YouTube Channels Statistics (2024)

YouTube, the world’s second-most popular website after its parent company Google, has experienced rapid growth over the years, with over 33 billion monthly views and an accelerating pace. This surge in popularity comes as no surprise in the era where video has become the most popular format of visual content.

As a result, YouTube channels have also been growing at a rapid pace. I researched the statistics of YouTube channels, including the number of channels, the most popular ones, and their earnings.

Number of YouTube channels

• There are 120 million total YouTube channels, and 61.6 million serious YouTube creators (those who have at least 5 to 10 videos).
• 44 million (or roughly 30%) of YouTube channels also create YouTube Shorts, a short format video introduced by YouTube in September 2020.
• YouTube has between 2.5 billion and 2.7 billion users in 2024, but not all of them are subscribers.

Most subscribed YouTube channels

• T-Series has the most subscribers (256 million), followed by MrBeast (226 million), Cocomelon – Nursery Rhymes (170 million), and SET India (167 million).

Rank	Channel	Videos	Subscribers	Views
1	T-Series	20.09K	257M	257B
2	MrBeast	774	228M	40.77B
3	Cocomelon – Nursery Rhymes	1.06K	170M	173.9B
4	SET India	125.5K	167M	156.1B
5	Kids Diana Show	1.15K	117M	98.85B
7	PewDiePie	4.75K	111M	29.2B
6	Like Nastya	864	111M	96.55B
8	Vlad and Niki	637	107M	83.38B
9	Zee Music Company	9.81K	103M	63.1B
10	WWE	73.27K	98.8M	80.89B

• T-Series also has the most views as a channel (257 billion), followed by Cocomelon – Nursery Rhymes (173.9 billion) and SET India (156 billion).
• T-Series has had the most subscribers since 2019, when it surpassed PewDiePie, after a few months of competition between the channels.
• T-Series was the first channel to reach 100 million subscribers on May 29, 2019. Since then, 8 other channels also surpassed the 100-million mark, including PewDiePie.
• As of January 2024, 10 channels have more than 100 million subscribers.

Subscriber Count	Number of Channels
100 million or more	10
50 million or more	43
10 million or more	2,900
1 million or more	51,800
100,000 or more	453,700
10,000 or more	3,000,000
1,000 or more	20,000,000
100 or more	54,000,000
0 or more	120,000,000

• 51,800 channels have over 1 million subscribers. At the same time last year, 41,900 channels had 1 million subscribers.
• 453,700 channels have over 100K subscribers.

YouTube channels earnings

• A YouTube channel is worth around three times its annual revenue or 36 times its monthly revenue. For example, a YouTube channel that makes $12,000 per year ($1,000 per month), can be sold for around $36,0000.
• YouTube channels make between $10 and $30 per 1000 views, but that figure varies based on region and industry.

Highest-earning channel

The highest-earning channels are usually those that also get the most video views. In 2023, the highest-earning channels included:

1. MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) – $80 million per year
2. T-Series – $65 million per year
3. Cocomelon – Nursery Rhymes – $35 million per year
4. Sony SAB – $26 million per year
5. Set India – $25 million per year
6. Kids Diana Show – $24 million per year

There are also other YouTubers who are making lots of money but through other means. For example, Jake Paul makes 90% of his income with boxing.

Sources & methodology

Most of the data in this YouTube channel statistics article is original research performed by Matic Broz for Photutorial. The data was procured using data collection, extrapolation, averaging, trend analysis, and checking archives. The sources for data include YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Social Blade, vidIQ, and Reddit threads.