The short version: A YouTube channel membership is a monthly recurring payment your subscribers make (from $0.99 to $99.99) in exchange for perks like custom badges, emoji, members-only videos and live chats, and YouTube keeps roughly 30% of whatever comes in. It only works if you already have a loyal audience, not just a big one, and that’s the part most guides skip over.
What a YouTube channel membership is
A channel membership is Patreon, but built into YouTube itself. Viewers pick one of your paid tiers, get charged monthly through Google, and in return they get things your regular subscribers don’t: a badge next to their name in comments, custom emoji they can use in your live chat, early access to videos, members-only posts in the Community tab, and sometimes exclusive livestreams or shoutouts.
It sits under the same roof as ads, Super Chat, and Super Thanks, all part of what YouTube calls its monetisation tools. But it’s fundamentally different from the rest because it’s not one-off. Someone paying for ads sees them once. A member pays you every single month until they cancel, which is why creators get excited about it, and why they should also be realistic about how few people convert.
Who’s eligible (and it’s not as simple as “get monetised”)
To turn on memberships you need to be in the YouTube Partner Program, which means the standard bar: 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days. Once you’re in the Partner Program, memberships is a separate toggle inside YouTube Studio under Monetisation, not something switched on automatically.
In some countries there’s also a minimum subscriber threshold specifically for memberships (in many regions it’s 1,000, in others it’s higher), and your channel needs to not be set as “made for kids,” because you can’t sell paid perks to an audience YouTube has classified as children. If your channel is borderline on any of this, it’s worth reading through how to check if your YouTube channel is correctly monetised before you spend time building membership tiers you can’t turn on yet.
How the money side works
This is the bit creators find out the hard way. YouTube takes a cut of membership revenue, and historically that’s been 30%, so on a $4.99 tier you’re not seeing $4.99, you’re seeing roughly $3.49 before tax. Some larger, longer-standing partners negotiated better splits over the years, but 30% is what most channels should plan for.
Compare that to Patreon, where the platform fee is typically 5 to 12% depending on the plan, plus payment processing. So a $4.99 Patreon tier nets you more than a $4.99 YouTube membership tier. I’ve had this exact conversation with a client who runs a small cooking channel, around 40,000 subscribers. She had both a YouTube membership and a Patreon running side by side for eight months. The Patreon, with fewer members, paid her more per month, because YouTube’s cut was eating a third of every payment before it even hit her account. She eventually shut the YouTube membership down and pointed everyone to Patreon instead. Nobody talks about this because YouTube is the platform doing you the “favour” of building the feature in, but built-in isn’t the same as best value.
Setting up tiers: the practical steps
Once you’re eligible, here’s what happens in YouTube Studio:
- Go to Monetisation, then the Memberships tab
- Set your first tier, usually starting between $0.99 and $4.99
- Add perks: a custom badge (you design this in three sizes), custom emoji (up to 15 per tier on higher tiers), a welcome message for new members
- Choose whether to add a second or third tier, priced higher, with extra perks like early video access or a members-only livestream
- Turn on member-only content by uploading a video and setting visibility to “members only” instead of public
- Post exclusive Community posts, polls or images visible only to paying members
The top tier can go up to $99.99 a month, though almost nobody prices there unless they’re running something closer to a coaching or mastermind offer disguised as a membership. Most successful channels sit at two tiers: something cheap around $2.99 to $4.99 for casual supporters, and something around $9.99 to $24.99 for the genuine fans who want direct access.
The uncomfortable bit: most channels shouldn’t bother yet
Here’s what I tell people when they ask me whether they should switch on memberships the day they hit the eligibility threshold: don’t. A channel with 1,000 subscribers has, statistically, almost no one who’s watched enough of your content to trust you with a recurring payment. Membership isn’t a growth tool, it’s a loyalty monetisation tool, and those are different jobs.
The channels that do well with memberships tend to have three things in common: a recognisable personal voice (not a faceless niche channel), a posting habit of at least once a week for over a year, and a comment section where the same names show up again and again. If your comments are mostly one-time viewers who found you through the algorithm and never came back, memberships will sit there converting almost nobody, and you’ll spend more time designing badges than it’s worth.
I’ve seen channels with 200,000 subscribers get fewer than 100 paying members, because the audience was built on one viral video rather than sustained trust. And I’ve seen a 15,000-subscriber niche channel (specialist woodworking, oddly specific tool reviews) get 300 paying members at $4.99 because every single viewer had been there for years and wanted the extra content. Subscriber count is a vanity number here. Loyalty is the actual currency, and it’s the one thing YouTube’s own dashboard doesn’t measure well.
