YouTube sponsorship rates 2026: what 26,380 sponsored videos cost, by channel size

A YouTube sponsorship costs about $2,100 to $5,100 per video on a channel with 100,000 to 500,000 subscribers, and about $8,000 to $19,300 on a channel above 1 million. We got those figures from the views that real sponsored videos get. We found 26,380 sponsored videos on 49,697 channels with 1,000 or more subscribers, measured their views, and priced them at $25 to $61 per 1,000 views, the range that creators disclosed for paid deals and asking prices. The views are measured. The dollar figures are an estimate.

The pages that rank for YouTube sponsorship rates give price tables by subscriber tier. OutlierKit puts an integration on a 100K to 500K channel at $1,500 to $10,000, and Vivian Agency puts a mid-tier video at $5,000 to $10,000. ThoughtLeaders gives $0.02 to $0.06 per view. None of them counts how many channels run sponsors, how many views a sponsored video gets, or which named channels and brands are behind the numbers. This study does, and the tables are in a CSV at the end.

What a YouTube sponsorship costs, by subscriber count

For each channel that ran a sponsored long-form video, we took the median views of its sponsored videos. Then we took the median channel in each size band and multiplied its views by $25 and by $61 per 1,000 views. The next section explains where those two prices come from.

The views spread widely inside each band. A channel with 100,000 to 500,000 subscribers in the cheaper quarter gets about 36,000 views on a sponsored video, and one in the dearer quarter gets about 183,000. At $25 to $61 per 1,000 views that is $900 to $11,100. So price a deal from the channel's own sponsored views, not from its band.

Brands pick channels whose videos travel. In our influencer rates study, the median channel with 100,000 to 500,000 subscribers got 48,582 views on its usual long-form video. The channels that ran sponsors got 84,869 on a sponsored video, 1.7 times as many. The gap is 1.4 to 2.8 times in every band.

Our estimates sit inside the published tables for small channels and below them for large ones. OutlierKit's integration range for 1M+ channels starts at $15,000, and Vivian Agency puts 1M+ channels at $20,000 to $100,000. A sponsored video on our median 1M+ channel got 318,172 views, and $20,000 for that is $63 per 1,000 views, above the asking prices we found. A table price fits a channel whose sponsored videos beat its band.

Where the $25 and $61 per 1,000 views come from

YouTube does not show what a brand paid. So we collected 113 prices that named creators made public, and kept the ones with the views of the video or of the channel's recent videos.

• Ten paid long-form deals have both a fee and views, and their median is $25 per 1,000 views.
• One of those ten is MrBeast, whose rate card in court filings asked about $2.5 million for a 30 to 45 second segment in early 2024, on videos with 100 million views or more, which is also about $25 per 1,000.
• Twenty-four asking prices on channels whose recent videos get 20,000 views or more have a median of $61 per 1,000 views, and most come from Passionfroot storefronts where creators set their own prices.
• Kevin Stratvert's media kit lists a 60 to 90 second integration at $14,000 or more with 4.39 million subscribers, about $194 per 1,000 of his recent median views.
• Ryan Robinson's August 2026 income report lists a $7,000 single-video deal at about 154,000 subscribers, about $500 per 1,000 of his recent median views.

So $25 is what deals closed at, and $61 is what creators ask. Channels that teach software or business ask more per view, as the last two cases show. ThoughtLeaders' $0.02 to $0.06 per view, or $20 to $60 per 1,000, matches this range.

How often YouTube channels run sponsored videos

One channel in ten ran a sponsored video in the year. Below 10,000 subscribers it was about one in 75. From 100,000 subscribers up it was about one in six, and the share stopped growing after 500,000.

Channels that do run sponsors do not run them in every video. The median sponsoring channel put a sponsor in 10.5% of its uploads, about one every two months at its pace of 4.2 uploads a month. Another 3.9% of all videos carry only a discount code or an affiliate link with no sponsor line, so they are not counted as sponsored here.

That pace answers how much YouTubers make from sponsors. A sponsoring channel with 100,000 to 500,000 subscribers ran a median of 5.2 sponsored videos a year. At $2,100 to $5,100 each, that is about $11,000 to $27,000 a year. Above 1 million subscribers it is 5.5 videos and about $43,000 to $105,000. Both are estimates from measured counts and the disclosed prices.

