YouTube Money Calculator (Earnings Estimate)

About the YouTube Money Calculator (Earnings Estimate)

Work out what a YouTube channel earns per day, per month and per year from your own numbers. For long-form videos, enter the RPM shown in YouTube Analytics — or estimate from your playback-based CPM, the share of views that show ads and the 55% share YouTube pays creators for Watch Page ads. For Shorts, enter your Shorts RPM and engaged views. Add a monthly goal to see how many views it takes, and optionally estimate the US tax Google withholds.

The calculator never fills in an “average RPM”: rates vary from channel to channel and month to month, and any single number would be a guess. Every result shows the formula with your numbers in it, in rupees or the currency your Analytics uses.

Common uses

• Checking what a growing channel could earn at its current RPM before quitting a job or hiring help.
• Comparing what long-form videos and Shorts bring in for the same number of views.
• Setting a view target for a monthly income goal.
• Explaining to a brand or partner how ad revenue on a channel is worked out.

RPM, CPM and the 55% share

• RPM (revenue per mille) is “your total revenue (after YouTube’s revenue share) per 1000 views”, including ads, channel memberships, YouTube Premium revenue, Super Chat and Super Stickers. For videos it counts all views, including ones that showed no ads; for Shorts it counts engaged views (YouTube Help: Understand ad revenue analytics).
• CPM is what advertisers pay per 1,000 ad impressions, before YouTube’s share. Playback-based CPM is what they pay per 1,000 playbacks that showed an ad, and monetised playbacks are views with at least one ad.
• For Watch Page ads, partners receive 55% of net revenues; for Shorts feed ads they receive 45% of the revenue allocated to them; for fan funding (Super Chat, Super Stickers, Super Thanks, memberships) 70% (YouTube Help: YouTube partner earnings overview).

RPM is therefore the closest measure of what you take home per 1,000 views, and the RPM method here is the most accurate. The CPM method is an upper estimate: advertisers’ CPM is gross, while the 55% applies to net revenue.

How Shorts earnings are worked out

Each month the revenue from ads shown between videos in the Shorts Feed is pooled. Part pays for music used in Shorts (half of a Short’s share when it uses one track, two thirds with two), the rest forms the Creator Pool, which is split by each creator’s share of engaged views in each country; creators keep 45% of what is allocated to them, whether or not they used music. YouTube’s own example: 1% of a country’s eligible views earns 1% of a $90,000 pool, $900, and the creator keeps 45% of it — $405 (YouTube Help: Shorts monetization policies).

Your Shorts RPM already contains all of this, so the calculator simply multiplies it by your engaged views.

Which views to enter

Use the view count from the same YouTube Analytics report, and the same period, as your RPM, so the two match. YouTube counts a view as soon as a video starts to play, in every format, while Partner Program earnings are still based on engaged views and engaged watch hours (YouTube Help: How engagement metrics are counted). For Shorts, use engaged views with your Shorts RPM.

Joining the YouTube Partner Program

To share ad revenue you need 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 qualified watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days (YouTube Help: YouTube Partner Program overview).

YouTube has announced the changes below; YouTube Help: Partner Program updates says when they apply:

• New applicants for ad and Premium revenue will need 1,000 subscribers and either 8,000 qualified watch hours in the last 365 days or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days. Channels already in the programme keep their status.
• Channels in the programme count as active with 1,000 qualified watch hours in the past 365 days, 1 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days, or 2 long-form videos or 5 Shorts uploaded every 90 days. A channel that drops below gets a 90-day window to reach the watch-hour or Shorts-view figure to stay in the programme.
• Earning from the Shorts Creator Pool in a month will need 10 million qualified Shorts views over the last 90 days; missing it does not remove a channel from the programme, and long-form and other earnings are not affected.
• Partners who do not accept the updated terms in YouTube Studio by YouTube’s deadline stop earning from the features those terms cover until they accept.
• Fan funding, Shopping and Creator Partnerships stay at 500 subscribers plus 3,000 watch hours in a year or 3 million Shorts views in 90 days.

US tax withheld by Google

Creators outside the US who submit their US tax information have tax withheld only on earnings from viewers in the US: 30% without a tax treaty, or the treaty rate — 15% for creators in India. If no tax information is submitted, Google may withhold up to 24% of an individual’s total worldwide earnings; for a business outside the US the default is 30% of its US earnings (YouTube Help: U.S. tax requirements for YouTube earnings). The optional section applies these rates to your estimate; it is not tax advice, and income tax in your own country is not included.

Limitations

• An estimate, not a promise: actual earnings depend on the ads shown, where viewers are, the time of year and YouTube’s policies, and RPM changes from month to month — use a recent, typical period.
• The CPM method covers Watch Page ads only. It leaves out YouTube Premium, memberships, Super Chat and other income, and uses advertisers’ gross CPM while the 55% applies to net revenue.
• Amounts are not converted between currencies: enter rates in the currency you want the result in.
• Income tax and GST in your own country are not included; the US withholding section uses only the rates YouTube publishes.
• Sponsorships, affiliate income, merchandise and other income outside YouTube are not counted.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.