Data reviewed September 2026

Show your work

Every estimate on CreatiCalc is a formula plus a range plus where it came from: a named source, or a plain label saying the number is ours. All of it is on this page, including the parts where the honest answer is a range and not a number.

named sources, each linked below

dated data reviews, all logged below

YouTube niches modeled separately

48h

to publish a verified correction

On this page

YouTube earnings

Ad revenue projected from CPM ranges by niche, then cut to the creator share. Low, mid and high always travel together. This is the math behind the YouTube Money Calculator.

Monthly revenue

(views/day × days × growth) ÷ 1,000 × RPM

Creator share

RPM = CPM × 0.55

Niche is the biggest lever

Ten niches, each with its own researched RPM range. Finance runs about 3x gaming because finance advertisers bid harder for the same viewer. Long-form spans $1.65 to $24.75 per 1,000 views end to end.

Growth compounds

Factor 1.0 holds flat. 1.05 compounds 5% monthly, putting month 12 about 71% above month 1. Flat is the default, because flat is the honest default.

Seasonality multiplier

Shape of the curve, not a forecast

RPM peaks 28 to 38% above the annual average in November and December, drops 15 to 20% below in January and February, and recovers through spring. The month-by-month figures are our own estimate. YouTube says advertisers bid higher just before holidays, and vidIQ describes the same pattern: highest before the holidays, lowest in January. MilX puts November and December 30 to 80% above the annual average, so our curve sits at the low end of that.

Shorts earnings

Shorts pay much less per view than long-form. Revenue is pooled across the feed instead of placed on your video, and the creator share is 45% rather than 55%. The Shorts Money Calculator runs the same formula on Shorts-specific RPM ranges.

Shorts RPM

$0.02–$0.12

per 1,000 views

Finance niche

$0.03–$0.17

per 1,000 views

Long-form, all niches

$1.65–$24.75

per 1,000 views

May 2025: YouTube said Shorts revenue per watch-hour hit parity with long-form in the US. Per hour of attention they now compete. Per view they still do not.

Subscriber growth

The Subscriber Projector compounds a monthly growth rate over 24 months and dates your 1K, 10K, 100K and 1M milestones. It starts from vidIQ's measured median for a channel your size, 0.51% a month at 1,000 to 9,999 subscribers, until you enter your own rate. As the channel grows, the rate slows in the same proportion as vidIQ's median does between sizes. That slowdown is our assumption, not a measurement.

Projection

next month = this month × (1 + rate × slowdown)

Engagement rate

engagement rate = (total interactions ÷ followers) × 100

Instagram

Likes, comments, saves

TikTok

Likes, comments, shares

Facebook

Reactions, comments, shares

Likes, replies, reposts, bookmarks

Nano, under 10K followers

3.42–5.67%

Typical Instagram rate. Small audiences answer back.

Mega, 500K+ followers

0.81–1.12%

Rates fall steadily as accounts scale. Normal, not a warning sign.

Engagement rate is the metric brands lead with when they pick creators. A creator with 50K followers at 5% is usually worth more to an advertiser than one with 500K at 0.5%, because engagement is the part that shows an audience is actually paying attention. The engagement rate calculators apply the platform-specific definitions above.

We benchmark you against your own follower tier rather than one platform-wide figure, because the platform-wide figure flatters nobody. The tier medians for Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube come from SociaVault Labs' 2026 benchmarks. No study breaks Facebook down by Page size, so a Facebook Page is graded against Socialinsider's brand-Page average instead.

What we will not claim

Ad revenue only

YouTube estimates cover ads. Real income usually adds sponsorships, merch and memberships.

CPM is a range, not a rate

Geography, ad blockers, video length and live auctions all move it.

Benchmarks are averages

Quality, cadence and audience will pull you off them in both directions.

Rates are opening positions

Exclusivity, usage rights and creator-brand fit decide the rest.

Not financial advice

Plan with the low end, aim at the mid. These are estimates, not commitments.

Update log

Scheduled reviews at least quarterly, plus out-of-cycle updates when a platform changes something that moves the math: 33 dated entries since February 2026.

SEP 2026Site-wide sourcing audit

The Instagram and TikTok earnings posts listed a 'typical monthly income' for every follower tier. No study publishes that, and CreatorIQ's 2026 survey of 5,095 creators contradicts the top tiers. The posts now quote CreatorIQ (67% of creators earn under $10,000 a year from content), Lumanu's 2025 payment data, CreatorIQ's 2025 compensation report and NeoReach's 2025 earnings survey, with their caveats
The brand deals post's headline figure, 58% of brands using creators under 5,000 followers per Linqia, appears nowhere in Linqia's published material, and its 28% belongs to a different Linqia finding. It now leads with Lumanu's figure: creators under 10,000 followers were paid 45% more in 2025. Its CreatorIQ figures came from the 2024-2025 report, not 2026, and a $15 billion TikTok spend figure and scam percentages from an agency listicle are gone
TikTok Shop commissions are set by each seller, from 1% to 80% per TikTok, not 5% to 20%. TikTok publishes no creator share of LIVE Gifts, so the 50% figure is gone. Subscriptions are now two programs, Super Fan and Subscription, and Creator Rewards is open in eight countries
A line-by-line audit of 29 posts, 38 calculator pages, the comparison pages, the hubs and the AI-crawler summaries confirmed 163 defects, each checked by a second reviewer. Hand-typed niche CPM tables now match the model, a Forbes creator figure and its data partner are corrected, a YouTube Premium quote now includes Premium Lite as YouTube’s page does, and YouTube hid public dislikes in November 2021, not December
Calculator tips quoted figures with no source: end screens adding 10% to 20% views, Reels getting 2 to 3 times the reach, Groups 3 to 5 times the engagement, fixed best posting hours. They are gone, and the YouTube tips' seasonal and video-length figures now read from the model
The glossary’s influencer tiers now match the tiers the sponsorship calculators price, and Instagram saves are no longer called its strongest ranking signal

