For a channel with around one million subscribers, SponsorRadar pegs a deal at $6,000–$15,000, TrySpansa at $20,000–$150,000, and YTCalculators at anywhere from $8,400 (gaming) to $42,000 (finance). That's not noise you can round away. It's the whole story.

TL;DR: Prefer I read it to you?

So before we get to the numbers, one warning that matters more than any table below: almost every figure in this space comes from a company selling something adjacent to the marketplace tools, rate calculators, influencer agencies, creator-finance apps. Several openly admit their tier rates come from a “rate model” of multipliers rather than observed deals. There is no audited, independent dataset here. Treat everything as a vendor estimate, and you'll negotiate better than the buyer who treats a calculator output as gospel.

The honest answer: it's a huge range

The headline span is genuinely enormous. SponsorRadar quotes roughly $200 per video for a small channel to $200,000+ for major creators. TrySpansa gives $50 to $150,000+ per video. InfluencerFee lists YouTube at $5K–$500K per video in its platform navigation. Crowdfundly claims top-tier creators pull $16M–$54M annually but attaches that to channels with 100M+ subscribers and notes sponsorships are only a slice of it. That last figure is single-source and unverified; park it.

The more useful insight, repeated across nearly every source, is that subscriber count is a weak predictor of price. As Creators Agency puts it bluntly, “Subscriber count is a weak signal. Average views over the last 10 to 15 long-form videos matter far more.” If you're pricing a deal off a sub count, you're pricing off the wrong number.

How pricing actually works

The dominant model is CPM, cost per 1,000 views. SponsorRadar says, “The vast majority of YouTube sponsorships are priced on a CPM basis.” Some sources frame it as CPV (cost per view); ThoughtLeaders quotes $0.01–$0.10 per view, but it's the same math in different clothing.

Beyond CPM, expect three payment structures: flat rate (most common), CPM-based, and performance-based, with hybrid deals (base fee plus performance bonus) growing. OutlierKit extends the list to five, adding CPA and equity/revenue share.

The number that should reframe your budgeting: sponsorship CPMs run far above AdSense CPMs. SponsorRadar puts sponsorship at $15–$80 per 1,000 views versus $2–$8 for AdSense. The premium buys performance sponsorships reportedly deliver 3–5x the click-through rate and 2–4x the conversion rate of display, with OutlierKit claiming up to 10x conversion (single-source at the top end). That gap is precisely why brand deals have, per YTCalculators, “surpassed AdSense as the primary revenue driver for mid-tier creators (50K–500K subscribers).”

The rate tables and why they don't agree

Here's a compressed cross-section for mid-sized channels. Read them as competing estimates, not a consensus.

  • SponsorRadar (per mid-roll): 100K subs / ~30K views → $600–$1,500; 500K subs / ~100K views → $2,000–$5,000. Dedicated videos pay 1.5–2x.
  • TrySpansa (60-sec integration): Established (50K–500K) → $1,000–$15,000; Premium (500K–1M) → $10,000–$50,000.
  • Sponsorship.so: Mid (10K–100K) → $1,000–$5,000 per video; Large (100K+) → $5,000 to $50,000+.
  • Vivian Agency: 1K–10K subs → $100–$500 per sponsored video; 100K+ → $2,000–$50,000+.
  • YTCalculators (modeled 60-sec, US/UK/CA audience): 100K subs → $10,800 finance, $4,860 tech, $2,160 gaming.

One source worth watching for its ADOPTER-backed floor: the minimum realistic investment is almost always $1,000, even on tiny channels, because production effort doesn't scale down to zero. If a nano-creator quotes you $200, the deal economics (their time, filming, editing) rarely work.

And don't skim past Payd's median annual figures, which reframe the question from per-deal to per-year: 100K–250K subscribers earn a median $50,000–$120,000 in annual brand income; 500K–1M earn $350,000–$700,000. Those are middle-50% medians, not top-line outliers.

Niche is the biggest lever

If one theme is genuinely consistent across every source, it's the niche hierarchy: finance, crypto, and business sit at the top; gaming and entertainment at the bottom. The numbers vary; the ranking never does.

SponsorRadar 2026:

  • Finance & business $40–$80
  • CPM · Tech $30–$60
  • Gaming $10–$25
  • Entertainment: $10–$20.

YTCalculators 2026

  • Finance $100 · B2B SaaS $80 ·
  • AI/ML $70 · Gaming $30 ·
  • Entertainment $20
  • finance being “five times the entertainment baseline.”
  • Creators Agency: Personal finance, investing, real estate, and tax “often command $50–$200 CPM”; gaming as low as $4–$12.

The practical takeaway for buyers: a smaller channel in an expensive niche can out-price a much bigger one in a cheap niche. TrySpansa's example, a 37,000-sub finance channel averaging 80,000 views and commanding higher rates than a 500,000-sub entertainment channel averaging 12,000 views, is echoed by both ADOPTER and Payd (“a 50K finance channel typically earns more than a 500K lifestyle channel”). TrySpansa, citing InfluenceFlow/HubSpot 2025, claims finance creators earn 4x more per view than lifestyle creators.

AI/ML is flagged as the fastest-growing niche by CPM though note YTCalculators reports the growth as both +56% and +27% in different documents, an internal inconsistency worth treating skeptically.

The modifiers that move a quote

Beyond size and niche, four levers reshape any rate:

  • Placement/format. A dedicated video costs more than an integration 1.5–2x per SponsorRadar, up to 2–4x elsewhere. A pre-roll runs about 70–80% of a mid-roll (Creators Agency). YTCalculators reports 60-second integrations have overtaken 30-second as the most requested placement.
  • Geography. A US-primary audience roughly doubles rates versus a global mix. YTCalculators' multipliers: US/UK/CA-heavy = 2.0x; global mix = 1.0x; India = 0.45x. Same channel, same views, very different invoice.
  • Engagement. 6%+ engagement commands about 1.6x versus a 1–3% average.
  • Exclusivity. A significant lever, since a 30-day category exclusivity blocks the creator from competing deals; you're paying for what they can't sell to your rivals.

The gap between headline and take-home

Here's an angle worth remembering when a creator pushes back on your offer. Payd distinguishes three numbers creators themselves confuse: quoted CPM, actual deal value, and take-home after costs. Their worked example: a $10,000 brand deal often nets only about $3,600 after a 20% manager fee, ~$1,200 in production, and roughly 32% in taxes around 36% of the headline. Most creators quote gross. It's single-source, but it explains why a number that looks generous to you can feel thin on the other side of the table.

How to use these numbers as a buyer

Given that no figure here is independently verifiable, anchor to method rather than any single table:

  1. Price off average views, not subscribers; pull the last 10–15 long-form videos.
  2. Apply a niche-appropriate CPM, then adjust for geography, engagement, format, and exclusivity.
  3. Expect a floor near $1,000 even on small channels.
  4. Negotiate knowing the opening move. Creators Agency (citing 3,700 campaigns) says brands typically open 30–40% below their real budget and advises creators not to name a rate first. Both sides know the dance.
  5. Insist on FTC-compliant disclosure of the “paid promotion” toggle plus a verbal or text mention. Non-disclosure exposes both creator and brand.

The median CPM sits somewhere between TrySpansa's $15 and YTCalculators' $52 a gap wide enough that no one should pretend there's a single right answer. Build your model, sanity-check against several vendor tables, and treat any calculator that hands you one confident number with the skepticism it deserves.