How much does YouTube pay for 1 million views?
The short answer: about $984–$7,535 for 1 million long-form views, but only $12–$123 for 1 million Shorts views. Where you land in that range depends mostly on two things: the video format and where your viewers live.
1 million long-form views: $984–$7,535. 1 million Shorts views: $12–$123. The channel must be in the YouTube Partner Program with ads turned on to earn anything at all.
Why there is no single number
YouTube does not pay a fixed amount per view. Advertisers bid to show ads, YouTube keeps a share, and the creator receives the rest. For long-form videos, creators get 55% of the ad revenue. For Shorts, ad money from the Shorts feed goes into a shared pool, and each creator gets 45% of their part of it based on how many engaged views they had. That pooled system is why a Short view is worth a small fraction of a long-form view.
Not every view shows an ad, either. Viewers with ad blockers, YouTube Premium members, and videos with limited ads all lower the number of views that actually pay. That is why every estimate on this page is a range.
Long-form vs Shorts: 1 million views
The more of your views that come from Shorts, the less 1 million views is worth. Here is how the same million views changes as the Shorts share grows (audience location unknown):
| Views from Shorts | Long-form views | Estimated earnings |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | 1,000,000 | $984–$7,535 |
| 20% | 800,000 | $790–$6,053 |
| 50% | 500,000 | $498–$3,829 |
| 80% | 200,000 | $207–$1,606 |
| 100% | 0 | $12–$123 |
A channel posting only Shorts needs roughly 60 to 80 times more views to earn what a long-form channel earns. Many creators use Shorts to find new viewers and long videos to earn money.
How audience country changes the payout
Advertisers pay much more to reach viewers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. For 1 million long-form views, here is what changes as the share of US viewers grows:
| Audience | US viewers | Estimated earnings |
|---|---|---|
| Almost no US viewers | 0% | $984–$4,510 |
| About a quarter US | 25% | $1,149–$5,266 |
| Half US | 50% | $1,314–$6,023 |
| Mostly US | 75% | $1,479–$6,779 |
| All US | 100% | $1,644–$7,535 |
You can find your own audience split in YouTube Studio under Analytics → Audience → Top geographies.
Topic matters too
Advertisers pay more to appear next to videos about personal finance, investing, software, business, and insurance, because their customers are worth more. Gaming, comedy, music, and especially videos made for kids tend to sit at the low end; videos marked “made for kids” cannot show personalized ads at all. Two channels with the same views and the same audience country can still earn very different amounts because of topic.
Ad prices also change through the year. They usually rise from October to December as brands spend on holiday campaigns, then drop sharply in January.
What 1 million views a month adds up to
A long-form channel getting 1 million views every month would earn roughly $11,808–$90,420 a year from ads alone. Most successful creators earn more from sponsorships, memberships, merchandise, and affiliate links than from ads, so ad revenue is usually the floor, not the ceiling.
Before you can earn anything
Ad revenue starts only after a channel joins the YouTube Partner Program: 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million public Shorts views in the last 90 days. See the full list in our monetization requirements guide.