All posts on e621 are one of three ratings: Safe, Questionable, and Explicit, which roughly coincide with the more commonly seen General, Mature, and Adult ratings of other such systems.

While we try to ensure that every submission is rated correctly based on the below criteria mistakes may happen. If you encounter a submission that you believe has been incorrectly rated either change the rating yourself, or report it to staff using the Report button. Please include your reasons why you believe the submission to be incorrectly rated, this helps us tremendously to understand what you're seeing and helps us make a quicker decision.

Please note that the following examples for their respective ratings are far from exhaustive.

Explicit (Adult)

Any image which depicts:

• genitals-- pussy, penis, penis sheaths, balls, perineum, and including blatant cameltoes and detailed bulges (penis outline)
• genital orifices-- genital slits/vents, cloaca, and anus, including toony x-anuses
• sex and/or masturbation
• sex toys-- usage irrelevant
• cum and/or pussy juice, regardless of context
• gore, such as subjects of dismemberment, extreme amounts of blood, physical trauma, and snuff
• any content with obvious "extreme" fetish purposes (e.g. heavy BDSM and BDSM toys, hard/fatal vore, scat, watersports, etc...)

Questionable (Mature)

This rating should be free of the content found under Explicit, but may include:

• exposed female breasts with nipples, including obvious depiction of female nipples pulling through clothing
• slight cameltoes and/or non-detailed bulges
• realistic blood (without gore or anything else covered under Explicit)
• pubic hair, perhaps from over the top of underwear or a swimsuit
• deep/French kissing
• characters with revealing clothing with obvious erotic or teasing intent
• suggestive posing (such as butt shot) where focus is drawn to breasts, butt, or covered/obscured genitals
• all content with slight (but obvious) fetishistic material
• light teasing bondage (done with household items and similar), soft vore, or depictions of older characters in diapers with otherwise no explicit content are acceptable under Questionable

Safe (General)

Finally, this rating should be free of any of the content listed above, and may include:

• cartoon nudity (see featureless breasts and featureless crotch)
• non-suggestive artwork containing characters in underwear or swimwear
• very mild and/or cartoony blood (such as anime-style nosebleeds, very small/minor cuts, etc)

Search

You can filter search results by querying for rating:s, rating:q, or rating:e for safe, questionable, and explicit posts, respectively. You can also combine them with other tags and they work as expected.

If you want to remove a rating from your search results, use -rating:s, -rating:q, or -rating:e.