How Much Does It Cost to Sponsor a YouTube Creator?

Real rates by audience size

There's no rate card for the whole internet, but there is data. Across the 541 creators in our set with a confirmed quoted rate, here's the median price for a YouTube integration:

• Under 10K subscribers → about $350
• 10K–50K → about $1,500
• 50K–250K → about $1,384 (our densest priced band, 210 creators)
• 250K–1M → about $3,500
• 1M+ → about $7,000

Notice the 10K–50K and 50K–250K medians are nearly level. Subscriber count alone doesn't set the price. Views do.

Price on views, not subscribers

Subscriber count is a vanity number. What you're buying is how many people see your sponsorship, and that's views per video, which can be wildly different from the subscriber headline. A channel with two million subscribers but 40,000 views per video is worth far less than it looks.

So the unit that matters is CPM: cost per thousand views. Take the fee, divide by expected views, multiply by a thousand. That's the number to compare across creators.

What our data says about CPM

Here's where it gets useful. In our priced data, the median CPM falls as channels get bigger:

• Under 10K subs → about $86 per thousand views
• 50K–250K → about $68
• 250K–1M → about $58
• 1M+ → about $37

Small channels charge more per view because their audiences are tight and engaged. Big channels are cheaper per view but cost more in total. If you've seen the old "$20–$30 CPM" rule of thumb online, our real numbers run higher — that estimate is dated.

This is exactly the spot where brands overpay: a creator quotes $8,000, it sounds reasonable, and nobody works out that it's a $90 CPM on a channel that should be closer to $40. We send the priced comparison data with every quote so you can see what's normal and what's a stretch.

What pushes a quote up

• Niche. Finance, B2B, and health audiences cost more per view because the viewers are worth more as buyers.
• Format. A dedicated video costs more than a 60-second integration, which costs more than a shout-out.
• Rights and exclusivity. The right to run the content as a paid ad, or to lock out competitors, stacks onto the base fee fast.
• Proven sales. A creator whose audience actually buys can charge a premium, and usually earns it.

How to tell if a rate is fair

1. Ask for average views on the last 10–20 videos, not subscriber count.
2. Divide the quote by those views, times a thousand — that's the CPM.
3. Compare it to the bands above, adjusting up for finance, B2B, or health.
4. Weigh it against audience fit. A higher CPM for the exact right audience beats a cheap one for the wrong audience. (More in how to find the right creators for your brand.)

And remember the real test isn't the rate, it's the return. Track every creator with a code or link so you know cost per customer, not just cost per view (see influencer marketing for DTC brands).

Skip the guessing

We hold current, real rate data across hundreds of thousands of creators, so we can tell you what a fair price is before you ever negotiate, and match you to creators whose audience is your customer. Overpaying for reach you can't convert is the most common way brands waste a creator budget. That's the part we take off your plate.