YouTube Shorts Money Calculator: What Do Shorts Pay?
Shorts are paid from a shared ad pool, not per ad, so they earn far less per view than long videos. Enter your Shorts views, pick where your viewers are, and see a realistic monthly range. It also checks your pace toward the 10 million Shorts views that unlock monetization.
RPM $0.02–$0.20 per 1,000 · Range across most niches
| Ad revenue | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Per day | $0.66 | $6.58 |
| Per month | $20 | $200 |
| Per year | $240 | $2,400 |
- Short of 10M Shorts views in 90 days (3M at this rate). You also need 1,000 subscribers.
Shorts RPM is per 1,000 engaged views, after YouTube’s share (creators keep 45% of the Shorts revenue allocated to them). Estimates only. Numbers stay in your browser.
How to estimate your Shorts earnings
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Enter your Shorts views
Use monthly Shorts views from YouTube Studio (Content → Shorts). Shorts earnings are counted on engaged views, so the number in Studio is the right input.
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Choose your audience
Shorts RPM depends heavily on viewer country. Pick the country most of your viewers are in, "Mixed global" if they are spread out, or a niche if you run a music or kids channel.
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Use your own RPM if you have one
Already in the Partner Program? Filter YouTube Studio revenue to Shorts and use that RPM. Check a full month, as single-day RPM jumps around.
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Check the 10M-view path
Below the result you will see whether your current pace reaches 10 million Shorts views in 90 days, one of the two ways into ad revenue sharing.
How YouTube Shorts revenue sharing works
Long videos earn from the ads shown on them. Shorts work differently. Ads play between Shorts in the feed, and YouTube adds that revenue up each month, by country, into a Creator Pool. The rules are on YouTube's Shorts revenue sharing page.
Three steps decide your share. First, part of the money goes to music: a Short that uses one licensed track sends half its share to the music partner, two tracks send more. Second, the pool is split by each monetizing creator’s share of engaged Shorts views in that country. Third, you keep 45% of what is allocated to you, whether or not you used music.
So your Shorts RPM is not set by your own ads. It is set by how much advertisers spent on Shorts that month in your viewers' countries, divided across everyone's views. That is why it is low and fairly flat across niches. YouTube's RPM help page notes that Shorts RPM is calculated per 1,000 engaged views.
YouTube Shorts RPM by country (2026)
How much YouTube Shorts pay per 1,000 views, from AIR Media-Tech partner data, last updated 24 July 2026. "Per 1M views" is our arithmetic.
| Audience | RPM per 1,000 views | Per 1M views |
|---|---|---|
| United States | $0.328 | ~$328 |
| Switzerland | $0.205 | ~$205 |
| Australia | $0.193 | ~$193 |
| South Korea | $0.185 | ~$185 |
| United Kingdom | $0.166 | ~$166 |
| Canada | $0.165 | ~$165 |
| Germany | $0.163 | ~$163 |
| Brazil | $0.045 | ~$45 |
| Indonesia | $0.012 | ~$12 |
| India | $0.008 | ~$8 |
| Mixed global audience | $0.15–$0.25 | $150–$250 |
The mixed-audience figure is AIR’s own approximation, not a measured median. Your channel can sit well above or below these.
Does niche matter for Shorts?
Much less than for long videos. AIR's niche study (274 channels, updated 17 September 2026) found most niches between $0.02 and $0.20 per 1,000 Shorts views. The outliers:
Music: $0.97–$1.48
Small and mid-size music channels earned far more, which AIR attributes to Content ID payouts when other creators use their tracks, not to the Shorts pool itself.
Lifestyle: $0.16–$0.20
Mid-size lifestyle channels sat at the top of the normal band, against $3.87–$4.88 for their own long videos.
Crafts & DIY: $0.11
About 3% of the same channels’ long-form RPM of $3.53–$3.68. A useful reminder of how wide the gap is.
Kids & teens: $0.02–$0.05
Videos made for kids cannot show personalized ads anywhere on YouTube, which keeps their RPM the lowest of any niche, on Shorts too.
Shorts vs long videos: what a view is worth
At a mixed-audience $0.20 RPM, 1 million Shorts views pays about $200. The same million views on long videos, at the 2026 long-form median of about $2.30, pays about $2,300. Per view, long videos win by roughly ten times.
Shorts earn their keep in other ways. They are the fastest route into the Partner Program (1,000 subscribers plus 10 million Shorts views in 90 days, per YouTube Help). They reach people who would never click a 20-minute video. And they cost little to make if you cut them from videos you already recorded.
Use the YouTube money calculator for your long videos, then add the Shorts figure from this page. For most channels, the plan that pays is long videos for revenue and Shorts for reach.
How to earn more from Shorts
- Post more, not longer. Pool share follows engaged views, so volume matters. Our guide to the best time to post Shorts helps each one start strong.
- Hook in the first second. Views only count as engaged if people stop scrolling. See how to write video hooks.
- Skip extra music tracks. Every licensed track you add moves part of your share to music partners before your 45% is applied.
- Get the format right. Vertical 9:16 at 1080×1920 fills the screen. The Shorts size guide covers the details.
More Shorts without more filming
Shorts pay on volume. Short.now finds the best moments in your long videos and turns them into captioned 9:16 Shorts, so one upload gives you a week of posts.
Questions
Usually between $0.02 and $0.33 in 2026, depending on where your viewers live. AIR Media-Tech data puts US audiences at about $0.33 per 1,000 views and a mixed global audience at about $0.15 to $0.25.
Roughly $150 to $250 for a mixed global audience and around $330 for a mostly US audience, based on 2026 AIR Media-Tech data. Music channels with Content ID income can earn more.
Shorts ads play between videos in the feed, not on your video. That revenue is pooled, part goes to music licensing, the rest is split by views across all monetizing creators, and you keep 45% of your allocation.
You need 1,000 subscribers plus 10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days, or 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours on long videos in 12 months.
Yes. Revenue from Shorts that use licensed music is partly paid to music partners before the Creator Pool is split. A Short with one track sends half its share to music. Your 45% cut stays the same.
YouTube calculates Shorts RPM per 1,000 engaged views and splits the pool by engaged views, but it does not publish an exact definition. Treat it as views where someone actually watched rather than scrolled straight past.
