How to estimate YouTube earnings
- Enter your average daily views, or drag the slider anywhere from about 100 to 10 million views a day.
- Choose a niche preset to fill in a typical RPM range, or type your own low and high RPM from YouTube Analytics.
- Use the RPM range slider to shift the whole range up or down.
- Read the daily, monthly and yearly estimates, and compare other view levels in the table below.
What you can do with Earnings Estimator
- Daily, monthly, yearly ranges
- Shows a low-to-high revenue range for each period plus a monthly midpoint, based on your views and RPM range.
- Niche RPM presets
- Ten presets from gaming and music to personal finance, plus a separate YouTube Shorts preset with a much lower RPM.
- Use your own RPM
- Type the RPM from the Revenue tab in YouTube Analytics for an estimate based on your channel's real numbers.
- View-level table
- Compare monthly and yearly earnings at 1K, 10K, 50K, 100K and 1M daily views at your current RPM range.
- Log-scale views slider
- Drag across several orders of magnitude to see how earnings scale as a channel grows from hundreds to millions of views.
YouTube RPM vs CPM and what affects earnings
This calculator uses RPM, or revenue per mille: what a creator actually earns per 1,000 views after YouTube's share. That differs from CPM, which is what advertisers pay per 1,000 ad impressions before the split and only covers views that showed ads. Because RPM is spread across all views, including ones with no ads, it is the right number for estimating income. You can find your channel's RPM in YouTube Studio under Analytics, in the Revenue tab.
RPM varies a lot. Finance, business and tech channels often earn several times more per view than gaming, music or kids content, because advertisers pay more to reach those audiences. Viewer country, time of year, video length and mid-roll ads all matter too. Shorts are paid from a shared revenue pool and typically earn a few cents per 1,000 views. Ad revenue only starts after you join the YouTube Partner Program, which requires 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 public watch hours in 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days.
Frequently asked questions
How much does YouTube pay per 1,000 views?
It depends on the niche and audience. Commonly reported long-form RPMs fall somewhere between about $1 and $10 per 1,000 views, with finance and business channels sometimes higher. Shorts usually earn far less, often a few cents per 1,000 views. The presets in this calculator reflect these rough ranges.
What is the difference between RPM and CPM?
CPM is what advertisers pay per 1,000 ad impressions, before YouTube takes its share. RPM is what you earn per 1,000 total views, after YouTube's share and including views that showed no ads. RPM is lower than CPM but is the more useful number for estimating income.
How accurate is this YouTube earnings estimate?
It's a ballpark. Real earnings depend on audience country, season, video length, ad blockers, the share of views that are monetized and your content category. For the most accurate result, replace the preset with your own RPM from YouTube Analytics once your channel is monetized.
How many views do you need to make money on YouTube?
You first need to join the YouTube Partner Program, which requires 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 public watch hours in the past 12 months or 10 million public Shorts views in the past 90 days. After that, earnings scale with views: at a $3 RPM, 100,000 monthly views is roughly $300.
Does this calculator access my channel data?
No. You type in the numbers yourself and all the math runs in your browser. The tool doesn't connect to your YouTube account, request any permissions or send your figures to a server.