SEP 2026Sponsorship pages and seasonal figures sourced

Every figure in the answers on the X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok sponsorship pages now comes from the calculator, and each says it is our estimate. The Facebook tier table and worked example had been typed by hand; the table priced an average Page at the standard engagement rate, when the 0.15% brand-Page average falls in the band the calculator halves
Claims with no source are gone from the sponsorship pages: X Premium creators charging 15% to 25% more, keeping sponsored posts to 20% to 30% of a feed, bundles earning 30% to 50% more, and usage rights at 25% to 100%. The 15% to 20% agency cut is replaced with a sourced figure: the agency Socially Powerful told Digiday in 2024 that 20% is the standard commission
The Facebook pages called its audience more affluent. Pew's 2025 survey finds Facebook use flat across household income, 71% of adults under $30,000 and 71% at $100,000 or more, while Instagram's rises with income. The pages now pitch Facebook on age, where Pew does show a gap: 57% of adults 65 and older use Facebook against 19% for Instagram
The holiday ad-rate figures now cite MilX, which puts November and December 30% to 80% above the annual average and the fall into January at 30% to 50%. Our month-by-month curve is our own estimate and sits at the low end of that range, and the pages now say so
MilX's ranking now sets the order within the top country tier. Norway's CPM range moves from $6 to $16 to $5 to $13 and the UK's from $4 to $12 to $4 to $11, below the countries MilX ranks above them, and the Netherlands takes $4 to $10. Old CPM calculator share links still open the country they were made with
The brand deals post cited a $10,000 FTC penalty against Fashion Nova in 2024 over influencer disclosure. The FTC’s Fashion Nova case was a $4.2 million settlement in 2022 over suppressed reviews, so the post now cites the FTC’s 2020 case against Teami instead. A HypeAuditor figure for nano earnings and a Socially Powerful conversion figure, neither of which we could find in its source, are gone, and its rate card now comes from the calculator
The glossary named ShareASale, which closed in October 2025, and put a healthy YouTube click-through rate at 4% to 10%; YouTube says half of channels and videos fall between 2% and 10%. Its niche list, labelled as ordered by ad rate, now follows our own rates
The X vs Instagram comparison listed three X formats where the calculator prices five, named beauty as Instagram’s top-paying niche against our own multipliers, and cited Instagram swipe-up links, which Instagram replaced with link stickers in 2021
The watch-hours page's claim that most channels qualify within 6 to 18 months had no source; it now quotes vidIQ's time-to-1,000 median. The TikTok earnings post's tier headings now match the tiers its prices use

SEP 2026Country ad rates rechecked against MilX

MilX's 2026 ranking puts New Zealand fifth and Finland eleventh by CPM, both above our Tier 2 ranges. They now sit in Tier 1 with Canada's and Sweden's ranges, the countries MilX ranks them beside. The Netherlands, which already had Austria's ranges, moved up with them
South Korea's range now matches Japan's, $2 to $6 CPM, since MilX puts the two within a few cents of each other
Each tier’s headline band is now worked out from its own countries. Tier 1 had read $5 to $20 while listing a $3 country
The country CPM post now renders its tables from the same data as the calculators. It had said Norway and Switzerland beat the US on CPM; our table and MilX both put the US first. Its holiday section split the spike by country, 30% to 80% for the US and UK against 5% to 15% for India and Indonesia. MilX publishes the 30% to 80% for November and December overall, but no source splits it by country, so the split is gone. A 2 to 5 PM posting window and several trend claims had no source and are gone too

SEP 2026Sponsorship prices in posts match the calculator

The Instagram and TikTok sponsorship-rate posts and the how-to-calculate post now render every price from the same model as the calculators. Their tier tables had been typed by hand and disagreed with the calculator and with each other
The TikTok post listed multipliers the calculator does not use: a 3.0x review deal (the calculator uses 3.5x), beauty at 1.8x, finance at 1.7x, original sound at 1.4x and Duets at 0.5x. It now lists the calculator’s own. The how-to post’s per-follower table used a tier-scaled scheme no calculator uses
Unsourced figures are gone from those posts: brand deals as 60% to 80% of creator income, a $35 billion market in 2026 (Statista puts 2025 at about $33 billion, which the posts now cite), and a claim that TikTok rates are rising
The Instagram and TikTok earnings posts quote sponsorship prices from the same model

