Facebook or YouTube: which pays more for the same video

Updated 24.09.2026 · Kostas Obuchow

YouTube shares 55% of ad revenue on long videos and 45% on Shorts; Facebook pays for performance and publishes no percentage. What that means per thousand views, where Facebook comes out ahead, where YouTube does, and why the question is "and", not "or".

Short answer

For long videos, YouTube pays more per view, often by an order of magnitude. For short videos the rates are comparable, and Facebook can come out ahead depending on the country.

But the rate is the wrong question. The same video can earn on both platforms. The right question is how much Facebook adds on top of what YouTube already pays.

Two different ways of paying

YouTube shares ad revenue, and says how much:

• long videos: the creator gets 55% of net revenue from ads on their videos;
• Shorts: 45% of the revenue allocated to the creator from the Shorts pool, by share of views.

Facebook does not share ad revenue. Content Monetization, in Meta’s words, pays for “the performance” of content rather than for the ads placed in it. Meta does not publish a percentage. The 55% often quoted for Facebook comes from press reports about the old in-stream ads programme, which ended on 31 August 2025.

So a direct comparison is only possible on the outcome: how much a thousand views paid.

Per thousand views

YouTube does not publish typical RPM figures, so for YouTube we use public aggregated channel statistics. For Facebook we use our own payouts.

The YouTube rows are third-party estimates, rounded, from September 2026. The Facebook rows for the network are our own: 33 pages, 40.9 million views, $3,620 paid out. Details in Facebook RPM by country.

What follows from this:

• long videos earn more on YouTube. Only the single best Facebook language in our sample reaches the YouTube estimate for Poland; the average is nine times lower;
• for short videos Facebook is not worse. Most of our Facebook rows sit inside the Shorts range or above it.

Shorts versus Reels

For short-form authors this is the main comparison, and it is closer than people expect.

On YouTube, Shorts earn from a shared pool, and from February 2027 the rules tighten: to keep earning from the Shorts pool each month, a channel will need 10 million Shorts views in 90 days.

On Facebook, reels earn on their own performance, and geography drives the rate harder than format. Authors of Ukrainian and Polish pages report $0.003–0.03 per thousand on reels; a US audience pays many times more. More in the Reels breakdown.

Getting in

YouTube has published thresholds: 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours in 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days. From 1 February 2027, new channels will need 8,000 hours or 20 million Shorts views. Channels already in the programme are not affected.

Facebook has no application. Content Monetization is by invitation, and you must live in an eligible country. The exception is Creator Fast Track: from 20,000 followers on YouTube and 30,000 video views in 60 days you get immediate access and a guaranteed payment for three months. Only for creators based in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. More in how to get monetization.

Geography decides on both

On both platforms the country of the viewer moves the rate more than anything the author does. On YouTube the gap between the US and Poland in the estimates is about sevenfold. On Facebook the gap between the best and worst language in our network was 53 times.

On Facebook the language of the video sets the geography more strictly than any setting: the algorithm shows it to whoever understands it. That is why the same library, dubbed into several languages, can pay very differently.

Why the answer is both

Your own video can be posted on Facebook without breaking any rule: Meta counts what you produced as original. So the choice is not “YouTube or Facebook” but whether to leave the second income on the table.

Facebook makes sense when:

• you make short videos: here the rates are comparable;
• your audience is in expensive countries, or can be reached there in another language;
• your YouTube monetization is off or not yet available.

How to move videos without an originality flag is in the YouTube-to-Facebook breakdown.