the Transgender Erotica Awards gave her a Lifetime Achievement award in 2012. She also appeared widely on daytime American talk television and had a credited role in the 2003 film The Life.

Signature: One of the first trans performers in this industry to own the catalogue she appeared in, rather than licence herself into someone else’s.

Best known for

Studios

Beyond performing

• Founder, Gia Darling Entertainment
• Producer, Transsexual Heart Breakers series

Mainstream credits

• The Life (2003)
• The Jerry Springer Show
• The Maury Povich Show
• The Jenny Jones Show
• US editions of Playboy and Hustler

Career

Born in Uruapan, Michoacán, and of Purépecha descent, Vaniity moved to the United States at seven and grew up in Sunnyvale, California. She began performing in 1998 and in 2004 won AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year in the first year the category existed — the first trans woman to win an AVN Award of any kind. Nine years later she won the same title again and was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in the same year, a gap that no other performer in the category has matched. She worked for eighteen years before stopping in 2016, and has spoken publicly about choosing not to have gender-affirming surgery.

Signature: Won the category’s top title in 2004 and again in 2013 — a nine-year gap, in a field where most careers do not last nine years at all.

Mainstream credits

• The Howard Stern Show
• Pornucopia (HBO documentary series)

Career

Mars was discovered on Twitter, where she had been posting during her transition, and shot her first scene in 2015 at thirty-one — later than almost anyone else in this category. She worked at volume across the trans-category studios and in January 2020 took both top annual titles, AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year and XBIZ Transgender Performer of the Year, plus both AVN fan-voted trans awards at the same ceremony, a clean sweep of everything on offer that year. Her showcase release for Adult Time’s Transfixed line won the AVN and XBIZ production awards to match.

Signature: A four-award night in 2020 that took every trans title either body handed out — the most complete single-year sweep in the category.

Best known for

Studios

Career

Rose transitioned in 2017 and began performing in 2020, signing an exclusive contract with TransAngels the following year. She won AVN Transgender Performer of the Year in both 2023 (honouring 2022 work) and 2024 (honouring 2023 work) — a back-to-back title confirmed directly against that award’s own Wikipedia winners table — and added XBIZ’s equivalent title for 2023 work the same season, confirmed against XBIZ’s own page. She has spoken publicly as an activist against unregulated cosmetic surgery among transgender women, stating in 2023 that she had spent over $100,000 on procedures.

Signature: The only performer on this page confirmed as a repeat winner of the same top-tier title across both the ceremony honouring 2023 work and the one immediately before it, at two separate award bodies.

Studios

Beyond performing

• TransAngels exclusive contract (2021)

Career

Demure debuted in May 2013 with a solo scene directed by Buddy Wood and has worked continuously since, one of only two performers on this list whose career spans the whole period in which the award categories were renamed. Her strongest record is in acting rather than performer-of-the-year categories: she won AVN’s Best Thespian in the Trans/X category in 2023 for Under Her Wing and the successor award, Best Trans Acting Performance, in 2026 for Transpirella. XBIZ named her its Transgender Performer of the Year in 2025.

Signature: The category’s acting specialist — two AVN dramatic-performance wins three years apart, plus an XBIZ top title.

Best known for

Studios

Career

Kade grew up in southern California, transitioned at thirteen after being taken out of school, and began modelling at seventeen. She opened a subscription page as soon as she turned eighteen and started industry work in July 2021 with Grooby Productions, signing with the agent Riley Reynolds at Hussie Models. AVN gave her Best Trans Newcomer in 2023 and Transgender Performer of the Year in 2025 — a two-year climb from the entry award to the top one, the fastest on this list. She appeared in the video for Chase Icon’s "Bands On Me" in 2025.

Signature: Two years from the newcomer award to the top annual title, the shortest gap any performer in this category has managed.

Studios

Beyond performing

• Direct-to-fan subscription business, opened at eighteen

Mainstream credits

• "Bands On Me" music video, Chase Icon (2025)

Career

Born in Manila, Lin began performing in 2011 and won XBIZ Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2013 and the AVN equivalent the following year, taking the AVN title from a field that included Buck Angel and Venus Lux. She is the only performer to have won either body’s top annual trans title who was born outside the Americas, in a category whose award record is otherwise almost entirely American. English Wikipedia’s article on transgender pornography names her, alongside Buck Angel, as one of the field’s two best-known performers.

Signature: The only winner of either top title born outside the Americas, in a category whose awards are otherwise an almost entirely American record.

Career

Taylor shot her first scene for Grooby Productions in late December 2018, at twenty. She has won AVN’s fan-voted Favorite Trans Porn Star award in two consecutive years, 2023 and 2024, and in 2024 also took Best Thespian in the Trans/X category for her own showcase feature, Daisy’s Flower Box. The combination is unusual: she is the only performer on this list whose strongest results are a popular vote and a jury acting award rather than a performer-of-the-year title, and she has never won either body’s top annual honour.

Signature: The audience pick two years running in a category where the jury title went elsewhere both times.

Best known for

Studios

Career

Richter won AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year at the 22nd ceremony in 2005, the second year the category existed, taking it from Vaniity. Wikidata records her as a director, screenwriter and producer as well as a performer, which puts her among the earliest trans performers in the American industry documented as working behind the camera. Beyond the award itself the record is thin, and this entry is ranked on a verified top-title win rather than on a documented body of work.

Signature: One of the two performers who established this category in its first two years, and among the first documented as directing as well as performing.

Beyond performing

• Directing, writing and producing credits

Career

Dubai began performing in 2014 and won XBIZ Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2016, the year she was also nominated for the AVN equivalent — the award that went instead to Venus Lux for the second consecutive time. Two fan-voted NightMoves wins, in 2015 and 2017, bracket that peak. Her documentation is thinner than most on this list: there is no English Wikipedia biography and no reliable published filmography count, and what is recorded here comes from Wikidata and the award bodies.

Signature: A three-year peak in the middle of the 2010s, when the category’s two award bodies were splitting their top titles between different performers most years.

Career

James began performing in 2007 and won AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year at the 27th ceremony in 2010, in the single year between Wendy Williams’ win and Bailey Jay’s two. Her Wikidata entity carries sitelinks to seventeen language editions of Wikipedia, none of them English — a good illustration of what happened to this category’s documentation when English Wikipedia retired its adult-performer notability guideline in 2019.

Signature: The one-year holder between two of the category’s longer reigns, and a case study in how thin the English-language record for these performers has become.

Career

Starr was born in Cuba, where her father was held as a political prisoner, and came to the United States with her family as a child, growing up in Miami before moving to New York in 1999 to study art. She entered the industry in 2002, at eighteen, and won AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2008 after a nomination the previous year. Her total filmography runs to roughly thirty-one titles — small by the standards of anyone else on this list — which makes her the clearest case in the category of a top annual award going to selectivity rather than volume. She retired in 2012.

Signature: Took the category’s top title on around thirty credits, the smallest documented body of work of any winner here.

Best known for