SEP 2026Subscriber projector rebuilt on measured growth

The subscriber projector now starts from vidIQ's measured median growth for a channel's size, from its July 2026 study of 11.8 million active channels. The niche growth rates it used before, 3% to 6% a month, were our own estimates and ran about ten times the measured medians. No study we know of publishes a monthly growth rate by niche, so the niche now only picks the peer channels
The slowdown as a channel grows now follows vidIQ's medians instead of breakpoints we set. That a channel slows the way the medians do is still our assumption, and the page says so
Upload frequency no longer changes the projection. It only prices the publish-more tip, and that multiplier is labelled as our own estimate
The growth rate slider now reaches down to 0.1% a month in 0.01% steps, so the medians can be entered exactly. Share links made before the change still open with the same inputs; the projection itself now follows the new model
The subscriber growth benchmarks post is rebuilt on vidIQ's data. Its niche table and its healthy and strong growth bands had no source and are gone. A second post put the typical time to 1,000 subscribers at 12 to 18 months with no source; it now quotes vidIQ's figures
The YouTube hub and the growth tag pages quoted niche growth rates of 3% to 10% a month. They now quote vidIQ's medians. The methodology page described the projector as growth speeding up with channel size; it now describes the model the projector runs
Two more vidIQ studies are now cited: its upload frequency study of 10.2 million channels, as a correlation, and its time-to-1,000 study, a median of about 16 months for young channels that got there
The growth timelines page no longer says the climb from 1 million to 10 million is usually faster; only two channels in it have both dates, one each way. It also no longer presents its niche ordering, four to six channels per niche, as proof that niche sets growth

SEP 2026Earnings and sponsorship sources corrected

Source lists on the YouTube money, views-goal, CPM, Shorts, TikTok and Instagram money calculators and the subscriber projector now name the reports each figure is checked against: OutlierKit, Miraflow and Lenos for niche CPMs, MilX for countries, Mediacube, Miraflow and vidIQ for Shorts, and Influencer Marketing Hub and TTS Vibes for TikTok. Statista, eMarketer, the IAB and HypeAuditor were listed but fed no figure, and are gone
Those pages, the sponsorship pages and the methodology page no longer say every range is a consensus of several sources. The pages now say which figures are our own estimates, and the methodology page lists them all
Sponsorship prices per follower are labelled as our own estimates everywhere. The claim that add-on prices reflect publicly reported deals is gone. So are the trend claims on the sponsorship pages, including a 10 to 15% yearly rise on Facebook, and the X page’s table of reported deal ranges. None of them had a source
The benchmarks report's channel growth section now shows vidIQ's measured median growth by channel size. The niche growth rates it showed before were our own estimates and ran about ten times the measured median
TikTok's help page states that qualified views come from the For You feed, which the TikTok pages had called unconfirmed. The TikTok earnings table's low end now matches the pay range the page quotes
The launch entry below said sponsorship base rates came from Influencer Marketing Hub survey data and seasonality from IAB and eMarketer. Nothing on record supports either; both are our own estimates, and the entry now says so

SEP 2026Engagement data rebuilt from its sources

Instagram's 0.98% average and X's 0.10% had no source. Platform medians now come from SociaVault Labs' 2026 benchmarks: TikTok 4.25%, Instagram 1.81%, X 1.11%, YouTube 3.06% of views. Facebook's 0.15% is now sourced to Socialinsider's study of 130,683 brand Pages
The year-over-year series now starts in 2024, where SociaVault's does, and every 2023 figure is gone. Facebook's series has 2024 and 2025 only
TikTok and X tier bands use the study's own follower groups and medians, like Instagram and YouTube. TikTok's extrapolated top tiers, including the 10M+ super tier, are gone
No study breaks Facebook engagement down by Page size, so the Facebook calculators grade a Page above or below the 0.15% average instead of against size bands that had no source
The industry table keeps only the cells a study published, and the benchmarks page shows SociaVault's niche medians as printed. The Animals, Arts, Design, Health and Sports figures, and five YouTube figures, had no source
Rates measured on views, reach or impressions were graded against thresholds with no source. They now grade above or below one published figure each: TikTok 4.2% of views (Socialinsider), Instagram 5.46% and Facebook 5.6% of reach (Buffer), X 1.58% of impressions (Metricool). The benchmarks page lists all four
In those modes the health grade, the niche marker, the cross-platform comparison and the year-over-year rows no longer set the rate against follower-based figures, and the brand deal estimate uses the follower-based rate
The Instagram calculator no longer offers impressions: Instagram stopped reporting them, and no study publishes an Instagram engagement benchmark on views
The YouTube engagement calculator now grades a channel against its subscriber tier, as its page said, rather than one fixed scale for every channel
Sourcing claims on the engagement pages now say what is true: each benchmark names the study it comes from. The old wording called every figure a consensus of several

