YouTube Earnings Calculator

The YouTube Earnings Calculator gives a rough range for how much advertising revenue a video might bring in, based on its view count and a low and high CPM you choose. It is meant for planning, such as sizing up a content idea or preparing for a sponsorship conversation, and its figures are estimates, not a statement of what YouTube will pay.

How the estimate is worked out

There are three fields: Total views, Low CPM ($) and High CPM ($). Leave a CPM field blank and the tool uses $0.50 for the low end and $4 for the high end. It then applies two steps:

1. Monetized views = total views × 0.55. This is a fixed assumption that roughly 55% of views show an ad, since not every playback does: ad blockers, ineligible content and viewers who leave early all reduce the share.
2. Earnings = monetized views ÷ 1,000 × CPM, calculated once with the low CPM and once with the high CPM.

The result shows the range in US dollars as "Estimated earnings" and, below it, the monetized views figure.

Worked example: 100,000 views

With the default CPMs:

• Monetized views: 100,000 × 0.55 = 55,000
• Low: 55,000 ÷ 1,000 × $0.50 = $27.50
• High: 55,000 ÷ 1,000 × $4 = $220.00

The eight-fold gap between the two numbers is the honest answer: without your own analytics, the rate per thousand views is the biggest unknown. If you enter 1.2 as both the low and high CPM, the range collapses to a single figure of $66.00. To see the rupee value, run the dollar figure through the currency converter.

CPM, RPM and YouTube's share

CPM is what advertisers pay per thousand ad impressions. The CPM figures in YouTube Analytics are gross, before YouTube takes its cut. For ads on long-form videos, members of the YouTube Partner Program receive 55% of the net ad revenue. This calculator does not apply that split separately, so if you type in CPMs copied from Analytics, multiply the result by 0.55 for a take-home estimate.

RPM is what a creator actually earns per thousand views, counting all views and all revenue sources after YouTube's share. If you already know your RPM, the simplest estimate is views ÷ 1,000 × RPM worked out by hand, because the calculator's 55% step would count the ad-free views twice. Shorts are paid from a pooled ad revenue model rather than per-video ads, so this per-view method does not fit them well. For the general CPM formula used in advertising, see the CPM calculator.

What moves the real numbers

• Audience country: advertisers pay more to reach viewers in high-spending markets such as the US and UK, so a channel watched mainly in India usually sees lower rates than one with a mostly American audience.
• Topic: finance, technology and business content tends to attract higher ad rates than general entertainment.
• Time of year: ad budgets usually peak in the last quarter of the year and drop in January.
• Video length: videos of 8 minutes or longer can carry mid-roll ads.
• Eligibility: ad earnings need YouTube Partner Program membership, which for ad revenue sharing requires 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.