Influencer Advisory™Original research · November 14, 2026
2026 YouTube Creator Rates Report
Influencer Advisory counted 317 rate quotes from 312 YouTube creators, sent to us by email between September 21, 2025 and August 25, 2026. Each one is a price in US dollars, written by the creator or their manager, for one sponsored YouTube video or a sponsored segment inside one. For an integration, which is a sponsored segment inside a regular video, the median quote was $2,200 across 253 quotes, and the middle half ran from $800 to $5,500. Channels with 1M+ subscribers had a median integration quote of $8,000, and channels with 50K to 250K subscribers had a median of $1,000. These are prices creators asked for, not what brands paid in the end. Below we explain how we counted, what we left out and why.
How we counted
Where the quotes come from
Influencer Advisory runs creator campaigns for brands. Our team emails YouTube creators to ask what they charge, and every reply is saved in our database with the date it arrived.
This report uses those replies and nothing else. No survey, no public rate cards and no numbers from other reports.
What counts as a rate quote
A rate quote is a price in US dollars, written in an email to us by a creator or their manager, for one sponsored YouTube video or a sponsored segment inside one.
It is the price the creator asked for. It is not an invoice and not the final price of a deal.
How we checked each price
An AI tool read each email thread and wrote down the price it found. We did not take its word for it.
We kept a price only when the same dollar figure appears in an email the creator's side wrote, and not in our own email quoted back to us. The date of a quote is the date of that email.
Sample size and dates
1,081 email threads had a price saved. After the checks below, 317 quotes from 312 creators were left, dated September 21, 2025 to August 25, 2026.
253 of those quotes, from 249 creators, were for an integration. The tables by subscriber band and by topic use those 253.
Subscriber bands and topics
Subscriber counts come from our latest reading of each channel, not from the day of the quote.
A channel's topic is the main topic our system gave it from its videos. We show a topic only when it has at least 20 integration quotes. Six topics passed. The other 108 integration quotes are spread across 42 smaller topics.
Cost per 1,000 views
We divided each price by the channel's typical views: the middle view count of its 8 latest long videos that were at least 60 days old, measured on August 2, 2026.
229 of the 253 integration quotes had that number on record. Views are measured on one day, while the quotes are spread over many months.
Median and middle half
The median is the middle quote: half of the quotes asked for more, and half asked for less.
The middle half runs from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile, so a quarter of quotes sit below it and a quarter sit above it. Prices are rounded to the nearest dollar, and cost per 1,000 views to the nearest cent. A percentile can fall between two quotes.
Quotes ran from $15 to $450,000. A few very large quotes would pull an average far up, so we show the median and the middle half instead.
What we left out
We started with 1,081 email threads that had a price saved. Each one is counted once, under the first rule it failed, in this order.
| Rule | Rows removed |
|---|---|
| The thread is filed as a brand or spam conversation, not a creator's. | 28 |
| Test or junk: marked junk or spam, a price of zero, or one of our own addresses. | 2 |
| A TikTok or Instagram creator with no YouTube channel (left for a later edition). | 173 |
| No YouTube channel on the thread, so no subscriber count to sort it by. | 133 |
| The channel is not in our creator table or has no subscriber count. | 0 |
| The price is for something other than one YouTube video or segment (an Instagram or TikTok post, a community post, a bundle across platforms, a monthly deal). | 75 |
| The price is not a US dollar figure the creator wrote: another currency, the middle of a range, or a misread. | 186 |
| The figure is a price per 1,000 views, per view or per month, not per video. | 5 |
| The email carrying the price has no date on record. | 1 |
| The email carrying the price sits in the threads of two or more different channels and does not name this one alone, so we cannot tell whose price it is. | 56 |
| We read the lowest and highest quotes by hand; these were not a creator's price for one YouTube video (a marketing email, an offer to pay us, a backlink or article, a setup fee, a multi-month plan, or another platform's price on the same rate card). | 15 |
| The same creator gave the same price in another thread, so it is counted once. | 90 |
317 quotes were left.