SEP 2026Instagram tiers re-based on published medians

Instagram engagement bands now come from SociaVault Labs' 2026 tier medians. Each band starts at the median for that size and runs to the median one size smaller; nano tops out at the study's upper-quartile mark. The old bands had no source and graded a typical account under 10K, at 100K to 500K, or at 500K to 1M as below average
Instagram tiers now use the study's own follower groups: 50K to 100K, 100K to 500K and 500K+ replace 50K to 500K, 500K to 1M and 1M+. Sponsorship prices are unchanged; they depend on the engagement rate, not the band
Blog posts that put small Instagram accounts at 5 to 10%, set a flat 3% bar for everyone over 10K, or quoted unsourced Reels and feed rates now use the same medians
The Instagram hub's unsourced Reels and Stories reach figures, and the engagement calculator's claim that most brands set a fixed minimum, are gone

SEP 2026Instagram format bands removed

The Feed, Reels and Stories switch on the Instagram engagement calculator is gone. No published study breaks Instagram engagement down by format and follower count together, and the bands it used had no source; every format is now judged against the same follower-tier bands
The Reels and Stories engagement thresholds on the engagement calculator are gone for the same reason, and taps forward no longer count toward Story engagement: a forward tap is a viewer skipping ahead

SEP 2026YouTube sponsorships priced on views

YouTube sponsorships are now priced on average views per video instead of subscribers: views ÷ 1,000 × the niche rate × the format. The per-1,000-subscriber base rate is gone; subscribers still set the tier label
One pricing function now serves the YouTube sponsorship calculator, the money calculator, the YouTube engagement calculator, the multi-platform calculator and every page that quotes a YouTube sponsorship figure, so they give the same answer for the same channel
A dedicated video is 2x an integration everywhere. The money calculator had used 4x, and the sponsorship calculator could count a dedicated premium twice. A Short is 0.4x the per-view rate on the Short's own views; the money calculator had used 0.3x
Engagement no longer multiplies a YouTube price, and the sponsorship calculator's YouTube engagement rate now divides by views rather than subscribers
The standard integration the rates describe is now stated as 60 to 90 seconds, the standard length the rate guides that name one give (1of10 and BrandsForCreators); the money calculator had labelled it 30 to 60

SEP 2026X reapply wait shortened

X cut the wait to reapply for Original Content Rewards after a failed appeal from 90 days to 42. Its help page still said 90 on September 7 and said 42 on September 11. The checker, this page and the X pay post now carry 42, read from one constant.

SEP 2026X Creator Revenue Sharing removed

X retired Creator Revenue Sharing on September 7, 2026, so the X monetization checker no longer tests it. The checker is now four programs: Original Content Rewards, Subscriptions, Ticketed Spaces and Tips. The program history stays in the FAQ, because the requirements are still a common search, but it is written as a program that ended rather than one you can still join
The retired program’s creator-reported effective rate of $8 to $12 per million impressions is now labelled everywhere as historical and measured on total impressions. X publishes no rate for Original Content Rewards and no creator-reported figure has settled, so the checker deliberately shows no earnings estimate for it
Corrected a claim that X had not said whether Original Content Rewards was open to creators outside the old program. X’s help page lists eight eligibility requirements and prior membership is not among them; September 8, 2026 is when X starts migrating former Revenue Sharing members, not when applications open. The same wrong claim was removed from the machine-readable llms-full.txt
Total organic impressions over 3 months stays as an input: Subscriptions still requires 5 million of them, re-confirmed against X’s Subscriptions help page on September 7

SEP 2026Creator tax model corrections

Missouri: the deduction for federal income tax paid is now the tiered share Missouri actually allows by Missouri adjusted gross income (35% at $25,000 or less, stepping down to nothing above $125,000, capped at $5,000 single), per RSMo 143.171 and the MO-1040 instructions; the model had deducted the full amount up to the cap
Oregon: the federal tax subtraction cap is $8,750 for 2026 and phases out to zero at $145,000 of AGI for a single filer, and the $263 exemption credit ends above $100,000 of AGI, both per the 2026 withholding formulas and Form OR-40 instructions; neither phase-out had been applied
Ohio: the non-business schedule charges $332 plus 2.75% above $26,050 under R.C. 5747.02(A)(3)(c); the $332 step had been missing. The business income deduction and 3% rate are now sourced to R.C. 5747.01 and 5747.02 rather than a fiscal note for a different bill
District of Columbia takes its own $15,000 standard deduction for tax years after 2025 under D.C. Code 47-1801.04 and no longer tracks the federal amount
Arizona is now marked as resting on 2025 figures, because the Department of Revenue has published no 2026 page; the tax calculator says so on the result card
Tax calculator FAQ: the S-corp break-even now reads as a band from roughly $37,000 to $70,000 of profit depending on state and preparer fees, derived from the worked comparison in the LLC vs S-corp guide, rather than "high five figures"