Sponsored videos get the channel's usual views

On Instagram and TikTok a sponsored post loses reach. Our sponsored post engagement study found sponsored Instagram reels got 0.85x the creator's usual views and sponsored TikToks 0.69x. YouTube is different.

We divided each sponsored video's views by the median of the same channel's unsponsored videos from the same year. The median sponsored video got 0.98x, and 51.6% got fewer views than the channel's usual video, which is close to a coin flip. The sponsor read sits inside the video, so it does not change who the video reaches. The 1.34x for the smallest channels rests on 270 videos, so read it as a hint.

For a brand, this makes YouTube easier to price than Instagram. The channel's recent median views are a fair forecast for your video. Our YouTube engagement rate benchmarks give the likes and comments per 100 views to expect on top.

Four channels and their sponsored videos

These four channels ran sponsors often enough to see a pattern. The fees are our estimate at $25 to $61 per 1,000 views of their median sponsored video. We opened one video of each on YouTube on October 20, 2026, and each one showed YouTube's "Includes paid promotion" label.

Binging with Babish, 10.5 million subscribers

22 of the 28 videos we read from Babish's year named a sponsor. Squarespace sponsored 9 of them, Challenge Dairy and CookUnity 4 each, Bombas 2, and Wildgrain, Helix Sleep and Cometeer one each. The median sponsored video got 718,663 views, so one costs about $18,000 to $43,600 on our estimate. The Squarespace videos ran from 220,222 views on a video posted in August 2026 to 2,030,019 on "10 Levels of PB&J". "The Foods of KPop Demon Hunters ft Alton Brown" had 791,882 views when we opened it. Few of his videos had no sponsor, so his 0.75x against the usual video rests on 5 videos.

Doctor Mike, 15 million subscribers

Doctor Mike ran 12 sponsored videos among the 107 we read. Zocdoc sponsored 8 of them, each tagged #sponsored, and Microsoft Dragon Copilot, the Shield blood test, Quest Nutrition and Chime one each. The 8 Zocdoc videos had a median of 2.1 million views. "Doctor Reacts To Extreme Diseases" had 3,228,122 views at our read and 4,038,955 when we opened it. Across all 12, his sponsored videos got 0.96x his usual views, and one costs about $38,700 to $93,900 on our estimate. A brand that buys 8 videos in a year buys a recurring slot in a medical channel, which is what Zocdoc did.

Graham Stephan, 5.18 million subscribers

Graham Stephan ran 17 sponsored videos among 58: SoFi 9, Policygenius 4, CookUnity 3 and Upside 1. 33 more videos carry only a code or an affiliate link. His median sponsored video got 413,271 views, 0.86x his usual, and one costs about $10,300 to $25,100 on our estimate. The outlier is a Policygenius video, "I Paid Off My 2.875% Mortgage, Dave Ramsey Was Right", with 2,160,964 views, 4.5 times his usual. His 17 sponsored videos come to about $176,000 to $426,000 a year on our estimate. Our YouTube pay study puts his ad income from new uploads near $27,000 a month, or $324,000 a year, so his sponsors pay in the same range as his ads.

Through My Lens, 488,000 subscribers

Through My Lens is a travel channel, and 30 of its 57 videos named a sponsor: LMNT 12, Unbound Merino 6, Insta360, Away and SURI 3 each, Turo 2 and Monarch 1. The median sponsored video got 112,185 views, 1.14x the usual, so one costs about $2,800 to $6,800 on our estimate. The range is wide. One Unbound Merino video, "I Only Pack One Bag For Most Trips", had 18,404 views, and another had 283,825. The packing products fit a travel audience, and LMNT bought 12 videos in a year.

Tech, how-to and travel channels run the most sponsors

Almost a third of science and tech channels ran a sponsor, and 11.0% of their videos were sponsored. How-to and style channels follow at 29.0%, and travel at 21.3%. Music channels almost never name a sponsor in the description, at 1.6%. A product that fits the video's topic is easier to sell, and the categories at the top are the ones where a product can sit inside the video.

Russian channels top the list at 39.0% because Russian ad law requires the word Реклама and an ad registration code on paid ads, so nearly every deal is marked. Japanese channels mark deals with 提供 or PR lines, and 27.9% of them did. Among English-speaking markets, UK channels led at 26.0% and US channels were at 17.8%. Channels in India (3.7%) and Indonesia (2.0%) named sponsors least, which may mean fewer deals or deals that are not written in the description.

