How Many Subscribers Do You Need to Get Paid on YouTube?
As of 2026-07-19, you need 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10,000,000 Shorts views in the last 90 days to join the YouTube Partner Program and earn ad revenue. You can start earning earlier at 500 subscribers through fan funding. Across 10 well-known YouTube channels SocialCrawl sampled, the median was 22 million subscribers, far above the payout floor.
Last updated July 19, 2026
The numbers, right now
Last updated July 19, 2026
1,000
Subscribers to get paid
500
Subscribers for fan funding
21,900,000
Median (top channels)
10
Channels sampled
YouTube monetization requirements
| Program | Subscribers required | Watch hours (12 months) | Shorts views (90 days) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expanded YPP (fan funding) | 500 | 3,000 | 3,000,000 |
| YouTube Partner Program (ad revenue) | 1,000 | 4,000 | 10,000,000 |
How we compute this
The subscriber thresholds on this page are YouTube's own published monetization requirements, cited from YouTube Help, YouTube Partner Program eligibility (2026) (model version 2026-07-19): 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 valid public watch hours in 12 months or 10,000,000 Shorts views in 90 days for the full Partner Program, and 500 subscribers plus 3 public uploads in 90 days plus 3,000 watch hours for the expanded fan-funding tier. The two tracks do not add together: a channel has to clear one of them outright. To show where earning channels actually sit, SocialCrawl reads the live subscriber count for a curated basket of well-known public YouTube channels via the API endpoint /v1/youtube/channel and takes the median: 10 channels sampled on 2026-07-19, a median of 22 million subscribers. The thresholds are official published facts, never fabricated; the median is read live from real channels, so the number a creator actually needs is the published floor, not this basket median.
- Source endpoints
- /v1/youtube/channel
- Sample size
- 10
- Computed
- 2026-07-19
Run this yourself
One API call returns the same live feed we sampled. Drop in your key and go.
curl "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/v1/youtube/channel?region=US" \
-H "x-api-key: sc_your_api_key_here"Have a question? We got answers
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