We also read the 25 lowest and 15 highest quotes by hand, plus 14 that came from an email copied into more than one thread. 11 of those prices were not a creator's price for one YouTube video, so we removed them (15 rows, counting copies).
The limits
These are quotes creators gave us, not invoices. We do not know what each brand finally paid, and a deal can close above or below the first price.
We left out quotes in pounds, euros and other money, so the numbers lean toward creators who price in US dollars.
The creators are ones we chose to email for client campaigns, so they are not a random sample of YouTube.
The rates
Integration quotes by subscriber band
One sponsored segment inside a regular video, grouped by the channel's subscribers. Figures in US dollars per video.
| Group | Quotes | Creators | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All integrations | 253 | 249 | $800 | $2,200 | $5,500 |
| 1M+ subscribers | 61 | 59 | $3,500 | $8,000 | $20,000 |
| 250K to 1M subscribers | 44 | 44 | $2,150 | $3,250 | $7,500 |
| 50K to 250K subscribers | 103 | 102 | $600 | $1,000 | $2,500 |
| 10K to 50K subscribers | 33 | 32 | $450 | $800 | $2,000 |
| Under 10K subscribers | 12 | 12 | $88 | $300 | $662 |
Integration quotes by topic
Topics with at least 20 integration quotes, largest first. Figures in US dollars per video.
| Group | Quotes | Creators | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entertainment | 30 | 30 | $888 | $1,725 | $10,000 |
| Business | 25 | 24 | $1,000 | $2,500 | $3,500 |
| Finance | 24 | 23 | $750 | $2,583 | $5,125 |
| Lifestyle | 24 | 24 | $675 | $2,250 | $6,625 |
| Technology | 22 | 22 | $492 | $1,000 | $7,000 |
| Education | 20 | 20 | $375 | $1,600 | $3,000 |
All quotes by what the price buys
The type of video comes from the AI tool's reading of each email. Figures in US dollars per video.
| Group | Quotes | Creators | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All quotes | 317 | 312 | $900 | $2,250 | $6,000 |
| Integration (a sponsored segment inside a video) | 253 | 249 | $800 | $2,200 | $5,500 |
| Dedicated video (the whole video is about the brand) | 25 | 25 | $1,200 | $3,000 | $6,500 |
| YouTube Short | 14 | 14 | $888 | $3,000 | $17,500 |
| One video, type not stated | 25 | 25 | $1,250 | $2,500 | $8,000 |
Integration cost per 1,000 views, by subscriber band
Each price divided by the channel's typical views, measured on August 2, 2026. Figures in US dollars per 1,000 views.
| Group | Quotes | Creators | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All integrations with views | 229 | 226 | $38.80 | $144.74 | $393.41 |
| 1M+ subscribers | 55 | 54 | $19.56 | $44.42 | $144.68 |
| 250K to 1M subscribers | 40 | 40 | $48.11 | $157.38 | $366.66 |
| 50K to 250K subscribers | 93 | 92 | $32.70 | $144.74 | $456.00 |
| 10K to 50K subscribers | 30 | 29 | $180.53 | $409.11 | $2,913.81 |
| Under 10K subscribers | 11 | 11 | $141.68 | $310.56 | $3,914.14 |
What the numbers do not show
- What brands paid. These are the first prices creators asked for. We do not have the final deal for each one.
- Usage rights and packages. A price can change with usage rights, exclusivity and how many videos a brand books. We did not adjust any quote for these.
- Results. Views, clicks and sales from the sponsored videos are not part of this report.
- Other platforms and money. This edition covers YouTube quotes in US dollars only. TikTok and Instagram quotes were left out.
- Small groups. The under 10K band has 12 quotes and YouTube Shorts has 14. Read those rows as rough.
- Rates move. The newest quote in this report is from August 25, 2026.
Published November 14, 2026 by Influencer Advisory.
Source: Influencer Advisory email records, September 21, 2025 to August 25, 2026.