The brands that sponsor the most YouTube channels

Raycon earbuds sponsored 138 channels in our data, Quince 110 and BetterHelp 104. The list is mostly direct-to-consumer apps and products that sell with a discount link: VPNs, therapy, money apps, clothing and earbuds. These brands buy many mid-size channels at once and measure each one by its link. If you sell something similar, the channels these brands already sponsored are a list of creators who know how to do a read.

YouTube Shorts sponsorship rates

Our crawl holds few Shorts, 3,856 of the 1.29 million videos, and 5 of them named a sponsor. That is too few to measure how often Shorts are sponsored or what they get. Nineteen creators in our disclosures list a Shorts asking price, with a median of $1,410 and a median of 5,100 views on their recent Shorts. Treat Shorts prices as a separate deal from a long-form integration.

How to use these numbers

• Price a sponsored video from the channel's median views on its recent sponsored videos, because the middle half of channels in one subscriber band spans five times the views.
• Expect the channel's usual views, because a sponsored YouTube video got 0.98x the views of the same channel's other videos.
• Start a quote at $25 per 1,000 views and treat $61 as what creators ask, because that is the range of 34 disclosed deals and price lists.
• Book a series when you want a recurring slot, as Zocdoc did with 8 Doctor Mike videos and LMNT did with 12 Through My Lens videos.
• Look in tech, how-to, travel and gaming channels first, because one in five to one in three of them already runs sponsors.
• Brands can filter YouTube creators by subscriber count, country and topic in Virev creator search, which covers 180M+ creators.
• The YouTube money calculator estimates what a channel earns from ads, which is the floor a creator compares your offer with.

For Instagram and TikTok prices per 1,000 views, see our influencer rates study and our guide on how much to charge for a sponsored post.

How we measured, and what can be wrong

• The sample is every public YouTube channel with 1,000 or more subscribers in Virev's search index with at least 6 videos posted from October 1, 2025 to October 10, 2026, minus channels Virev labels as media, brands or businesses. That is 49,697 channels and 1,293,853 videos.
• A video counts as sponsored when a line in its title or description names a sponsor ("sponsored by", "thanks to X for sponsoring", "paid promotion", a sponsor chapter) or carries an ad mark such as #ad, Werbung, Реклама, 提供 or 광고. Lines that invite viewers to sponsor the channel, ask brands to get in touch, or say a video is not sponsored are left out.
• A German Werbung or Anzeige mark next to a single link counts as an affiliate link, and so do lines with only a discount code. Those 49,959 videos are not counted as sponsored.
• We checked 100 random detected videos on YouTube on October 20, 2026, and 86 were sponsored. The 14 errors were event sponsors, notes that a video has no sponsor, contact lines for brands, affiliate links and film history text. 49 of the 100 showed YouTube's "Includes paid promotion" label.
• We also opened 100 random videos we did not flag, and 3 showed YouTube's paid promotion label, so some sponsored videos have no sponsor line and our counts run low.
• Views are the counts at Virev's last read of each video. Videos posted in the last weeks of the window had less time to collect views, which affects sponsored and other videos alike.
• The views ratio compares a channel's sponsored long-form videos with the median of its own unsponsored long-form videos, for channels with 4 or more of those.
• Fees are an estimate: measured views times $25 or $61 per 1,000 views. The $25 is the median of 10 paid deals with views, and the $61 is the median of 24 asking prices on channels with 20,000 or more recent views. A brand that pays for usage rights, exclusivity or a dedicated video pays more.
• Category and country come from 9,760 channels in an earlier Virev channel read with both fields, so those charts cover a fifth of the sample.
• The sample is the set of channels Virev crawls, which leans toward channels that brands search for, and is not a random draw from all of YouTube.

Download the data

The tables behind every chart are in one CSV: youtube-sponsorship-rates-2026.csv. Each row has a table name, a group, a metric, a value and a count. The tables are by_subscriber_tier, sponsored_video_views, estimated_fee_usd, views_sponsored_vs_usual, by_format, by_video_category, by_channel_country, top_sponsor_brands, price_per_1000_views_inputs and hand_check. Please cite "Virev, October 2026" and link this page.