Look up any channel and see what it earns in 2026: ad revenue from its real upload views and niche, plus sponsorship income from the brand deals detected in its videos, compared with channels its size. Or enter your own numbers. No sign-up.
Where the money comes from
Sponsors detected, last 12 months
Cortex Brand3All 3 sponsors and every dealCompared with entertainment channels its size
Among 5,141 entertainment channels between 32.8K and 131K subscribers in our index, 20% have at least one detected sponsor, and the median sponsored channel has worked with 2. Cortex Podcast has 3. Typical views in the band are 8K per upload; this channel gets 10.5K.
Estimates, not actuals. Views are the median of the last 12 long-form uploads with one-off spikes removed; ad revenue uses the entertainment RPM range and sponsorship the entertainment CPM range; sponsorship income counts detected sponsored uploads at that rate. Shorts, memberships, affiliate links and merch are not included. Methodology.
Median views of a sponsored long-form upload per size tier across 931K deals detected in the last 12 months, priced per upload at a general $15–$50 sponsorship CPM and a $2–$7 ad RPM. Niche moves both.
Bar lengths are on a log scale: each step of the same length is ten times the money. Coverage is thinner under 50K subscribers, so the two smallest tiers lean on fewer channels. Sponsorship pays three to eight times ad revenue on the same upload, which is why the lookup above counts detected deals.
Both columns are per 1,000 long-form views. RPM is what YouTube pays the creator after its share; CPM is what a brand pays for an integration. Finance and tech audiences buy expensive things, so they earn the most per view.
| Niche | Ad revenue per 1,000 views (RPM) | Sponsorship per 1,000 views (CPM) | Sponsor premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finance & Business | $12–$35 | $40–$80 | ~4x |
| Technology | $6–$18 | $30–$60 | ~6x |
| Automotive | $4–$10 | $25–$50 | ~8x |
| Health & Fitness | $5–$12 | $25–$45 | ~6x |
| Beauty & Fashion | $3–$9 | $20–$40 | ~8x |
| Travel | $4–$10 | $20–$40 | ~6x |
| Education | $6–$15 | $20–$40 | ~4x |
| Science | $5–$13 | $20–$40 | ~5x |
| Food & Cooking | $3–$8 | $18–$35 | ~7x |
| Lifestyle & Vlog | $3–$7 | $15–$30 | ~6x |
| DIY & Crafts | $3–$8 | $15–$30 | ~6x |
| News & Politics | $2–$6 | $12–$25 | ~7x |
| Sports | $2–$6 | $12–$25 | ~7x |
| Pets & Animals | $2–$5 | $12–$25 | ~7x |
| Gaming | $2–$5 | $10–$25 | ~7x |
| Entertainment | $2–$5 | $10–$20 | ~6x |
| Music | $1–$3 | $8–$18 | ~10x |
Benchmarks reviewed against 2025 to 2026 creator-reported figures and agency rate cards. Each niche links to its rates page with observed view distributions.
Views, not subscribers, and detected deals, not guesses.
Nobody pays for subscribers. AdSense pays for monetized views, and brands price sponsorships against views per video. A 500K-subscriber channel getting 20,000 views per upload earns less than an 80K-subscriber channel getting 60,000, so the calculator starts from the median views of a channel's last twelve long-form uploads, with one-off spikes removed.
Ad revenue is those views times the niche RPM range and the channel's upload pace over the last 90 days. Sponsorship income is the sponsored uploads SponsorRadar detected in the channel's videos over the last 12 months, priced at the niche CPM range. The peer comparison uses every channel in the index in the same niche with half to double the subscribers. Shorts, memberships, affiliate links and merch are not counted, so real income is usually higher for channels that use them. For your own rate with the full pitch numbers, use the sponsorship rate calculator.
The sponsorship column only pays out when you pitch brands that already buy in your niche and size range. SponsorRadar tracks over a million deals so you can see exactly who those brands are.
