Gaming Channel RPM in India 2026: Videos, Shorts, Live

There is no published figure for gaming channels with Indian audiences, so treat any exact number that does not name its data with caution. These are the closest figures that do name a source:

All values are per 1,000 views. Sources: MilX (1 October 2026), AIR, January 2026 and AIR, September 2026. MilX and AIR publish the same family of data, so they are one source, not two that confirm each other.

The India rows cover every kind of channel and the gaming rows are not broken down by country, so neither is an Indian gaming figure.

The two are measured differently, but the gaming medians are several times the all-niche India estimate, which fits YouTube's own explanation that CPMs vary by viewer geography.

The figures 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.

YouTube defines RPM as revenue per 1,000 views after YouTube's share, counting all views, including ones without ads. It includes ads, YouTube Premium, channel memberships, Super Chat and Super Stickers, so a gaming channel that streams can show a higher RPM than one that only uploads.

In YouTube Studio, select Analytics in the left menu, then Revenue at the top.

The content performance report shows what your videos, Shorts and live streams earned, includes RPM, and splits your top earners by format, according to YouTube's revenue guide.

Read the Shorts figure and the video figure separately: they come from two different payment systems, and a blended number hides both.

Some details make the number easier to read:

• Revenue takes 2 days to appear and is adjusted twice, after one week and again in the middle of the following month.
• For Shorts, YouTube calculates RPM per 1,000 engaged views. Since 24 August 2026 the public view count counts every start, so it runs higher than the views that earn.
• RPM can fall when unmonetized views rise, even if revenue stays the same, as YouTube notes.
• Advanced mode lets you break the report down by geography and add revenue metrics, which shows how much of your income comes from viewers outside India.
• YouTube began rolling out an updated Studio layout in July 2026, so the menus on your account may look different.

Five levers that YouTube documents apply directly to gaming channels.

• Viewer country. YouTube says advertisers choose which locations to reach and competition differs by location, so CPMs vary by geography. A channel with more viewers in higher-paying countries earns more per view.
• Ad suitability of the gameplay. YouTube's advertiser-friendly guidelines say violence in unedited gameplay is generally acceptable for advertising, but montages where gratuitous violence is the focal point are not. Unedited gameplay violence after the first 7 seconds can earn ad revenue, while graphic game violence in the thumbnail gets limited ads.
• Made for kids settings. On videos set as made for kids, YouTube does not serve personalized ads and says this may reduce revenue for some creators.
• Length. Monetized videos of 8 minutes or longer can carry mid-roll ads, according to YouTube.
• Reused clips. YouTube's reused content policy covers content repurposed without significant original commentary or modification, and it applies to the channel as a whole. Replays of a sports tournament where you explain a competitor's moves are listed as allowed.

Timing matters as well: YouTube notes that many advertisers bid higher just before holidays, so RPM changes through the year. None of these levers is specific to India, but together they explain why two Indian gaming channels with the same views can show very different RPMs.

Gaming Shorts are not paid from a gaming budget.

YouTube pools the revenue from ads shown between Shorts each month, sets part aside for music licensing, and divides the rest among monetizing creators by their share of engaged views in each country; creators keep 45% of their allocation, according to YouTube's Shorts monetization policy.

The policy does not mention topic, so under it a BGMI Short and a cooking Short with the same engaged views in India get the same allocation from India's pool, and views from other countries are paid from those countries' pools.

The country-by-country arithmetic is worked through in YouTube Shorts revenue: India vs US.

Eligibility is what can make a gaming Short earn nothing.

YouTube leaves non-original Shorts, such as reuploads of other creators' content or compilations with no original content added, out of revenue sharing, along with artificial views and content that breaks its advertiser-friendly guidelines.

Shorts over one minute that contain claimed content are blocked from monetization.

Music does not change your own allocation, but a Short with music sends part of its revenue to music licensing before the Creator Pool is formed.

From 1 February 2027, a channel needs 10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days, which is 1 crore, to earn Shorts ad or Premium revenue that month, YouTube announced on 10 August 2026.

Channels below it stay in the Partner Program and keep their long-form earnings.

At AIR's 2025 India average, 1 crore Shorts views from India would have earned about $80, roughly ₹7,738.

Does posting Shorts hurt a gaming channel's long-form RPM? In a separate within-channel comparison of 10 gaming channels, AIR found long-form RPM of $3.42 in months without Shorts and $3.29 in months with them, the most stable result in its data. AIR cautions that such comparisons may be correlational.

Example inputs only. Replace each number with your own from Studio.

₹30 is an example input, not a benchmark. ₹0.77 is AIR's 2025 India Shorts average converted at ₹96.73 per dollar.

Forty lakh engaged Shorts views a month is about 1.2 crore over 90 days.

If the channel's qualified Shorts views, the measure the 2027 threshold uses, are similar, that is just above the threshold; at 30 lakh a month the channel would fall below it, and the Shorts line would be ₹0 in those months from February 2027.

To work back from a goal, divide it by your RPM and multiply by 1,000. ₹15,000 a month at a ₹30 long-form RPM needs 15,000 ÷ 30 × 1,000 = 500,000 long-form views (5 lakh). Running the same arithmetic on your own Studio figures gives a better estimate than any published average, because it reflects where your own viewers are.

For gaming channels that stream, fan funding is the other YouTube income line.

According to YouTube's partner earnings overview, creators receive 70% of net revenue from channel memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers and Super Thanks.

These features open before ad revenue: YouTube's expanded Partner Program, which is available in India, gives access at 500 subscribers with 3 public uploads in the last 90 days and either 3,000 qualified watch hours in 12 months or 3 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days.

YouTube says the 2027 changes leave these thresholds as they are.

Sponsorships and affiliate links sit outside YouTube's RPM, and YouTube's RPM page lists brand deals among the income it does not include. No sponsorship rate data with a published method could be found for Indian gaming channels, so price deals from your own audience numbers rather than from published averages.

If making more videos is your next step, FluxNote is an AI video generator that turns a topic or script into a finished video with an AI script, voiceover and captions. It does not clip existing gameplay or streams, and it does not change RPM or views.