SEP 2026Draft fact-check sweep

Sponsorship base rates now carry a provenance note in the model: published agency rate cards and rates creators have shared publicly, with no platform-published figure behind any of them. The methodology page dropped an Influencer Marketing Hub attribution that could not be traced to a per-1,000-subscriber rate
Three published sponsorship posts swept to the model values they had drifted from: whitelisting at 150% of the content fee (one post said 20 to 25%), usage rights at 75% (one said 25 to 50%), exclusivity at 20, 40 and 60% for 30, 60 and 90 days, and the YouTube base rate stated per 1,000 subscribers rather than per 1,000 views
YouTube sponsorship calculator FAQ corrected to state its real default engagement rate of 3.5% rather than the platform median
Instagram engagement calculator FAQ no longer claims brands screen on a 1 to 3% minimum, because no such published floor exists; the weight given to saves is labelled as our reading rather than an Instagram statement
Description optimizer: keyword density is now mentions divided by total words, so a multi-word keyword no longer trips the stuffing flag on its own; chapters are checked against all four documented conditions including the 10 second minimum; the 157-character fold is described as a working approximation because YouTube publishes no figure
X checker: payouts for US creators go through X Money rather than Stripe, first payouts under Original Content Rewards went out on August 28, 2026, and reply impressions are excluded from the 500,000 eligibility bar rather than from the qualified-impressions definition

AUG 2026X Original Content Rewards checker

The X monetization checker now tests Original Content Rewards as its own program rather than only describing it. It takes a separate qualified-impressions input, because Home Timeline impressions from verified users with replies excluded are a different number from the total organic impressions the other programs use, not the same number with a smaller threshold
Creator Revenue Sharing moved to the bottom of the rulebook. It closed to new enrollments on August 7, 2026 and stops earning on September 7, so it is kept only for members still earning against it and is due for removal once the final payout clears around September 11
Added from X’s help page, re-read on August 30: the $30 payout minimum, the fortnightly payout cycle, the roughly 3 business day review, one appeal then a 90-day wait to reapply, and the country list the program runs in
Recorded two rules that decide whether a post earns anything: content carrying a helpful Community Note is excluded, and so is content exclusively about monetization itself
Clarified that Premium Basic does not make you eligible but impressions from Basic subscribers do count toward your qualified total

AUG 2026Content Creator Tax Calculator

New calculator estimating self-employment, federal and state income tax on creator income for tax year 2026, with the quarterly payment and its due date
Federal figures taken from the 2026 Form 1040-ES, Rev. Proc. 2025-32, the 1099-MISC/NEC instructions, the IRS 1099-K FAQ and Notice 2025-67, each recorded beside the figure in src/lib/taxData/us2026.ts with the date it was read
State rates, brackets and deductions for all fifty states and DC from each state revenue department, cross-checked against the Tax Foundation 2026 table; states that had not published 2026 figures carry the previous year and say so on the result card
The wage base, standard deduction and 1099-NEC threshold are pinned in check:figures so the January refresh cannot be half done

AUG 2026Trust page corrections

Review cadence corrected on /about, /about/editorial, /methodology and six calculator Sources blocks, which still promised full reviews each January and July. The real schedule is quarterly scheduled reviews plus out-of-cycle corrections, and every page now reads the count and start date from this log
Instagram engagement formula row on /methodology corrected to likes, comments and saves; it listed shares, which the model deliberately excludes
Long-form RPM ceiling on /methodology derived from the niche table, $24.75, instead of the hand-typed $25 one card still carried
Sponsorship multiplier examples on /methodology recomputed from the rate model: the niche spread is 2.5x, not 2 to 3x, and the content-type example now compares a dedicated YouTube video with a YouTube Short (5x) instead of a cross-platform pair the model prices at 13x
Seasonality caption now reads the peak and trough straight from the multipliers
This log re-dated to the commits that made the changes: the TikTok pay correction to June 8, the Shorts music split to June 16 and the music penalty removal to July 11

AUG 2026YouTube engagement benchmarks

YouTube added as an engagement platform with sourced tier medians, view benchmarks and a platform average from the SociaVault 2026 benchmark study
YouTube engagement rate calculator launched on the likes-plus-comments formula, the only two signals YouTube exposes publicly

AUG 2026Facebook sponsorship sourcing

Branded content copy rewritten against Meta Branded Content Policies directly. The page had asserted a 2026 policy update requiring Partnership Ads with creator approval; the policy says no such thing, and its "prior permission" is the business partner permitting the tag, not the creator approving an ad boost
Added the branded content tool requirement, the tagging-permission rule, the ban on paid posts you did not feature in or help create, and the format restrictions (no pre, mid or post-roll ads, no banner ads, no title cards in the first three seconds)
Pew, Meta Branded Content Policies and Meta Content Monetization added to sources.ts, and the Facebook sponsorship page now renders one Sources block instead of two disconnected lists, half of which this file could not see
Sponsorship configs gained a sourceIds field so a platform can cite its own sources without a hand-typed block
Sources blocks now state the real review cadence rather than "reviewed twice a year"

