Agency
Creator Earnings Report 2025
A $250 billion creator economy should be minting wealthy creators. It isn't. More than half still earn under $15,000 a year, and the distance between a booming market and a creator's actual paycheck keeps widening.
The Creator Earnings Report 2025 asks the question the headlines skip: are creators actually earning more? We surveyed over 3,000 creators representing 1.1 billion combined followers, across every platform, niche, follower tier, and income level, to map who is earning, who is not, and what separates them.
The answer is a pattern we call the Monetization Barrier. At roughly $15,000 in annual revenue, creators split in two. Below it, most stall for years regardless of talent or reach. Above it, income compounds through brand deals, platform visibility, and audience growth. The dividing line is not audience size. It is whether a creator is built to convert influence into income. Inside: earnings by platform, niche, gender, follower count, and tenure, plus how owning a brand changes the math and where the economy heads next.
More than half of creators (50.71%) earn under $15,000 a year, up from 48.1% in 2023.
Nearly 57% of full-time creators earn below the US living wage of $44,000 from content alone.
Earnings accelerate sharply once creators pass roughly $15,000, the point we call the Monetization Barrier.
44.8% of creators own a business or brand, and those who do earn close to $100,000 a year.
Creators who treat content as a business earn $132,000+, more than double their peers, yet only 7.4% started creating for the money.
If TikTok is banned, 99.5% of its creators plan to pivot, most of them (65.3%) to Instagram.