Netflix? Hulu? Pfft! Everybody knows YouTube is where you find the best video content. Disagree? Just ask the millionaire YouTube celebrities who have built their fame on talking about what they love in front of their webcams.
To help you discover the best that YouTube has to offer, we’ve compiled a definitive list of the most popular individual YouTubers (no brands, bands or shows) in nearly every country in the world.
In order find out the most popular YouTuber in each country, we used statistical websites Social Blade and Vidooly to find out which YouTuber has the most subscribers. To calculate each channels earnings, we used Banner Tag to find the average daily views for each channel and estimated how much it was earning using a site called Noxinfluencer, which estimates earnings based on views and subscribers.
Key Findings
- The world’s most popular individual YouTuber is PewDiePie, a Swedish influencer based in England with a channel registered in the U.S. He has 105 million subscribers.
- The most popular YouTuber actually based in the U.S. is a six-year-old Russian-American named Anastasia Radzinskaya, who has the YouTube handle Like Nastya.
- The most popular beauty channel to also be the top YouTube channel in its country is NikkieTutorials in the Netherlands with 13.4 million subscribers.
- The most popular gaming YouTuber in the U.S. is Markiplier, who has 26 million subscribers.
Who’s the Biggest YouTuber in Your Country?
North America
Anastasia Radzinskaya is younger than Snapchat, but she’s the most popular YouTuber in the U.S. and the whole of North America. Like Nastya’s 57 million followers tune in to see the six-year-old vlog about daily life with her dad, sing songs and tell stories.
Nastya even out-earned “Mr. YouTube” PewDiePie last year, and has lucrative deals with Legoland and merchandizing specialists IMG. In case you think it’s easy work, consider that Nastya has learned Russian, English, Spanish, and Mandarin and produces content in all four languages.
South America
Chilean YouTuber HolaSoyGerman has 40.8 million subscribers – more than twice the population of Chile! This makes him South America’s most popular channel. HolaSoyGerman’s real name is Germán Alejandro Garmendia Aranis (hence “Hello, I’m Germán”).
Fans faint when they meet Germán, and his high-octane comedic take on ordinary daily life once helped him rival Justin Bieber’s subscriber count. “My persona on the internet is an exaggeration of myself,” Germán tells Wired. “I’m a pretty normal guy. I have happy days, sad days, high-energy days.”
Europe
The name PewDiePie is familiar even with non-YouTubers. Felix Kjellberg has hit the headlines by incorporating controversial content in his videos, but remains the subject of sports world-style bidding wars with rival streaming sites.
PewDiePie started out making gaming videos at a time when there were no super-popular vloggers in that subject. He has since branched out into music videos, skits and other TV-style formats. The England-based Swedish influencer has the most subscribers on YouTube for an individual, and only one channel has more subscribers – the Indian record label T-Series.
Middle East & Central Asia
Shfa is an eight-year-old Emirati girl and the most popular YouTuber in the Middle East & Central Asia. With average daily views of over 30 million, we reckon her earnings have topped $1 million. Shfa has been posting Frozen role plays, skits and product reveals since 2015.
Saudi Arabia’s mmoshaya is not far behind. Mohammed Moshaya Al-Ghamdi shares his family diaries with around 17 million subscribers, making stars of himself and his three children in the Arab world.
Rest of Asia & Oceania
With 24 million subscribers, Atta Halilintar claims to be Asia’s number one YouTuber (our research shows that UAE’s Shfa deserves that title). Halilintar was the first Southeast Asian to reach 10 million subscribers and now boasts over 4 million daily views. The entertainer lists “hard worker” as his primary occupation – he posed in a hospital bed suffering from exhaustion when he hit 10 million subs.
The kids channel Rainbow Learning is number one in New Zealand and Oceania. Mrs Rainbow teaches appropriately colorful lessons to pre-school kids. The channel has over 5 million subscribers and 26,952 daily views.
Africa
Oum Walid is Algeria’s biggest YouTube channel and the most-subscribed on the continent. This cooking channel promises easy dishes (with controlled amounts!) for beginners and “every woman.” A mysterious pair of hands (the channel’s name means “Walid’s mother”) presents lessons to over 7 million subscribers.
Xavier Hubert-Brierre is a rare nature-themed “influencer,” with 114K subscribers. The Frenchman sets up camera traps to catch fascinating animal life in Gabon. However, that doesn’t mean production is easy. “Myself and my wife spent many long days at the site, often being attacked by different types of fly and bees,” he says of his most popular video.
Beauty Channels Worldwide
The most popular beauty channel to also be the top YouTube channel in its country is NikkieTutorials in the Netherlands. Nikkie de Jager is a makeup artist with 13.4 million YouTube subscribers. She was also set to host the online reportage of Eurovision 2020 before it was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
SaraBeautyCorner is “a regular girl who loves all girly related stuff” – particularly DIY and nail art. She has 10.6 million subscribers, making her Norway’s top YouTuber. Sara quit a career in finance and insurance to make her teen-oriented videos, which we believe has earned her around $1,000 per day.
Gaming Channels Worldwide
Gaming videos are a YouTube phenomenon like ASMR or mukbang. Who knew people could make millions narrating gameplay? PewDiePie got big through gaming but moved on, leaving El Salvador’s Fernanfloo as the top gamer in our study. Luis Fernando Flores Alvarado’s 38 million subscribers earned him a $13K monthly paycheck and the lead zombie role in the trailer for Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 remake.
Libya’s top YouTube is also a gamer. King GTA – real name Belaid Soleitani – mostly narrates scenes from Grand Theft Auto. He has amassed over 800K subscribers, and our research suggests he earns $706.31 per day thanks to an advertising CPM (cost per 1,000 views) of 2.56.
Kid Channels Worldwide
Shfa and Like Nastya aren’t the only child stars on YouTube. Slovenia is home to TimKo Kid, who makes play and educational videos for nearly 4.5 million subscribers, earning what we estimate to be over $150K a year along the way.
Boram is a super-cute 8-year-old South Korean who reviews toys, mostly by playing and role-playing ecstatically with them. She has nearly 14 million subscribers to her toy channel, and over 25 million for her vlog. With an $8 million home in Seoul’s celebrity district, Boram is now officially living Gangnam-style.
How Much Money Do YouTubers Make in Every Country?
YouTubers make money from advertisements shown within their content. We used the Noxinfluencer YouTube Money Calculator, which takes the average views and number of subscribers of a YouTube channel to estimate how much money it makes from ads per thousand views. All figures are estimated, as there are many unknown factors that decide earnings, such as the video type and location of the channel.
Methodology & Sources
We used statistical websites Social Blade and Vidooly to find out which YouTuber has the most subscribers in each country. If the most subscribed channel was a band, media channel or company of any kind rather than an individual YouTuber, we looked for the next highest subscribed channel. Next we used Banner Tag to find average daily views and estimated how much each channel was earning using a site called Noxinfluencer.
To find the top beauty, gaming and kids channels, we studied the most subscribed channels, read ‘About’ pages and watched the videos to see if they fit into these categories. It proved difficult deciding what channels would fit the ‘influencer’ category for some countries, especially those with obscure content. In these cases, if it looked like it was an individual making the videos, we counted them as a YouTuber. For some countries, we were not able to find any reliable channels. For others, we couldn’t find the CPM rate. In many cases, a channel claimed to be from one country when it was obvious from their videos that they lived elsewhere. We did not include any channels that did this.
Main Sources: SocialBlade, Vidooly, BannerTag, and Noxinfluencer. Data collected in May 2020. For the full research behind this map, visit bit.ly/YouTubeMoneymakers