YouTube Shorts RPM India vs US 2026: What Each View Pays

No official rate exists for either country.

YouTube's Help Center explains how Shorts revenue is shared, but it publishes no per-country figure, so every number you see elsewhere is an estimate or one company's data.

The figures also matter only inside the YouTube Partner Program: a channel outside it can have ads on its videos and still earn no share of them, according to YouTube.

AIR published these averages on 23 January 2026 in What RPM Can You Expect from Shorts in 2026?, describing them as based on its data across thousands of channels.

AIR reports in US dollars; the rupee column is arithmetic using the Federal Reserve's H.10 rate for 9 October 2026.

For a European comparison, Germany's figures are on YouTube Shorts RPM in Germany.

Three cautions apply. The figures are averages from AIR's own channels, not YouTube-wide rates, and AIR does not publish the spread around them.

They describe 2025, and pools change every month. And YouTube calculates Shorts RPM per 1,000 engaged views, while the public view count has counted every start since 24 August 2026, so revenue divided by the public view count comes out lower than the RPM in Studio.

Your own figure is in YouTube Studio: select Analytics, then Revenue. The content performance report shows RPM and separates videos, Shorts and live streams, according to YouTube.

Because YouTube pays Shorts revenue by the country where each view happens. Its Shorts monetization policy describes four steps.

Each month, the revenue from ads shown between Shorts in the Shorts Feed is pooled. Part of that money covers music licensing and the rest forms the Creator Pool.

The Creator Pool is divided among monetizing creators by their share of engaged views in each country. Creators then keep 45% of their allocation, according to YouTube.

According to the hypothetical example in that policy, a country with 100 million engaged Shorts views and $100,000 of Shorts Feed ad revenue, where music use takes $10,000, has a $90,000 Creator Pool.

According to the same example, a Short with 1 million engaged views is allocated 1% of it, $900, and its creator keeps $405.

YouTube presents these numbers as an illustration, not as a real rate for any country.

How much each country's pool holds per view depends on advertisers.

YouTube's CPM explanation says different locations have different levels of competition in the ad market, so CPMs vary by geography.

Long-form data shows the same split: MilX, which publishes data jointly with AIR, reports an average long-form CPM of $14.67 for US viewers and $0.74 for Indian viewers over the 365 days to 1 May 2026, a ratio of nearly 20 to 1.

The published method does not mention a Short's topic or language.

Under it, two Shorts with the same eligible engaged views in the same country get the same allocation, whether they cover finance or comedy.

What separates two Indian creators is where their viewers are, how many of their views YouTube rules ineligible (such as reuploads of other creators' content, or bot views), and YouTube Premium viewing, which YouTube pays out by each creator's share of subscription Shorts views within each country.

This is an example that uses AIR's 2025 averages as inputs: $0.008 per 1,000 engaged Shorts views from India and $0.328 from the US. Replace them with the per-country figures from your own Studio.

For each country, divide its views by 1,000 and multiply by its RPM, then add the countries together. In the middle row, 950,000 ÷ 1,000 × $0.008 = $7.60 and 50,000 ÷ 1,000 × $0.328 = $16.40, so one view in twenty brings in more than two thirds of the revenue.

To find your own split, open Analytics, choose Advanced mode, break the report down by geography and add revenue metrics.

YouTube's Advanced mode guide lists geography among the main breakdowns and revenue among the metrics you can add.

YouTube began rolling out an updated Studio layout in July 2026, so the menu names on your account may differ.

Only on views that come from the US.

Under YouTube's published method, a view watched in the US is paid from the US pool whoever made the Short, and a view watched in India is paid from India's pool.

Language, subtitles and posting time matter only if they change who watches, and no public measurement could be found of how much any of them shifts a channel's audience, so treat promises of a fixed uplift with caution.

Your own audience report is the test. If the geography breakdown shows a meaningful US share on certain topics, those topics are likely to carry most of your Shorts revenue. If it shows almost none, your Shorts income will follow India's pool however many views you get.

Earnings from US viewers come with US tax.

According to YouTube's tax help page, creators outside the US who submit US tax info face withholding of between 0-30% on earnings from US viewers, depending on whether their country has a tax treaty with the US.

If tax info is not provided by 10 December, Google may deduct up to 24% of total worldwide earnings, according to the same page.

The rates that apply to you appear in the United States tax info section of your payments profile in AdSense for YouTube.

Per view, long-form, by a wide margin.

AIR's study of 274 channels, published on 16 September 2026, reports that Shorts RPM was 3-14% of long-form RPM in almost every niche in its data, so most channels needed 11,000 to 34,000 Shorts views to earn what 1,000 long-form views earned.

For India specifically, MilX estimates long-form RPM at $0.26-$0.41 per 1,000 views (₹25.15-₹39.66 at ₹96.73) by applying a 35-55% CPM-to-RPM range from its own data to the measured India CPM of $0.74.

That RPM is an estimate, not a measurement.

The revenue split differs too.

According to YouTube's partner earnings overview, creators receive 55% of net revenue from ads on their long-form watch pages, against 45% of their Creator Pool allocation for Shorts.

Monetized videos of 8 minutes or longer can also carry mid-roll ads.

The case for Shorts is reach rather than revenue: AIR's data shows direct Shorts revenue was less than 2% of total revenue for most channels it studied.

Before shifting your output in either direction, compare the Shorts and video rows of your content performance report over several months.

If producing more videos is the constraint, FluxNote is an AI video generator that turns a topic or script into a finished video with script, voiceover and captions; it is a production tool and does not change RPM, views or where your audience lives.

YouTube announced on 10 August 2026 that from 1 February 2027 a channel needs 10 million qualified Shorts views over the last 90 days to share in Shorts ad and Premium revenue each month.

That is 1 crore views, about 1.11 lakh a day.

The Help Center adds that the 90 days end on the 15th of the month before the month being paid.

Channels below the line stay in the YouTube Partner Program, keep their long-form earnings, and resume Shorts revenue sharing automatically once they are back above 10 million.

The threshold is the same number of views in both countries, but the money behind it is not. At AIR's 2025 averages, 1 crore Shorts views from India would have earned about $80 (about ₹7,738), while the same number of views from the US would have earned $3,280 (about ₹3,17,274).

Three other changes take effect the same day, according to YouTube's summary of the changes.

New applicants need 1,000 subscribers plus 8,000 qualified watch hours in 365 days or 20 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days; until then, the Shorts route in is 1,000 subscribers and 10 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days.

Partners who do not accept the updated terms in YouTube Studio by 31 January 2027 stop earning from the features those terms cover.

And when an advertiser targets an ad at five or fewer channels, those creators earn 45% of that ad's net revenue directly, on top of the Creator Pool, according to the same source.