How This Monetization Checker Works
Be sceptical of any tool that claims to read a channel's monetization status directly. YouTube does not publish it, there is no public API for it, and the only place the real answer exists is the creator's own YouTube Studio. What a checker can honestly do is measure a channel against the Partner Program's published requirements using data YouTube does make public — and be clear about which parts it cannot see.
That is what this tool does. It checks five things:
1. The 1,000-subscriber threshold
The hard gate on the Partner Program, and the one piece of data that is reliably public. If a channel is below it, it is not earning ad revenue, full stop. Creators can hide their subscriber count, and when they have we say so rather than guessing.
2. Watch-hour potential
YouTube requires 4,000 valid public watch hours over 12 months, or 10 million Shorts views over 90 days. Watch hours are private, so no external tool can measure them — anyone showing you a precise watch-hour figure is inventing it. We estimate monthly view volume from the channel's recent uploads and present it as the proxy it is.
3. Upload activity
Partner status requires staying active; channels dormant for six months can lose it. We read the channel's upload feed for its posting cadence and how long since the last upload.
4. Audience size, and 5. advertiser-friendly content
Lifetime views across the channel's public library, and whether YouTube has flagged the channel as family-safe. Channels marked otherwise typically run with limited ads or none, even inside the Partner Program.
What This Tool Cannot See
Being straight about the limits: several Partner Program criteria are entirely private. Whether the channel has an active AdSense account. Whether it has Community Guidelines strikes. Whether it applied at all — plenty of eligible channels never do. Whether the creator has disabled ads by choice, which some do to improve retention. And whether the channel earns mainly through memberships, Super Thanks or the Shorts pool instead of ads.
This is why the result is a verdict with a confidence score and a visible checklist rather than a bare yes or no. You can see exactly which requirements were met and which could not be checked, and judge for yourself.
Is This Channel Monetized? Reading the Verdict
The check returns one of three verdicts, and the wording is deliberate. Likely Monetized means the channel clears every requirement we can see from outside — it is past 1,000 subscribers, posting regularly, carrying enough view volume to have plausibly cleared the watch-hour bar, and rated advertiser-friendly. Possibly Monetized means it clears the subscriber gate but something else is ambiguous: the upload feed has gone quiet, view volume is too low to infer watch hours, or the content rating is unclear. Not Eligible means it fails a hard requirement, almost always the subscriber threshold.
None of these is a confirmation, and a tool that gives you a flat yes is guessing. A channel can clear every public requirement and still not be in the Partner Program — it may never have applied, may have been rejected over a strike, or may have switched ads off deliberately. Equally, a channel that looks borderline may have been monetized for years. The checklist is the useful part: it shows you which specific requirement is the open question.
How to Check YouTube Monetization on a Phone
There is nothing to install. In the YouTube app, open the channel or any of its videos, tap Share, and copy the link. Open this page in your mobile browser, paste the link into the field above and run the check — the result, the requirement checklist and the earnings range all render on a phone screen. An @handle works too, so if you already know it you can type @channelname directly and skip the copying.
Checking Someone Else's Channel
Most people running this check are not checking their own channel, and that is the case it is built for. Creators vet potential collaborators, brands size up a channel before paying for a sponsorship, and people researching a niche want to know whether channels that size actually earn from it. Because the tool reads only public YouTube data, none of this requires permission and the channel owner is never notified.
For your own channel the honest answer is different: open YouTube Studio and look under Earn. That is your real Partner Program status, and no external checker can match it.
How Accurate Are the Earnings Estimates?
Treat them as a range. We take the median view count across the channel's recent uploads, multiply by its actual posting cadence to get monthly views, and apply an RPM band of $0.50–$4.00 per 1,000 views — the realistic spread for most English-language channels after YouTube's 45% cut. Finance, software and B2B channels routinely clear $10 RPM; entertainment and gaming channels with audiences in lower-CPM countries often sit under $1. Ad revenue is also frequently the smaller half of a creator's income, and sponsorships and merch leave no public trace at all.
Getting Your Own Channel Monetized
You need 1,000 subscribers, plus 4,000 valid public watch hours over 12 months or 10 million valid Shorts views over 90 days, an AdSense account, two-step verification, no active Community Guidelines strikes, and residence in a country where the Partner Program operates. Watch hours are usually the binding constraint, which is why longer videos that genuinely hold attention move you forward faster than simply uploading more often.
Transcripts help more than most creators expect. An accurate caption file gives YouTube clean text to index, opens your videos to people watching on mute, and hands you a script you can repurpose into a post or newsletter. You can pull a transcript from any video free, then generate tags and a description from it.