What it costs to get 10.000 subscribers on Youtube (we analyzed 1.859.291 channels)

We analyzed 1.859.291 YouTube channels, to find out the reality about what is takes to grow on YouTube. The platform has become increasingly competitive (check out our 100K study and 1M study here), we wanted to know everything about the road to 10.000 followers.

Out of the total amount of channels we analyzed, we extracted 42.882 channels worldwide who recently reached 10.000 subscribers, the following numbers are based on this data sample.

Here are some interesting findings:

• On average, it takes 2123 days to reach 10.000 subscribers, that's 5.8 years. The median is 1818 days (4.9 years). Interesingly, channels located in the US, needed a bit more time to reach 10K (2486 days), in India for example the growth is much faster as channels only need on average 1573 days. In France the average is 2346 days.
• On average YouTubers needed to produce 389 videos to reach 10.000 subscribers. However, 3.53% of YouTubers we studied reached 10.000 subscribers with less than 10 videos and 19.0% managed that under 50 videos

Let's look at the present study in detail, from 0 to 10.000 subscribers on YouTube.

How many days to reach 10000 subscribers?

YouTubers generally advise to prepare for a lot of work to grow a channel, but how much work exactly ? Well the data is very precise on that front, let's look at the graph:

Note : on the horizontal axis, the number of days needed to reach 10.000 subscribers

Most channels take anywhere from 320 days (95th percentile), to 3165 days (25th percentile - that’s 8.6 years) to reach 10.000 subscribers, with an average of 5.8 years.

We found that :

• only 0.49% of channels analyzed reached 10.000 subscribers under 100 days (+3 month)
• 2.26% reached in 200 days (+6 month)
• 4.48% reached in 300 days

If you reached 10K subscribers under 2 years, you outperformed 80% other YouTubers in the world, the statistic tells a lot about the level of professionalism that is needed to build a succesfull channel.

The first conclusion we can draw is that YouTube is now extremely competitive. Let’s now look in more detail at the amount of work needed to reach 10.000 subscribers.

How many videos to reach 10000 subscribers?

On average YouTubers needed to produce 389 videos to reach 10.000 subscribers. But there’s a catch ! We need to look at the statistics in details because in this case, the average will not give us an clear picture of the reality. Let’s look at the graphic :

Note : on the horizontal axis, the amount of video that was needed to reach 10000 subscribers. Note that we stopped showing the data over 1000 videos but the graph continiues

If the average may seem depressing, YouTubers will be happy to learn that 34.8% of our study sample acquired 10000 subscribers in less than 100 videos, and 56.6% of YouTubers acquired 10K subscribers under 200 videos. In a nutshell the production needed is around 2 videos per week for 2 years to acquire 10.000 subscribers.

Here are some interesting percentages ; YouTubers who managed to acquire 10.000 subscribers :

• under 10 videos 3.53% of the sample
• under 20 videos : 7.5% of the sample
• under 50 videos : 19.0% of the sample

VS Ratio

The VS ratio (Viewers to Subscribers ratio) is an important metric to take in consideration to understand the capacity of a channel to retain an audience. The 18.120 we analyzed showed an average VS Ratio of 243 (this means it takes 243 viewers to create one subscribers). This metric is important because the lower the ratio, the easier it is to convert viewers and grow a channel (a vs ratio of 50 makes it that a YouTuber will have to do half the work than one with a vs ratio of 100 to reach the same amount of subscribers in identical conditions).

Let’s look at the graph:

Note : on the horizontal axis, the VS ratio

Some examples of channels

Here’s an example of top performing US channels (we filtered in the US to keep things understandable and only kept the one in english language) in the 10.000 range we studied (note that by the time you will read the study the subscribers count will have evolved)

channelId	channelTitle	subscriberCount	Country	delta_date	videoCount
66614	UCvz6TemSgJ6XRtCiPmwf_3Q	Tsybulko Talk	11000	US	89	129
60749	UC99sSsNj1d_3ZvbFygy0vwg	Classic Country Collection	10900	US	96	69
53341	UCeZ3mJK1YI193lHNUw0GIww	Fab Fit Ladies	10700	US	94	247
49695	UCBgCzvqSIcUFPRBl3RIp2dQ	Nappy Boy Radio Podcast	10700	US	96	45
44067	UCkKeYg6Ni1ITzrVkxv8e8Jg	Morphle Dinosaurs	10600	US	46	22
41534	UCnUGCy2k6tIv8kMsQ99nJpQ	LEARN FAST 🚀	10600	US	69	51
37762	UCXIW336HGYHFMAzA_eFQe_g	Min Min	10500	US	82	34
38814	UCY_MFGvcglkSZmIY3FiF29g	Douglas Macgregor Col	10500	US	78	74
38774	UCBd0gERDBHu-lMHoYUA0Xhg	Reversah	10500	US	83	136
32226	UCA4T7PiC-hqgt5SuRrt6TWw	Kobe Factory	10400	US	98	241
26124	UC7jbV2hltd-lH6dZAt-4r5Q	Suluu kyz	10300	US	67	38
18379	UC0WjnlcTwdUKR7VaK0lyDWw	Movies Explained	10200	US	72	16
16334	UCgzLSmqBkIct619F8FnUJ4A	Sandblast ASMR	10200	US	92	461
12084	UCFwsjc56UtpbeapJljTP3bQ	Nursery Rhymes - Kids Songs	10100	US	24	4
10668	UCDa8o7WLwGgxEB6HPrfzvsg	Lily Nursery Rhymes	10100	US	63	183
3458	UCMu5xFbzbdq5uKmlnTcl7mA	Cop Theory	10000	US	39	28
5461	UCmYSgj2spaw3awd9Z9RAqLA	Football Lounge	10000	US	85	34

Conclusion

What do you think of this data ? We were surprized by the time needed to get to 10K subscribers on average. If you are looking to accelerate your growth, check out our keywords tool to help you find high growth keywords for YouTube. Tell us your thoughts, and what kind of other types of data studies you would like to see next !