AUG 2026Comparison config and citation sweep

Instagram per-follower premium over TikTok corrected to roughly 67 to 100% and derived from the base rates the same paragraph prints; it had said 40 to 70%
YouTube sponsorship premium over Instagram corrected to exactly 2x at every point; it had said 1.5 to 2x, and the 1.5x floor never occurs
Reels premium and the Instagram tier bands now interpolate their multipliers instead of restating them
Instagram engagement blurb corrected to likes, comments and saves; shares are deliberately excluded from the Instagram formula
Removed the claim that the Instagram Money Calculator models affiliate income, which it does not
Creator economy figure attributed to Goldman Sachs with the right years: $250 billion in 2023, approaching $480 billion by 2027. It had been published as a 2026 valuation
Influencer marketing spend figure replaced with Statista global $33 billion in 2025, of which Instagram is above $22 billion
Bundled-deal premium of 30 to 50% hedged in four places, one of which fed FAQ structured data. No source exists for it
Year of the creator claim attributed to the @XCreators announcement of January 16, 2026, with a note that Revenue Sharing has since closed to new enrollments
Instagram versus TikTok sponsorship table rebuilt from the rate model at each platform typical engagement, resolving a 2x to 5x disagreement with our own dedicated Instagram rate guide
Influencer Marketing Hub citation corrected: it publishes flat per-post ranges by tier, not per-1,000-follower benchmarks

AUG 2026Facebook and X accuracy pass

X Creator Revenue Sharing status corrected across the pay-per-1000-views post: it closed to new enrollments on August 7, 2026 and retires September 7. The post described it as joinable and put a per-view rate in a per-view table three paragraphs after calling such rates fiction
Original Content Rewards added to sources.ts and to the X monetization checker, which had been citing the retired program only
X finance niche corrected to about 1.2x the platform average, not 2x
X impression-rating table gained the Below Average band it was missing, and its bottom row is now labelled Low
Cross-platform equivalence corrected: a 0.5% rate on X maps to about 4.9% on Instagram, which is what our own comparison tool computes
Removed the unreachable parenting multiplier from the Facebook sponsorship FAQ; no such niche exists in the model or the dropdown
Corrected the claim that Facebook has no Save feature. It has had one since 2014
Pew figure corrected to 57% of adults 65 and older, verified against the 2025 fact sheet
Facebook reach-method default raised so the calculator no longer opens at 19%, more than double the 8% it calls excellent
Unsourced multipliers cut: the 6x Live figure, the two conflicting video-reach numbers, and the 10x X distribution claim that appears in no X documentation
Organic reach and meaningful-social-interactions claims scoped to what Meta actually published, and when
X engagement benchmarks post gained a sources note: every figure in it is our own published benchmark, which matters because X publishes no engagement data at all
Instagram market-size figure corrected from an unsourced $8 billion to Statista global Instagram influencer market above $22 billion in 2025
Freshness pills on the X and Facebook sponsorship calculators aligned with their own schema dates

AUG 2026Citation audit

Removed a fabricated three-tier YouTube Partner Program table that was cited to support.google.com. YPP has two tiers; the three-tier story is a garbled reading of Shopping affiliate thresholds
CreatorIQ compensation figures attributed and rescoped: they are brand and sponsorship payments across the creator economy, measured per campaign, not YouTube ad revenue per year
HypeAuditor citation corrected against the report itself: Instagram nano engagement is 2.19% (we printed 2.71%) and TikTok nano is 11.9% (we printed 10.3%). The macro figures we attributed to it do not appear in it at all
Revenue-split citation repointed from support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857, which does not contain the 55/45 split, to answer/72902, which states it
Hootsuite narrowed to what it actually informs. It publishes engagement averages that invert ours, so listing it behind our averages put a cited source against our own comparison
SociaVault attribution corrected: our bands sit at or above its tier medians rather than centering on them, and the mega and super tiers extrapolate past the study, which stops at one 500K+ bucket
Forbes Top Creators table repointed from a rolling URL to the dated June 2025 article, sorted by earnings, and the composite ranking method explained
Instagram Subscriptions ceiling corrected to $19.99 and subscriber conversion to the 0.25% our calculator actually uses, replacing a 1% to 2% assumption the tool itself flags as unrealistic
TikTok Creator Rewards ceiling corrected to $1.00 per 1,000 qualified views in the Reels comparison post

AUG 2026Out-of-cycle corrections

Published Shorts RPM, per-niche RPM and country CPM figures reconciled with the models they derive from, after an audit found prose that was never swept following the July recalibration
YouTube sponsorship rate at 100K subscribers corrected to $2,000 to $5,000 per integration across four posts, matching the $20 to $50 per 1,000 subscribers base rate
Engagement-versus-follower examples rebuilt across six surfaces: the rate multiplier spans 0.5x to 2.0x, so engagement closes a follower gap of about four times, and the published examples assumed five and ten times
Instagram nano engagement band on this page corrected to 4% to 6% and now derived from the tier table rather than typed
Sourcing claim corrected: the site promised at least three independent sources behind every number while sponsorship ran on two and seasonality on two. The figure is now computed from the source arrays instead of asserted
Review cadence corrected: the pages claimed two full reviews a year in January and July. The log shows eight dated reviews since launch, arriving every four to eight weeks
Removed unevidenced "trusted by agencies and talent managers" claims from five platform hubs, the about page and this page
Growth compounding example fixed: month 12 is 1.05^11, about 71% above month 1, not 80%
Finance Shorts figure corrected to $0.03 to $0.17; it had been publishing the model midpoint as its floor

