Turn on professional mode if you want to build a public audience as yourself, under the name you use with friends and family, and you will run the account alone; create a Page if you work under a stage name or brand, need other people to help manage it with their own access, or want Ads Manager and Meta Business Suite. Both routes give you a Professional dashboard and the same monetization programs, subject to eligibility.
A naming note before the detail: Meta's Business Help Center still says “professional mode”, while the Facebook Help Center now titles the same feature “pro mode”. They are one product. Everything below comes from Meta's help pages and its Facebook for Creators site as they read on October 1, 2026.
Meta's two deciding questions
Meta's own guide to choosing professional mode or a Page boils the decision down to two questions. First, are you building a public presence as an individual, or as an entity such as a business, organization, product, pet or pseudonym? Anything other than an individual goes to a Page. Second, if you are an individual, do you want that presence on the same profile you use with friends and family? Yes means professional mode; no means a Page.
The first question settles most creator cases because of Facebook's rules on names. The names policy says your profile should carry the name your friends call you in everyday life, a name that also appears on an ID or document from Meta's list. You can add another name, such as a professional name, but profiles are for individual use and pretending to be someone or something else is not allowed. A stage name or brand therefore belongs on a Page, which Meta's guide explicitly allows to represent a pseudonym.
If you keep your legal identity apart from your creator work, that separation is a privacy decision as much as a branding one; our guide to anonymous creator privacy covers the wider habits that go with it.
Decision table: identity, team access, ads, money and privacy
Read across each row and mark which column fits how you work. If the Page column wins on identity or team access, the other rows rarely change the answer.
| Factor | Profile in pro mode | Page | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | You, under the name you go by with friends and family | A business, brand, product or pseudonym, not necessarily tied to a named person | Professional mode or Page |
| Connections | Friends plus public followers; up to 5,000 friends and unlimited followers | Followers only, with no friends list; unlimited followers | When to create a Page or turn on pro mode |
| Audience per post | Choose public or friends only for each post | Every post is public | Professional mode or Page |
| Team access | One login only; Meta says admin roles are not supported on pro mode profiles | Facebook access with full or partial control, task access and Community Manager access | About Page access and Pages vs professional mode |
| Meta Business Suite and Ads Manager | Neither is available to pro mode profiles | Both are available | Pages vs professional mode |
| Boosting and ads | Meta for Creators lists boosted posts and ads as available; the Business Help Center comparison lists advertising only under Pages | Boosted posts, ads and full Ads Manager | Types of profiles and Pages |
| Monetization | Stars, Subscriptions and Content Monetization if eligible; profiles without pro mode cannot monetize | The same programs if eligible, under the same partner policies | Partner Monetization Policies |
| Insights | Professional dashboard only | Professional dashboard, Meta Business Suite and Ads Manager | Types of profiles and Pages |
| Messages | Messenger, Facebook comments and Instagram messages, without the combined Page Inbox | One Inbox for Messenger, Facebook comments and Instagram messages and comments | Types of profiles and Pages |
| What visitors can see about you | Profile transparency: creation date, your primary country location and whether you run ads | Page transparency: creation date, past name changes, the countries the Page is managed from and how many managers sit in each | Profile transparency and Page transparency |
The ads row is the one place Meta contradicts itself. Its creator site's product comparison ticks boosting and ads for pro mode profiles, while the Business Help Center table lists advertising only among Page tools. Check whether a Boost button appears on your own posts; if you need audiences, campaigns or anyone else running ads for you, that points to a Page regardless.
What turning pro mode on changes
Pro mode is added to the profile you already have; Meta's article on turning pro mode on or off stresses that you do not create a new profile and that your friends and existing posts stay as they are. What you gain is a set of professional tools:
- Content and audience insights you can use to track progress.
- Enhanced safety features, with Moderation Assist named as the example.
- Eligibility for discovery, so your posts can be recommended beyond your friends.
- A Who can follow me setting switched to Public, which you can change back in settings.
- Access to monetization products, if your profile is eligible.
