YouTube Money Calculator: Channel Earnings (2026)

How the YouTube money calculator works

The calculator answers one question: given its monthly views and the kind of content it makes, roughly how much does a channel earn from ads? To answer it we use RPM, the same metric YouTube shows creators in Analytics. RPM is the estimated revenue the channel keeps per 1,000 views, after YouTube's share and after views that showed no ads. Multiplying views by RPM therefore gives a more realistic answer than using CPM, which is what advertisers pay before any of that is taken out.

If you type a channel name, we read recent daily views, the channel's country and an estimated category from public YouTube data and fill in the sliders for you. If you are checking your own channel, entering your monthly views from Analytics and the country most of your audience is in gives a better result. The answer is a range, worked out with the lowest and highest RPM in our rate table for the category and audience country you chose.

The formula

Monthly ad revenue = long-form views × category RPM ÷ 1,000 + Shorts views × Shorts RPM ÷ 1,000. On long-form videos YouTube passes 55% of ad revenue to the channel; in the Shorts pool creators keep 45% of their allocated share. RPM already reflects those splits, so we don't deduct them again. Shorts RPM is far below long-form RPM, which is why the two view types are entered separately: at the same total views, a channel earns noticeably less as its Shorts share grows.

Worked example: a US personal finance channel

Take a personal finance channel with a mostly US audience that gets 300,000 long-form views and 1,000,000 Shorts views a month. Our table puts US finance RPM at $5–$20 and US Shorts RPM at $0.03–$0.10.

The Shorts views are more than three times the long-form views, yet they add only about 2% of revenue. Our own channel data shows the same pattern at scale: across the 250 most-subscribed global channels we analysed on 30 October 2026, short videos made up 63% of views but only 4.7% of estimated revenue.

What moves the result most

• Audience country. In the same niche, US viewers are worth roughly 3 times the average of other countries in our table, and 5–10 times Türkiye.
• Niche. What an advertiser will pay to reach a viewer depends on the topic: finance and business sit at the top, gaming and entertainment at the bottom. See the category pages for details.
• Long-form vs Shorts mix. Shorts views add only a little to revenue.
• Season. Ad budgets rise toward the end of the year and drop in early January, so a single month's RPM can be off from the yearly average.

What the calculator leaves out

The result covers YouTube ad revenue only. Channel memberships, Super Thanks, YouTube Premium revenue, sponsorships and affiliate income are not included, and for many channels they add up to more than ads. We assume the channel is in the YouTube Partner Program; channels outside it earn nothing from views. Figures are before tax. Creators outside the US who have not submitted tax information can have US tax withheld from earnings, and local income tax applies on top.

This is an estimate, not the channel's actual income. YouTube does not publish channel earnings; only the channel owner sees the real figure in YouTube Studio.

Sources

Last updated: 2026-10-13