AUG 2026Out-of-cycle corrections

TikTok Creator Rewards pay re-labelled as a market estimate: both Program Terms documents were read in full and neither publishes a rate or formula
Removed the unsourced "For You feed only" qualified-view rule from the TikTok model and every page that repeated it
Qualified-view definition scoped to the EEA terms, the only document that defines one
TikTok engagement average corrected to 4.25% on the platform hub, which still showed the pre-revision 4.9%

AUG 2026Out-of-cycle correction

X payout rate re-based to $8 to $12 per million total impressions, not Premium-only impressions

JUL 2026Mid-year data review

CPM and RPM ranges recalibrated across all 10 niches and swept site-wide
Shorts RPM re-based to $0.02 to $0.12 per 1,000 views
Audience geography multiplier rescaled to 0.2x through 1.2x
Seasonality stopped compounding into annual totals

JUL 2026Out-of-cycle correction

Licensed-music penalty removed from Shorts payouts: the deduction is pool-level, not per creator

JUN 2026Out-of-cycle correction

Per-tier and per-niche engagement tables added for TikTok and Instagram

JUN 2026Out-of-cycle correction

Shorts music split corrected: one licensed track halves a Short's contribution to the creator pool and two or more cut it by two thirds, replacing the earlier one-third and one-half figures

JUN 2026Out-of-cycle correction

TikTok pay corrected site-wide to Creator Rewards rates on qualified views

MAY 2026Engagement rebench

TikTok bands recalibrated against a 350,000-account study
Instagram rebenched on format-specific tier bands
Brand-signal ratios added to results across all platforms

MAR 2026Source-verified refresh

Engagement benchmarks re-verified for Facebook and X against current sources
Niche CPM data updated across the calculators and platform hubs

FEB 2026Launch data set

First CPM and RPM compilation across 10 YouTube niches
Engagement benchmarks established for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X
Sponsorship base rates set, as our own estimates
Seasonality multipliers set, as our own estimates

Frequently asked

The questions we get most often about how these numbers are built and how far to trust them.

How accurate are these calculators?

They are estimates, not measurements. Platform rules and payout shares come straight from the platforms. Ad rates and pay rates come from third-party reports that disagree with each other, which is why our ranges are wide, and some figures are our own estimates because nothing is published. Your own results also depend on audience geography, ad blockers, content type and more, so use the estimates as directional guidance rather than exact predictions.

Where does the CPM and RPM data come from?

YouTube publishes no CPM figures, so we check our niche and country ranges against reports from companies that sell to creators: OutlierKit, Miraflow and Lenos for niches, and MilX for countries. Every one of our niche ranges overlaps what they publish, but they disagree with each other, sometimes by more than double, and most don't show their samples, so treat the ranges as estimates. RPM then applies the 55% creator share YouTube states in its own partner earnings terms.

Why is my actual revenue different from the estimate?

Several factors cause real revenue to differ: your audience's geographic mix (US/UK viewers generate higher CPMs than viewers in developing countries), your video's ad suitability rating, the percentage of views from monetizable sources (e.g., embedded views may not be monetized), and your ad format mix (mid-roll ads generate more revenue than pre-roll only). Our calculator uses niche-average RPMs that may not match your channel's specific audience profile.

How often is the data updated?

We run scheduled data reviews at least once a quarter, and between them we make out-of-cycle adjustments when major platform changes occur, such as YouTube modifying its Shorts monetization model or a platform changing its revenue-sharing terms. That has meant 33 dated reviews since February 2026, every one of them listed in the update log on this page.

Can I use these estimates for business planning?

Our calculators are designed to provide useful directional estimates for content creators evaluating their monetization potential. They can inform business planning as one input among many, but should not be the sole basis for financial decisions. We recommend using the low-end estimates for conservative planning and the mid estimates as a realistic target.

Sources

Every published figure names the study or report it comes from. Where nothing is published, we estimate, and the list below the table says which figures those are.