One addition is easy to miss. Pro mode profiles show a Profile transparency section listing when the profile was created, your primary country location and whether the profile is running ads. Meta works out that location from your stated location plus device and connection information, the section itself cannot be hidden, and you can only ask Meta to hide the country in special circumstances such as a risk to your personal safety. A Page does not escape this: its transparency section shows the countries it is managed from and how many people manage it in each, so a manager or editor based abroad becomes visible to anyone who looks.
On/off consequences checklist
Switching pro mode off looks harmless because your friends and posts survive, but the same Meta article lists losses that are hard to undo. Work through this list before you press Turn off.
- Followers. Who can follow me reverts to Friends and you lose every follower who is not also a friend. Meta says you can allow public followers again by turning pro mode back on, but it does not say the lost followers return.
- Insights. Your existing content and audience insights stop being available, so export or screenshot anything you need first; our Facebook Insights glossary explains what each number means.
- Moderation. Enhanced safety features such as Moderation Assist go, so decide how you will filter comments without them.
- Reach. The profile is no longer eligible for discovery opportunities.
- Money. Pending payouts or bonuses are paid, but future bonuses and payouts pause. Download your earnings records first, using our guide to Facebook payout dates and payout accounts.
- Content protection. Protection is removed from all of your content, including reels with an open ownership issue, which the matches and conflicts article repeats. Settle disputes before switching, and see our walkthrough of Facebook content protection and Rights Manager.
- Eligibility. The Partner Monetization Policies say profiles outside professional mode are ineligible for monetization products, so the switch ends earning, not just pauses a setting.
When a Page is the better home for a creator business
The strongest reason is people. A pro mode profile is one person behind one login, and sharing that password is exactly what Meta's guide tells you never to do. A Page lets you hand out access by job. Meta's Page access article describes these levels:
- Facebook access with full control covers content, messages, comments, ads, insights, settings and access itself, including the power to remove anyone, you included, or delete the Page.
- Facebook access with partial control covers day-to-day work such as content, messages, ads and insights, without settings or access management.
- Task access lets someone manage content, messages and community activity, ads or insights from Meta Business Suite or Ads Manager without switching into the Page on Facebook.
- Community Manager access is limited to moderating live stream chat.
The same article warns that a Page with nobody left holding full control is automatically deactivated and scheduled for deletion. In practice that means keeping full control for yourself plus one person you trust completely, and giving editors, chat moderators or an agency task access instead.
The second reason is tooling. Scheduling, bulk uploads, the desktop Policy issues screen and Rights Manager all sit in Meta Business Suite, which Meta's appeals article confirms is not currently available to pro mode profiles; profile owners appeal monetization issues from the mobile app instead. Our map of where Facebook's creator tools live now shows which tasks each surface handles. You will still need a profile, because Meta's profile and Page overview notes that you must have one to create a Page.
Running a profile and a Page side by side
You can keep a personal profile, with or without pro mode, and run your public work from a Page. Meta's originality guidance does not punish you for posting your own material in both places: its July 2025 announcement on combating unoriginal content says you can share the same content across any of your Pages or profiles. What it does punish is reposting other people's work, and the same partner policies apply to Pages and pro mode profiles alike.
The cost of running both is attention and bookkeeping. Each account builds its own audience, its own insights and its own monetization record, so decide which one is the business, point your other platforms at it, and treat the second as personal. If you also run Instagram, the same question in a different shape appears in our comparison of Instagram creator and business accounts.
Limits of this comparison
Meta's comparison page says some features and tools are subject to eligibility, and monetization availability also depends on where you live, so two creators can see different options on identical account types; the thresholds for each program are in our guide to Facebook monetization requirements, tool by tool. Meta's pages disagree on advertising from pro mode profiles and use two names for the same feature, which tells you how often this area changes. Treat the table as a starting point, confirm each row against your own account, and take questions about legal names, contracts or tax registration to a qualified professional where you live. This reflects Meta's documentation on October 1, 2026, not a promise about how Facebook will treat any particular account.