AM This calculator estimates what a YouTube channel could earn from ads. Enter views per day or per month, choose a niche preset for the RPM range, adjust the share of views that can earn money, and it returns estimated daily, monthly and yearly earnings as a low to high range.
Treat the result as a planning estimate. Your real numbers live in YouTube Studio under Analytics > Revenue, and once you have a few months of data, your own RPM beats any preset.
How to use the YouTube Money Calculator
- Enter your views per day, or switch to monthly views. Use long-form views. Shorts pay in a different way, explained below.
- Pick a niche preset. It fills in a low and a high RPM.
- Edit the RPM fields if you know your own figure. In YouTube Studio, open Analytics > Revenue and read the RPM card for the last 90 days or more.
- Set the share of monetized views. Leave it at 100% if you entered your own RPM, because RPM already accounts for views that showed no ad. Lower it only for views that cannot earn at all, such as videos with limited ads or content not yet in the YouTube Partner Program.
- Read the daily, monthly and yearly range. The gap between low and high is the honest part of the answer.
CPM vs RPM
These two numbers are often mixed up, and the difference decides whether an estimate is realistic.
| Metric | What it measures | Who it describes |
|---|---|---|
| CPM (cost per mille) | What advertisers pay per 1,000 ad impressions, before YouTube takes its share | The advertiser side |
| Playback-based CPM | Gross ad revenue per 1,000 playbacks that showed at least one ad | Monetized playbacks only |
| RPM (revenue per mille) | What you earn per 1,000 views after the revenue share, across all views and all revenue sources | Your side |
RPM is always lower than CPM. It is calculated after YouTube's share, and it is spread across every view, including viewers with ad blockers, viewers who skip, and views where no ad was sold. RPM also includes other revenue such as YouTube Premium, memberships and Super Chat. That is why this calculator works with RPM: it is the number that turns views into money in your account.
The revenue share
For long-form videos, creators in the YouTube Partner Program receive 55% of the net ad revenue from ads shown on their videos, and YouTube keeps 45%. Shorts work differently. Ad revenue from the Shorts feed goes into a monthly Creator Pool, part of it covers music licensing when a Short uses music, and the rest is split among monetizing creators by their share of engaged views. Creators keep 45% of the revenue allocated to them. Details are in YouTube's Shorts monetization policies.
RPM ranges by niche
The presets are starting points drawn from ranges creators commonly report in public, not YouTube data. Edit them freely.
| Niche preset | Default RPM range (per 1,000 views) |
|---|---|
| Finance and investing | $8 to $20 |
| Tech and software | $4 to $12 |
| Education and how-to | $3 to $10 |
| Lifestyle, beauty and vlogs | $2 to $6 |
| Gaming | $1 to $4 |
RPM moves for reasons that have nothing to do with you. It depends on the niche (advertisers pay more to reach people about to spend money), the audience country, the season (ad budgets usually rise before the holidays and drop in January), video length (mid-roll ads are only available on videos of 8 minutes or longer) and how many viewers use ad blockers or YouTube Premium. Shorts RPM is far lower than long-form and is commonly reported in cents rather than dollars per 1,000 views.
Note: Two channels in the same niche with the same views can earn very different amounts. The range is an estimate, not a promise, and nothing here predicts what any specific channel will earn.
A worked example
Say a tech channel gets 10,000 long-form views per day and uses the $4 to $12 preset with 100% monetized share. Daily: 10 thousand-view blocks times $4 is $40, and times $12 is $120. Over a 30-day month that is $1,200 to $3,600, and over 365 days $14,600 to $43,800. The arithmetic is simple. The hard part is the RPM, which is why the range is wide.
When a channel starts earning
You earn nothing from ads until you join the YouTube Partner Program. It has two tiers, per YouTube's YPP overview.
| Tier | Requirements | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Fan funding (lower tier) | 500 subscribers and 3 public uploads in the last 90 days, plus 3,000 public watch hours in 12 months or 3 million public Shorts views in 90 days | Channel memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers, Super Thanks, Shopping |
| Full YPP | 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 public watch hours in 12 months or 10 million public Shorts views in 90 days | Ad revenue on long-form and Shorts, YouTube Premium revenue |
You also need to live in a country where YPP is available, turn on 2-Step Verification, have no active Community Guidelines strikes and link an AdSense account for payments.
Raising what a view is worth
- Pick topics advertisers pay for. A video about choosing accounting software attracts different ads than a reaction video. Research topics with real search demand first: YouTube Studio in AM Jarvis builds video topic cluster plans from real YouTube search suggestions.
- Make videos long enough for mid-rolls when the topic supports it, and never pad a video to reach 8 minutes.
- Earn clicks honestly. Titles decide whether views happen at all. Test ideas with the YouTube title generator.
- Add income that does not depend on RPM: memberships, affiliate links, sponsorships and your own products. If you sell physical products, work out your margin first with the profit margin calculator.