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YouTube Engagement Rate Calculator

Updated September 2026

Work out your engagement rate from likes, comments and views, then see whether that number is good for a channel your size. YouTube publishes no engagement rate of its own, so this page shows the formula it uses before it shows you a result.

Paste a channel URL or @handle to pull in the average likes, comments and views of its most recent public uploads.

1

Your account

Micro tier, 10K to 50K
25K
1K10K100K1M

The median General / Other account is at 3.06% on YouTube. The niche does not change your rate, it changes what your rate is compared against.

2

Your average video

YouTube reports no engagement rate of its own, so there is no official formula to defer to. This uses likes plus comments over views, the convention behind every published YouTube benchmark that discloses one. Views is also the honest denominator: it measures how the people who actually watched responded.

270
101001K10K100K
30
101001K10K

(Likes + Comments) / views × 100 = (270 + 30) / 8,000 = 3.75%

Fine-tuning

This does not change the rate. It frames the averages above: 10 or more recent videos gives a stable read, 3 gives you one viral outlier wearing a trend costume.

Your engagement rateMicro

3.75%

Average

Benched against micro creators like you, not the platform-wide median.

Your tier's band3.7% to 5.2%
you, 3.75%typical for microgeneral / other median, 3.06%

Interactions per video

300

Worth to brands

$96 to $200

Per sponsored integration at these views and niche. Price a real deal on the YouTube sponsorship calculator.

Averages across your last 10 videos. One viral outlier is a trend costume, not a rate. Methodology

Engagement health

C+
Rate vs your tier17/40
Likes to comments15/20
Vs your niche12/20

Three things brands check, scored out of 100. The headline rate is 50 of those points.

At 25,000 subscribers with 300 interactions per video, your engagement rate by views is 3.75%. That reads average for a micro creator, against a typical band of 3.7% to 5.2%, and at 8,000 views it prices a sponsored integration at roughly $96 to $200.

Your niche, benchmarked

SociaVault 2026, YouTube

Only two of the niches this calculator offers have a published YouTube figure, so this chart is thin.

Education4.62%
Technology3.94%

The YouTube median across every account is 3.06% in 2026. Niches above it earn attention more easily; niches below it work harder for each interaction.

Move the number

Each card re-runs the formula with one change, at your current numbers.

Comments

Double your comments

At 60 comments per video your rate reads 4.13%, up 0.38pp. Comments are the strongest active-interest signal, and brands weight them over likes.

Likes

Grow likes by 50%

At 405 likes per video your rate reads 5.44%, up 1.69pp. The cheapest route is posting when your audience is online, not making more content.

What your engagement is made of

300 interactions per video
Likes 90%Comments 10%

The ratios brands read past the headline number

Likes to comments9:1
Your rate in context

Baselines differ wildly by platform: the median TikTok account engages at 4.25% while the median X account engages at 1.11%. Holding your relative performance constant, your 3.75% on YouTube is the equivalent of:

Instagram≈ 2.22%TikTok≈ 5.21%Facebook≈ 0.18%X (Twitter)≈ 1.36%

Engagement on YouTube has risen since 2024. Your rate against each year's median:

YearYouTube medianYou vs it
20242.84%+0.91pp
20252.96%+0.79pp
20263.06%+0.69pp
How this is calculated

The rate is (Likes + Comments) divided by views, times 100.

Engagement rates fall as accounts grow, so the verdict compares you against your subscriber tier, not the whole platform. A nano creator at 5.2% to 7.8% is performing normally; the same number from a mega account would be exceptional.

Verdicts step at the band edges: at or above 120% of the band ceiling reads Excellent, above the midpoint Good, inside the band Average, under half the floor Low.

The brand deal figure is your average views divided by 1,000, times the Lifestyle sponsorship rate of $12 to $25 per 1,000 views. It is the same function the YouTube sponsorship and money calculators use, so all three agree. Engagement does not change it.

Creator tierSubscribersTypical rate
Nano Creator0 to 10K5.23% to 7.82%
Micro Creator10K to 50K3.74% to 5.23%
Mid-Tier Creator50K to 100K2.81% to 3.74%
Macro Creator100K to 500K2.12% to 2.81%
Mega Creator500K+1.41% to 2.12%
More on YouTube engagement

Nobody Agrees On This Number

Published YouTube engagement figures disagree sharply, and the reason is almost always that the formula is not stated. Some sources divide by subscribers, some by views. Some add shares, which YouTube does not publish. Some published formulas even mix subscribers in with likes and comments, which is not an engagement action at all. A figure without its formula attached tells you nothing, so this page states its own before it states a result.

Why This Is Not An Instagram Rate

A YouTube rate measured against views and an Instagram rate measured against followers are different quantities that happen to share a unit. Putting them side by side implies a comparison that the arithmetic does not support, which is why YouTube is absent from our cross-platform benchmark charts even though its tier bands are published there. If you want a like-for-like read against Instagram or TikTok, compare each against its own platform's band rather than against each other.