What perks move people to pay
Badges and emoji get people talking about memberships, but they’re not usually why people join. In my experience watching client channels test this, the perks that convert are:
- Early access to videos, 24 to 48 hours before public release
- A monthly members-only livestream or Q&A, especially if you answer questions by name
- Behind-the-scenes or “how I made this” content that never goes public
- Direct access, meaning you reply to member comments more than you reply to public ones
Custom emoji are fun but they’re a retention nudge, not an acquisition tool. Nobody joins a membership purely to get an emoji of your face to use in chat. They join because they want more of you, and the emoji is just the badge that proves it publicly.
How it compares to other income on the same channel
Memberships rarely replace ad revenue, and they’re not meant to. For most small to mid channels, this is a good rough split to expect: ads bring in the bulk of income if you get consistent views, memberships add a smaller but more predictable monthly floor, and sponsorships or affiliate links (when relevant) often out-earn both. If you’re weighing up memberships against other ways to build recurring income around a channel, it’s worth reading what passive income ideas work for beginners, because a lot of the same “will people pay for this” logic applies whether you’re talking memberships, a paid newsletter, or a digital product.
The channels that do memberships well almost always stack it with something else, not instead of it. A cooking channel I’ve watched closely runs YouTube memberships for the badge-and-emoji crowd, sells a recipe ebook to the wider audience, and runs occasional sponsored videos. None of those three alone would sustain the channel. Together, they do.
Cancelling, refunds, and the churn nobody mentions
Members can cancel any time, same as any subscription, and they keep perks until the end of the billing period they already paid for. YouTube handles the billing and the cancellation flow, you don’t touch it directly. What creators underestimate is churn: people join for a launch month, get the badge, then quietly cancel three months in once the novelty wears off. Healthy channels see this and keep posting new perks (new emoji sets, new exclusive series) specifically to fight it, because a membership tier that looks the same in month twelve as it did in month one loses people steadily.
If you’re building a wider income plan around content and want a realistic view of what’s sustainable long term rather than what looks good in a screenshot, it’s worth reading through the real blueprint for making money online alongside this, because memberships are one piece of a bigger income puzzle, not the whole thing.
Where memberships fit against Patreon and other platforms
I get asked constantly whether to run a YouTube membership, a Patreon, or both. My honest take: run YouTube memberships if your audience lives entirely inside YouTube and you want the lowest-friction option, since members don’t leave the platform to pay. Run Patreon (or keep both) if you want better margins, more flexible tiers, and the ability to include non-YouTube perks like Discord access or downloadable files, which YouTube memberships don’t natively support well.
The 30% YouTube cut versus Patreon’s lower fee is the single biggest reason experienced creators eventually run both, or move existing members over. It’s not a secret exactly, YouTube doesn’t hide the percentage, but it’s tucked away in the terms rather than shouted about, and plenty of creators only notice it once they check their first payout and it’s a third smaller than they expected.
A realistic first-month expectation
If you’re switching memberships on for the first time, here’s a fair benchmark based on what I’ve seen across small and mid-sized channels: expect roughly 0.5% to 2% of your subscriber base to convert to a paying membership in the first month, rising slowly if you keep promoting it in videos and community posts. A channel with 20,000 subscribers converting at 1% gives you 200 members. At a $4.99 tier, minus YouTube’s cut, that’s around $700 a month, which is real money, but it’s not a living, and it took a loyal audience years to build to that point.
If those numbers sound small, that’s honest rather than discouraging. Memberships reward channels that have already done the hard part, which is earning trust over time, not channels looking for a quick monetisation switch. For a broader look at where recurring income like this fits against other options, what I’ve built with passive income and what I’d skip covers the same trade-off from a different angle, worth reading if memberships end up feeling too slow for where you are right now.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a certain number of subscribers to turn on YouTube memberships?
You need to be in the YouTube Partner Program first, which requires 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 watch hours in the past year or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days, and in most regions the membership feature itself needs at least 1,000 subscribers too, though the exact threshold varies by country.
How much does YouTube take from channel memberships?
YouTube typically keeps around 30% of membership revenue, though some longstanding partners have negotiated different splits, so a $4.99 tier usually nets you closer to $3.49 before tax, which is a bigger cut than platforms like Patreon typically charge.
Can I run YouTube memberships and Patreon at the same time?
Yes, and many established creators do exactly that, using YouTube memberships as the easy, no-extra-signup option for casual supporters while keeping Patreon or a similar platform for higher tiers and perks YouTube doesn’t support well, like Discord roles or downloadable files.
What happens if a member cancels partway through the month?
They keep their perks until the end of the billing period they’ve already paid for, then lose access automatically, and YouTube handles the entire billing and cancellation process without you needing to manually remove anyone.