Source	Informs	Type
YouTube partner earnings overview	55% long-form and 45% Shorts creator shares	Platform
YouTube Partner Program eligibility	YouTube Partner Program entry thresholds	Platform
How Shorts revenue is shared	Shorts revenue sharing and music deduction	Platform
YouTube Help: why is my CPM changing?	Direction of the seasonal ad-rate cycle	Platform
YouTube: the Shorts Fund	Shorts Fund history	Platform
YouTube: Shorts up to 3 minutes	Maximum Shorts length	Platform
YouTube channel monetization policies	Good-standing and originality requirements	Platform
X Help Center: Creator Revenue Sharing	What replaced Creator Revenue Sharing, and when	Platform
X Help Center: Original Content Rewards	X Original Content Rewards thresholds, payout mechanics and country availability	Platform
X Help Center: Subscriptions	Subscriptions requirements and creator share	Platform
TikTok Creator Rewards Program Terms (US)	TikTok eligibility, payout mechanics, rate silence	Platform
TikTok Creator Rewards Program Terms (EEA)	Qualified-view definition, EEA-only qualifying rules	Platform
TikTok Series Creator Terms	TikTok Series eligibility	Platform
TikTok Shop Creator Eligibility Policy	TikTok Shop affiliate eligibility	Platform
TikTok Creator Rewards Program help	Creator Rewards eligibility and qualified views	Platform
Instagram Creators: earn money	Instagram monetization programs	Platform
Meta Branded Content Policies	Branded content rules and disclosure requirements	Platform
Meta Content Monetization	Facebook monetization program availability	Platform
YouTube Help: rejected for monetization	Reapply windows and review timing	Platform
TechCrunch: Shorts revenue sharing starts February 1	When Shorts revenue sharing began	Industry
YouTube CEO on Shorts revenue per watch hour (TheWrap)	Shorts versus long-form context	Industry
OutlierKit: most profitable YouTube niches	YouTube CPM by niche	Industry
Miraflow: YouTube CPM rates by niche 2026	YouTube CPM by niche	Industry
Lenos: YouTube CPM and RPM rates 2026	YouTube CPM by niche	Industry
MilX: countries with the highest YouTube CPM	YouTube CPM by country and the holiday peak	Industry
vidIQ: YouTube CPM	Direction of the seasonal ad-rate cycle	Industry
Mediacube: YouTube Shorts RPM	YouTube Shorts RPM	Industry
Miraflow: YouTube Shorts RPM in 2026	YouTube Shorts RPM	Industry
vidIQ: YouTube Shorts monetization	YouTube Shorts RPM	Industry
Influencer Marketing Hub: how much does TikTok pay	TikTok Creator Rewards pay per view	Industry
TTS Vibes: Creator Rewards payouts	TikTok Creator Rewards pay per view	Industry
NetInfluencer: Instagram re-enters affiliate commerce	Instagram affiliate relaunch	Industry
Retail Dive: Instagram Reels affiliate links	Instagram affiliate commission	Industry
Creators Agency: pricing integrated YouTube sponsorships	YouTube sponsorships priced on views	Industry
Creators Agency: YouTube sponsorship rates	Dedicated video against integration	Industry
ThoughtLeaders: understanding YouTube sponsorship rates	YouTube rate per view	Industry
1of10: YouTube sponsorship rates by channel size	YouTube niche rates and format multiples	Industry
ADOPTER Media: YouTube sponsorship rates	The view range our YouTube rates are built for	Industry
Digiday: influencer agencies expand into talent management	Agency commission on brand deals	Industry
Lumanu: creator payouts in 2025	Yearly creator payments by follower tier	Industry
vidIQ: YouTube subscriber benchmarks 2026	Measured subscriber growth by channel size	Research
vidIQ: YouTube upload frequency study	How subscriber growth tracks upload frequency	Research
vidIQ: time to 1,000 subscribers	How long channels that reach 1,000 subscribers take	Research
Hootsuite	Engagement rate formula definitions	Research
Socialinsider	Facebook Page engagement average and trend	Research
Socialinsider TikTok benchmarks	TikTok engagement by views	Research
Buffer	Instagram and Facebook engagement by reach	Research
Metricool	X engagement by impressions	Research
SociaVault	Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube tier bands, niche medians, platform medians and trends	Research
Pew Research Center	Facebook, Instagram and X audience demographics	Research
CreatorIQ: State of Creators 2026	How much creators earn overall	Research
CreatorIQ: State of Creator Compensation	How unevenly creator pay is spread	Research
NeoReach: Creator Earnings Report 2025	How many full-time creators earn a living wage	Research
Social Blade	Some peer channel histories	Tool

Our own estimates

Nothing is published for these, so the figures are ours. Each calculator that uses one says so beside it.

Sponsorship prices on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X

The rate per 1,000 followers and every multiplier on it: format, deal type, engagement, niche, add-ons and the X Premium uplift. No platform or study publishes a price per follower.

YouTube seasonal curve

The month-by-month multipliers. YouTube and vidIQ describe the pattern, highest before the holidays and lowest in January, and MilX puts November and December 30% to 80% above the annual average, but no source publishes monthly figures.

YouTube video-length adjustment

How much shorter and longer videos earn per view. The mid-roll rule is YouTube policy; the size of the adjustment is ours.

Shorts and TikTok niche multipliers

How much more a finance video earns than an entertainment one. Sources agree on the direction but publish no per-niche figure we could use.

TikTok audience-country adjustment

Reuses our YouTube country ad-rate data. TikTok publishes no country rates.

Subscriber growth slowdown and upload effect

In the subscriber projector, the assumption that a channel's growth rate slows in step with vidIQ's medians as it gets bigger, and the upload multipliers in the publish-more tip. The starting rate itself is vidIQ's measured median.

Who cites this data

8 citations, verified August 2026

Marketing platforms and creator publications reference CreatiCalc benchmarks in their own research. The work gets checked by people with their own data.

Sprinklr

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Influencer Marketing Factory

TikTok engagement rate guide

MySocial

Influencer pricing across platforms

MySocial

Instagram monetization guide

SaaSUltra

Creator brand deal statistics

Paprika.bot

YouTube earnings and CPM ranges