What is YouTube RPM and how much does YouTube pay per view?
RPM — Revenue Per Mille — is the amount of money a creator actually takes home for every 1,000 video views. It is the single most useful number for a YouTuber, because it already accounts for the two things that make raw CPM misleading: the 45% share that YouTube keeps under the Partner Program, and the fraction of views that never see a monetizable ad (Shorts, viewers with ad-blockers, skipped pre-rolls, and audience under advertiser demand). If someone tells you they earn a $20 CPM, they still only receive a fraction of that as RPM.
Actual RPMs range from as low as $0.30–$1 for gaming, music, and ASMR channels aimed at emerging-market audiences, up to $20–$40 or more for finance, crypto, or business content watched primarily in the United States, Canada, Australia, or Northern Europe. That range — roughly 100× between the lowest and highest — is why the same view count can produce wildly different monthly incomes across channels.
The four factors that decide your RPM
- Niche. Finance, crypto, real estate, tech, and business always pay the most because advertisers with high customer lifetime value bid heavily. Gaming, music, comedy, and general entertainment always pay the least, no matter how well the channel is executed.
- Audience country. A US, UK, Canadian, or Australian viewer is worth 5–8× more than a viewer in India, the Philippines, or many other emerging markets, because advertiser CPMs scale with consumer purchasing power.
- Video length. Videos of 8+ minutes can run mid-roll ads, and videos of 15+ minutes tend to run multiple mid- rolls. This typically adds another 20–40% on top of the base RPM.
- Format. Long-form videos monetize the strongest. Shorts monetize on a separate, much lower revenue pool — often just $0.05–$0.15 RPM.
Where to go from here
See the ranked lists — RPM by niche and RPM by country — or plug in your own view count and video length with the YouTube RPM Calculator.
These figures are estimates based on industry benchmarks and public creator-income reports. See our methodology for how we compile and update the dataset.
How YouTube pays creators, end-to-end
Advertisers bid to place their ads against YouTube videos through Google's ad auction. The winning bid becomes the CPM — the price paid per 1,000 ad impressions. YouTube keeps 45% of that as its platform fee, leaving 55% for the creator. But not every video view actually runs an ad: viewers with ad-blockers, viewers under the age at which advertisers can target them, viewers who skip pre-rolls, and playback on YouTube Kids all reduce the fraction of views that generate revenue. The resulting take-home figure per 1,000 views is what we call RPM. On top of that, YouTube Premium subscribers contribute a smaller pooled revenue share based on how much of their watch time you captured, which we include as a separate line so it's never double-counted with ad revenue.
Beyond ad revenue, most established YouTubers layer on three additional income streams that the RPM figures on these pages do not include: brand-deal sponsorships paid directly by advertisers (typically $20–$60 per 1,000 views for mid-sized channels in mainstream niches), affiliate commissions from products linked in descriptions, and channel memberships where paying subscribers receive perks. In many niches these three combined outweigh raw ad revenue by 2–3×, which is why RPM alone is not the whole story of creator income — it's just the most objective floor.
One last thing worth flagging: YouTube Shorts monetize through a completely separate revenue pool with dramatically lower payouts, typically $0.05–$0.15 per 1,000 views. If your channel mixes long-form and Shorts, your reported blended RPM in YouTube Studio will look much lower than the long-form-only figures quoted on these pages. This is normal — the calculator focuses on long-form because that is where the meaningful ad revenue happens.