How Much Do YouTube Shorts Pay in the UK?
UK Shorts RPM, worked £ examples at 100k and 1M views, eligibility rules, and a free estimator so you can plug in your own view count.
YouTube Shorts pay UK creators roughly £0.02 to £0.08 per 1,000 views — a fraction of what the same audience would earn on a long-form video. That works out to somewhere between £2 and £8 for 100,000 Shorts views, and £20 to £80 for a million. If that sounds disappointingly small next to the YouTube earnings figures you've seen elsewhere, it's because Shorts run on a completely different payment model to standard videos, and it's worth understanding how that model works before building a content strategy around it.
The short answer: UK Shorts RPM per 1,000 views
RPM — revenue per mille — is what you actually take home per 1,000 monetised views after YouTube's cut. For Shorts, that figure sits at roughly £0.02–£0.08 for a primarily UK audience, compared with £1–£12 on long-form video depending on niche. Here's what that looks like at two common view milestones:
| Monthly Shorts views | Estimated earnings (UK audience) |
|---|---|
| 100,000 | £2 – £8 |
| 1,000,000 | £20 – £80 |
These are rough ranges, not guarantees — actual pay swings with audience geography, whether your Shorts use licensed music, and how YouTube's algorithm is distributing the ad pool that month. For the full picture on long-form pay, including RPM by niche, see our guide to how much YouTube pays in the UK.
How the Shorts revenue pool works
Shorts don't carry dedicated ads the way a long-form video does. Instead, YouTube runs ads across the entire Shorts feed, pools that ad revenue together, and then divides it among every monetised Shorts creator based on their share of total Shorts views that month. If your Shorts made up 0.001% of all Shorts views watched in the UK that month, you'd get roughly 0.001% of the UK-attributable pool.
Before the split happens, YouTube deducts a cost to cover music licensing — a meaningful chunk when Shorts use commercial tracks, since rights holders need paying regardless of how the ad pool performs. Whatever's left after that deduction is split using the same 45% creator share that applies to long-form ad revenue. The mechanics are consistent with the rest of YouTube's monetisation system; it's the shared-pool structure, not the revenue split, that pushes Shorts RPM so far below long-form.
Eligibility for Shorts monetisation in the UK
Shorts ad revenue sits inside the same YouTube Partner Programme as long-form monetisation — there's no separate application. To qualify, a UK channel needs:
- 1,000 subscribers, plus
- Either 4,000 public watch hours on long-form content in the past 12 months, or 10 million valid Shorts views in the past 90 days
There's a lower entry tier at 500 subscribers and 3,000 watch hours (or 3 million Shorts views in 90 days), but that only unlocks fan-funding features like Super Thanks and channel memberships — not ad revenue sharing on Shorts or long-form. If your channel is still short of the threshold, many UK creators use subscriber growth services to reach the 1,000-subscriber threshold while their content and posting frequency build momentum organically.
Shorts vs long-form RPM: side by side
| Metric | Long-form video | Shorts |
|---|---|---|
| Typical UK RPM | £1 – £12 per 1,000 views | £0.02 – £0.08 per 1,000 views |
| Revenue at 100k views | £100 – £1,200 | £2 – £8 |
| Revenue at 1M views | £1,000 – £12,000 | £20 – £80 |
| How it's paid | Ads placed against your specific video, priced by advertiser demand for your niche | Pooled ad revenue split by your share of total Shorts views, minus music licensing costs |
The gap is roughly 10–20x in favour of long-form, which is why most channels that grow through Shorts eventually shift viewers toward longer videos rather than relying on Shorts as a primary income stream.
What moves your Shorts RPM
- Audience geography. Views from the UK, US and other high ad-spend markets pull a larger share of a richer pool than views from lower-CPM regions — this is the single biggest lever, same as long-form.
- Music licensing. Shorts built on original audio or royalty-free tracks avoid the licensing deduction taken from the pool, keeping more of the pot available for creators.
- Watch completion and replays. Shorts that get watched to the end or rewatched signal quality to YouTube's distribution system, which tends to widen reach and, over time, your slice of total views.
- Posting consistency. Because payout is proportional to your share of all Shorts views, a steady stream of Shorts compounds your view share more reliably than occasional viral spikes.
- Overall channel view volume. Creators who pair Shorts with a growing long-form catalogue and a healthy view count across their videos tend to see Shorts contribute more to total channel momentum, even though the direct Shorts payout stays modest.
Estimate your own Shorts earnings
Enter your monthly Shorts views below for an instant low–high estimate in GBP, calculated entirely in your browser using the UK Shorts RPM range above. Nothing is sent anywhere or stored.
Total views on videos under 60 seconds in the past 30 days.
How to use it: open YouTube Studio → Analytics → Content, filter by Shorts, and take your views total for the last 28 days. Drop that number in above. The estimate uses the same £0.02–£0.08 pooled RPM range covered earlier on this page, so it's a rough monthly range rather than a guaranteed figure — actual payouts shift with audience geography and music usage. For a fuller picture that also covers long-form ad revenue by niche, run your numbers through our YouTube Money Calculator instead.
Frequently asked questions
How much do YouTube Shorts pay per 1,000 views in the UK?
YouTube Shorts typically pay UK creators between £0.02 and £0.08 per 1,000 views. That's the pooled ad revenue rate after YouTube's cut, and it applies fairly evenly across niches since Shorts revenue isn't split by advertiser category the way long-form RPM is.
How much do YouTube Shorts pay for 1 million views?
A million Shorts views from a mainly UK audience typically brings in roughly £20 to £80. Compare that with long-form video, where a million UK views can earn anywhere from £1,000 to £12,000 depending on niche — Shorts pay a fraction because the ad pool is split across every creator on the feed, not just your channel.
Why do Shorts pay so much less than long-form videos?
Long-form videos carry dedicated ads tied to your specific content, so your RPM reflects what advertisers bid for your audience and niche. Shorts revenue instead comes from one shared pool: ads shown across the entire Shorts feed get combined, YouTube deducts music licensing costs, and what's left is divided among creators based on their share of total Shorts views that month.
How many Shorts views do I need to get paid in the UK?
To earn ad revenue from Shorts you need to join the YouTube Partner Programme, which requires 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million valid Shorts views in the last 90 days. There's a lower tier at 500 subscribers, but that only unlocks fan-funding features like Super Thanks, not ad revenue sharing.
Does using copyrighted music reduce Shorts earnings?
Yes. When a Short uses licensed music, YouTube pays a share of the ad pool to the music rights holder before splitting what remains among creators, which lowers the total available in the pool. Shorts built entirely on original audio or royalty-free tracks avoid this deduction.
Is it worth posting Shorts if the pay is so low?
As a direct income source, Shorts rarely compete with long-form ad revenue. Most UK creators who do well with Shorts treat them as a discovery and growth tool instead — short, shareable clips that pull new viewers toward the long-form videos and subscriber base where the real ad revenue sits.