YouTube pays anywhere from $0.03 to $28 per 1,000 views (RPM) — and where you land in that range comes down to your niche, your audience's country and your format. Enter yours below and get a realistic estimate, not a one-size-fits-all guess.
Total views across all your videos in a typical month. Type any number above the slider's max.
Shorts pay far less per view — they draw from a shared revenue pool, not per-video ads.
Realistic range: $0 – $0 per month
(views ÷ 1,000) × RPM — RPM is what you keep per 1,000 views, already net of YouTube's 45% cut.ScaleTrio builds and runs channels like this end-to-end — niche research, scripts, voiceover, editing, uploads and monetisation — so the channel earns while you don't film a thing. Tell us your niche and we'll map out what your channel could make.
The calculator above shows what a channel can earn. This is what it usually costs to get one built — hiring it the usual way in the US market versus ScaleTrio's fixed packages. Same end-to-end production; a very different invoice.
Market figures are the per-video rates published in our automation cost guide: script $25–$100, voiceover $50–$200, editing $30–$150, thumbnail $10–$40 — $100–$400+ per finished video when you hire the pieces yourself.
| Videos | Typical US market | ScaleTrio — fixed price |
|---|---|---|
| 5 videos | $500–$2,000+ piecemeal, or part of a $2,000–$10,000+ agency build | Starter — $299 |
| 15 videos | $1,500–$6,000+ piecemeal; traditional agencies $2,000–$10,000+ | Growth — $799 |
| 35 videos | $3,500–$14,000+ piecemeal | Authority — $1,799 |
Piecemeal hiring also costs you 8–15 hours of your own time per video, coordinating four different freelancers for every upload.
| Typical US market | ScaleTrio | |
|---|---|---|
| Channel setup + branding | Billed as part of the build — or your own DIY project | Free |
| Promo trailer | Extra, if offered at all | Free — you approve it before paying anything |
| Script, voiceover, editing, thumbnail | Separate freelancers, separate invoices | All included in every video |
| Titles, SEO, uploads & scheduling | Your job | Included |
| Cost per finished video | $100–$400+ piecemeal | About $51–$60, everything in |
| Payment | Upfront, or monthly retainers | $0 upfront — milestone payments, only after delivery |
Every ScaleTrio package starts free: channel setup and a promo trailer first. If you don't love the trailer, you walk away — no charge. See the YouTube automation packages.
Most calculators quietly use one rate for everyone — that's how you get meaningless ranges like “$2,000–$32,000”. We publish ours. Your row is highlighted as you change the inputs above.
What a creator keeps per 1,000 long-form views, before the country adjustment.
| Niche | RPM range |
|---|---|
| Legal & Law | $15 – $28 |
| Insurance | $14 – $25 |
| Real Estate | $12 – $25 |
| Business & Entrepreneurship | $10 – $20 |
| Finance & Investing | $8 – $15 |
| Health & Wellness | $8 – $18 |
| Careers & Jobs | $7 – $14 |
| Tech & AI | $5 – $12 |
| History & Documentary | $5 – $12 |
| Motivation & Self-Help | $5 – $10 |
| Science & Nature | $5 – $10 |
| Education | $4 – $10 |
| Travel | $4 – $10 |
| True Crime | $4 – $9 |
| Food & Cooking | $4 – $9 |
| Beauty & Fashion | $3 – $8 |
| Other / Not Listed | $3 – $8 |
| Gaming | $2 – $5 |
| Lifestyle & Vlogs | $2 – $6 |
| Comedy & Entertainment | $2 – $6 |
| Music | $2 – $5 |
| Kids & Family | $1 – $3 |
What advertisers pay per 1,000 ad views (CPM) in premium markets. Your estimate scales the niche RPM by your audience's country relative to the US.
| Audience country | CPM range |
|---|---|
| Australia | $32 – $36 |
| United States | $28 – $33 |
| Canada | $22 – $29 |
| New Zealand | $22 – $28 |
| Switzerland | $20 – $23 |
| United Kingdom | $18 – $22 |
| Norway | $18 – $20 |
| Germany | $16 – $19 |
| Ireland | $16 – $18 |
| Netherlands | $15 – $18 |
| Singapore | $15 – $18 |
| Denmark | $14 – $17 |
| Austria | $13 – $17 |
It depends on the niche, the audience and the format — which is exactly what this calculator models. We take your niche's published RPM band, adjust it by your audience country's advertiser rates relative to the US, and multiply by your views. Shorts use the Shorts revenue-pool rate of $0.03–$0.07 per 1,000 views; “Mixed” assumes half your views are long-form and half are Shorts.
A million Shorts views pays roughly $30–$70 from the shared revenue pool. The same million views on long-form videos pays $1,000–$28,000, depending on niche and country. That's why the channels we build use Shorts to grow subscribers and long-form to get paid — try your own mix above with the format set to Mixed.
A faceless channel earns the same RPM as any other channel in its niche — the camera was never the product. History and documentary channels keep $5–$12 per 1,000 views, true crime $4–$9, finance explainers $8–$15, all produced from scripts, voiceover and editing. That's the model behind ScaleTrio's done-for-you YouTube automation service: we research the niche, produce the videos and run the channel — you own it and the revenue.
Because advertisers pay for audiences, not views. A US viewer watching a finance video is worth many times more to advertisers than a viewer watching gaming content in a lower-CPM market — the rate tables above show an insurance channel with a US audience earning many times more than a gaming channel in Denmark on identical views.
Shorts ads run between clips in the Shorts feed, so revenue goes into a shared pool that's split across all Shorts creators — around $0.03–$0.07 per 1,000 views, versus $1–$28 for long-form. Shorts are a subscriber-growth engine; long-form is where the ad money is.
Treat it as a planning range, not a promise. Your real RPM shows up in YouTube Studio under Revenue once you're monetised. If your channel isn't monetised yet — or isn't built yet — that's exactly the part ScaleTrio handles for clients: getting a channel to Partner Program status and keeping it earning.
Yes — faceless channels (documentaries, finance explainers, top-10 lists, history, true crime) run on scripts, voiceover and editing rather than a presenter. That's the model ScaleTrio builds for clients through its done-for-you YouTube automation service: we research the niche, produce the videos and run the channel; you own it and the revenue.