How many views is good on YouTube?

Why one number doesn’t work

A thousand views in a week is a hit for a channel whose videos usually get two hundred, and a quiet week for one whose videos usually get ten thousand. Three things decide the number long before your title does:

• Your channel: how many people already watch what you upload, and how often they come back.
• Your niche: some subjects have a small audience that watches everything; others have a huge one that watches a little of every channel.
• The video’s age: many videos get most of their first month’s views in the first days, while one people find through search can keep growing for months.

So the useful question isn’t “is this a good number?” It’s “is this good for my channel, at this age?”

Typical views by channel size

For an outside reference, a study published in September 2026 counted the views of 436 recent long-form uploads from 232 channels, about seven days after each went up:

Source: OverseerOS, “How Many Views Should a YouTube Video Get in 7 Days?”, 16 September 2026. Not a random sample of YouTube: the channels came through the company’s own tools.

Look at the last column. In every band, the videos of similar channels range over ten times or more. That spread is why your own usual is the better yardstick. These videos all went up after YouTube changed how it counts views in August 2026 (more on that below), so older videos aren’t directly comparable.

How to work out your usual views

1. List your last 10 to 20 long videos. Leave out Shorts, live streams and anything that got a burst of outside traffic, such as a link from a big newsletter.
2. Write down each one’s views at the same age. Day 7 is a good first read, and day 30 settles most videos. In YouTube Studio, a video’s analytics can show its views over a set number of days from when it went up.
3. Take the middle value, not the average. Put the numbers in order and pick the one in the middle. One hit can double an average; it barely moves the middle.

That middle number is your usual. Work it out again every month or two, because it moves as your channel grows.

What counts as good at day 1, 7 and 30

Hold each new video against your usual at the same age. As a rule of thumb:

Example: if your usual at day 7 is 2,000 views, a video with 5,000 views at day 7 is 2.5 times your usual: a strong one.

Day 1 is noisy: it depends on when you posted and who was online. Day 7 is a fair read for most channels. A video people find through search can start slowly and still pass your usual by day 30 or day 90, so look again before you write it off.

A view isn’t what it was: the August 2026 change

Since 24 August 2026, YouTube counts a view from the first frame on every kind of video. A long video that starts playing when someone hovers over its thumbnail now counts as a view. The old kind, where someone clicks to watch or keeps watching past the first seconds, is now called an engaged view (YouTube’s announcement). Two things follow:

• Videos posted since then show more views than the same video would have before. Compare new videos with new videos, or compare engaged views.
• Click-through rate, average view duration and retention still count engaged views, so those numbers mean what they always did.

How many views a day is good?

After the first weeks, a video’s views per day settle into a steady trickle, and the useful check moves to the whole channel: are your total views per day this month higher than last month? A video that keeps bringing in views every day for months, usually from search, is a good video even if its first week was quiet.

How many views is good for a first video?

Very few, and that’s normal. In the study above, the middle video on channels under 1,000 subscribers had 40 views after a week. Early videos are found mostly through search and the people you share them with. Their job is to give you a usual to beat.

Shorts are on their own scale

Shorts are shown to far more people per video, and they’ve counted a view on every play since March 2025, so their numbers can’t be compared with long videos. Work out a separate usual for your Shorts and hold Shorts only against it.

Know the number before you make the video

MakeThisNext estimates each video idea’s engaged views at day 1, 3, 7, 30 and 90 against your channel’s usual, each with a range. After you upload, it holds the video against that estimate, day by day. To pick ideas worth estimating, start with our guide to finding YouTube video ideas that get views.

Questions

Is 1,000 views good on YouTube?

For a channel whose videos usually get a few hundred, yes. For one whose videos usually get ten thousand, it’s below normal. Compare it with your own usual at the same age.

Is 10,000 views a lot?

For a channel under 10,000 subscribers, 10,000 views in a week is above the middle of the study above. For a channel with a million subscribers, it’s a quiet week.

How many views do you need to make money on YouTube?

Views alone don’t qualify a channel. As of October 2026, the YouTube Partner Program asks for 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days. What a view earns after that depends on the niche and where the viewers are.

Do views keep going up after the first week?

Yes, for videos people search for or that YouTube keeps recommending. Check a slow video again at day 30 and day 90 before you decide it failed.