YouTube Money Calculator: How Much Do Your Views Earn?
Enter your views, pick your niche, and get a low-to-high estimate of your YouTube ad revenue per day, month and year. The rates come from 2026 YouTube Studio data, not guesses. Have your own RPM? Use that instead.
RPM $0.88–$5.02 per 1,000 · median $2.43
| Ad revenue | Low | Median | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per day | $8.80 | $24 | $50 |
| Per month | $268 | $739 | $1,527 |
| Per year | $3,212 | $8,870 | $18,323 |
At $2.43 RPM you need about 411,523 views for $1,000, and 41,153 for your first $100.
RPM is what you keep per 1,000 views after YouTube’s share (creators get 55% of watch-page ad revenue). Estimates only; your YouTube Studio RPM is the real number. Numbers stay in your browser.
How to use the YouTube earnings calculator
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Enter your views
Type your long-form views per day or per month. Use an average from the last 90 days in YouTube Studio, not your best week. You can type 25000 or 25k.
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Pick your niche
The niche sets an RPM range: the middle half of real channels in that category. The low end is a typical weak month, the high end a strong one.
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Or enter your own RPM
If your channel is monetized, choose "My own RPM" and type the RPM from YouTube Studio → Analytics → Revenue. That beats any niche average.
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Read the range, not one number
You get daily, monthly and yearly figures at the low, median and high RPM. Plan around the median and treat the high end as a good month.
YouTube RPM by niche (2026)
These are the ranges the calculator uses. They come from AIR Media-Tech's study of 300 monetized channels: verified YouTube Studio data from May 2025 to May 2026, last updated 1 July 2026. "Typical range" is the 25th to 75th percentile.
| Niche | Median RPM | Typical range | Views for $1,000 at median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education & science | $10.22 | $2.31–$19.50 | ~98,000 |
| Cars & transport* | $5.69 | $3.17–$9.81 | ~176,000 |
| Lifestyle & vlogs | $2.98 | $1.77–$5.24 | ~336,000 |
| News & politics* | $2.60 | $1.79–$3.62 | ~385,000 |
| Entertainment | $2.43 | $0.88–$5.02 | ~412,000 |
| Crafts & DIY | $2.39 | $1.00–$3.90 | ~418,000 |
| Gadgets & tech | $2.33 | $0.70–$3.71 | ~430,000 |
| Music | $2.28 | $1.35–$4.16 | ~439,000 |
| Food & cooking* | $2.25 | $1.50–$3.11 | ~445,000 |
| Gaming | $2.05 | $0.70–$3.62 | ~487,000 |
| Business & finance* | $2.01 | $0.73–$5.17 | ~498,000 |
| Health & sport | $1.23 | $0.72–$1.53 | ~813,000 |
| Kids & teens | $0.33 | $0.16–$0.88 | ~3,030,000 |
* Fewer than ten channels in the sample, so treat as directional. The median across all 300 channels was about $2.30. Health & sport and kids & teens "views for $1,000" are our arithmetic from the median.
RPM vs CPM: which number tells you what you earn
CPM (cost per mille) is what advertisers pay for 1,000 ad impressions, before YouTube takes its share. RPM (revenue per mille) is what you actually earn per 1,000 views, after YouTube's share, counting every view, including the ones that showed no ad. YouTube defines both in its RPM help page.
That is why RPM is always well below CPM. On long-form videos YouTube pays creators 55% of net ad revenue (YouTube Partner Program terms). Not every view shows an ad, either: in AIR's data the median channel showed ads on 53% of views. So a $10 CPM does not mean $10 per 1,000 views. It might mean $3 to $5.
Use RPM for planning. It already folds in the revenue share, ad-free views, YouTube Premium revenue and how many ads each viewer sees. The calculator works in RPM for that reason.
Why other calculators show bigger numbers for finance
Many YouTube revenue calculators put finance at $10 to $30 RPM. Those figures usually start from advertiser bids. vidIQ's niche guide (published 20 April 2026) gives personal finance a CPM of $15 to $50 and an RPM of $5 to $17, drawn from Google Ads benchmarks, creator disclosures and vidIQ channel data.
AIR measured what channels actually received and found a business & finance median of $2.01, with a top quarter above $5.17. Both can be true. A finance channel that talks about credit cards to US adults can earn far more than one that reacts to stock news for a global audience. Inside one niche the spread is wide: AIR found education channels in the top quarter earned 8.4 times the RPM of the bottom quarter.
If you are a finance creator with a US audience, set a custom RPM in the $5 to $17 band to see the advertiser-side view. If you are starting out, the measured median is the safer plan.
What moves your RPM up or down
Where your viewers live
Advertisers pay more to reach viewers in some countries than others. AIR's July 2026 country data for Shorts shows the gap: about $0.33 per 1,000 views from US viewers against $0.008 from India.
Time of year
Ad budgets peak before the holidays. AIR measured a November–December RPM premium of 60% for business channels, 39% for food and 9% for gaming, versus the rest of the year.
Video length and mid-rolls
Monetized videos of 8 minutes or longer can carry mid-roll ads (YouTube Help). More ad slots per view raise RPM, as long as viewers keep watching.
Ad-friendly content
Videos with limited ads (the yellow icon) earn much less. Swearing in the first seconds, violence and sensitive topics are the usual causes.
Ways to earn more than ad revenue alone
- Get monetized first. Ad revenue needs the YouTube Partner Program: 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours in 12 months, or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days (YouTube Help).
- Raise click-through. More impressions turned into views is the cheapest way to more revenue. Our thumbnail ideas and AI thumbnail generator help here.
- Post Shorts from your long videos. Shorts pay far less per view, but they bring new viewers to your channel. The Shorts money calculator shows what they add.
- Add sponsors and affiliates. They are paid per deal or per sale, not per view, so a smaller channel with a focused audience can still earn from them. Ad revenue is the floor, not the ceiling.
More videos out of the same recording
Short.now cuts your long videos into captioned Shorts, so every upload also works as discovery for your channel. On paid plans the AI thumbnail studio helps the long video get clicked.
Questions
It depends on niche and audience. In AIR Media-Tech’s 2026 data from 300 channels the median RPM was about $2.30 per 1,000 views, with education channels near $10 and kids channels near $0.33. Your own RPM in YouTube Studio is the real figure.
At the 2026 median RPM of about $2.30, one million long-form views earns about $2,300. The same views could earn $700 to $5,000 in most niches, and much more in high-RPM education or finance channels.
CPM is what advertisers pay per 1,000 ad impressions, before YouTube’s share. RPM is what you earn per 1,000 views after YouTube’s share, counting views that showed no ads. RPM is the one to plan with.
For long-form videos, YouTube keeps 45% and pays the creator 55% of net ad revenue. For Shorts, creators keep 45% of the revenue allocated to them from the Shorts pool.
First you need to join the YouTube Partner Program (1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in a year, or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days). After that, at a $2.30 RPM, about 43,500 views earn your first $100.
It is an estimate built on published 2026 data, so treat it as a planning range. Real earnings swing with country, season, video length and ad suitability. Once you are monetized, enter your own RPM for a much closer number.