Frequently asked

How is YouTube engagement rate calculated?
Add your likes and comments on a video, divide by that video's views, and multiply by 100. A video with 270 likes and 30 comments on 8,000 views has an engagement rate of 3.75%. Every published YouTube benchmark that discloses its formula uses this one. Note what is not in it: shares are not exposed publicly anywhere on YouTube, and public dislikes were removed in November 2021, so any calculator asking you for either is asking for a number you cannot look up.
Does YouTube report an engagement rate?
No. YouTube Studio reports likes, comments, shares, views, watch time, audience retention, impressions and click-through rate as separate figures, and never combines them into a rate. There is no official YouTube engagement rate and no YouTube-published formula. Engagement rate on YouTube is an industry convention, invented mostly by brand and agency platforms that needed one number they could compare against an Instagram or TikTok creator. That is worth knowing before you treat any published YouTube figure as authoritative: they are all somebody's convention, and they do not all use the same one.
What is a good YouTube engagement rate?
It depends on your size, and smaller channels should expect a higher number. Against views, the median by subscriber tier runs: nano creator (Under 10K) 5.23%, micro creator (10K–50K) 3.74%, mid-tier creator (50K–100K) 2.81%, macro creator (100K–500K) 2.12%, mega creator (500K+) 1.41%. So a Under 10K channel is doing averagely at 5.23%, while a 500K+ channel is doing averagely at 1.41%. Judging a large channel against a small channel's band is the single most common mistake here. Those figures come from SociaVault Labs' 2026 study of 75,000 YouTube channels, which is the only dataset in this space that publishes its formula, its sample size and its collection window together.
Why measure against views instead of subscribers?
Because subscribers do not watch. A channel's subscriber count includes everyone who ever clicked subscribe, including accounts dormant for years, so a rate computed against it measures list decay more than audience response. Views measure how the people who actually watched reacted. It also makes the number comparable across your own catalogue, since a video that reached far beyond your subscriber base is not penalised for it. The trade-off is that a view-based rate is not comparable to the follower-based rates quoted for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or X. Those are a share of a different denominator, so a YouTube channel at 3.06% and an Instagram account at 1.81% are not three times apart in any meaningful sense.
What is the average YouTube engagement rate in 2026?
The platform-wide median is 3.06% of views, from a 2026 study of 75,000 channels. Treat a single platform median carefully on YouTube: the spread by channel size is wide, running from 5.23% at the smallest tier down to 1.41% at the largest, so the median describes almost nobody. Your tier band is the more useful comparison. Published figures elsewhere also disagree sharply, partly because most sources will not say what formula produced them, and Metricool reports the platform falling over the same period SociaVault reports it rising.
Why are shares not included in the formula?
Because you cannot see them. YouTube does not display a share count on a video, in search, or anywhere in the public interface, and it is not available without an authenticated connection to your own analytics. A formula containing a term the user cannot measure is a formula that quietly treats a blank as zero, which drags every rate computed with it downwards by an unknown amount. Public dislikes are the same story since November 2021. Likes and comments are the only two interaction counts anyone can actually verify on a YouTube video, so those are the two this calculator uses.
What engagement rate do brands want on YouTube?
Brands rarely quote a YouTube threshold the way they do on Instagram, because the platform gives them better signals: view count is public, so they can see reach directly rather than inferring it. Where engagement rate does get used, it is usually as a check that the views are real and the audience is awake. Clearing your own tier band is the practical target, and the comment section matters more than the like count for that purpose, since comments are far harder to fake and show the audience actually watched. If you are pricing a deal rather than benchmarking, our YouTube sponsorship rate calculator turns your average views, niche and video format into an actual number.
How do I increase my YouTube engagement rate?
Because the denominator is views, the lever is the share of viewers who react, not the raw count. Ask for the comment early and specifically, since most viewers never reach an outro. A question that can be answered in four words gets answered; "let me know what you think" does not. Pin a comment of your own to start the thread. Reply in the first hour or two, when the people who commented are still watching. Beyond that, retention is the metric that actually drives the channel, and a video people finish tends to be a video people react to, so improving the first thirty seconds usually moves this number as a side effect.
Can I embed this calculator on my website?
Yes! Click the "Embed" button below the calculator results to get a free embed code for your website or blog. You can customize the theme (light or dark), accent color, and height to match your site's design. The embed is fully responsive and works on any website that supports iframes.

Sources

Reviewed every four to eight weeks
SociaVault

Engagement Rate Benchmarks 2026, a 350,000-account study across six platforms, filtered for fraudulent accounts.

Socialinsider

Facebook benchmarks from 130,683 brand Pages, 2024 to 2025, on the same formula as ours. Instagram format rates.

Socialinsider TikTok benchmarks

TikTok benchmarks from 214,507 profiles, 2024 to 2025, in a report aimed at brands, with engagement measured against views.

Buffer

The State of Social Media Engagement in 2026: 52 million posts from accounts that post through Buffer, with engagement measured against reach.

Metricool

X statistics from its 2026 Social Media Study of accounts connected to Metricool: 1,123,528 posts from 15,116 X accounts, with engagement measured against impressions. CreatiCalc is a Metricool affiliate.

Hootsuite

Engagement rate calculation formulas and methodology.

Each benchmark comes from the study named beside it, and where no study publishes one we leave it out rather than estimate it. The health score and the brand deal price are our own. Full formulas and the update schedule are on the methodology page.