Which social media platform pays the most in 2025?
Which social media platform pays the most in 2025? Whether you're working as a freelancer or part of a wider creative team, here’s what you need to know.
Author: Alec Chillingworth
Date: Jan 1, 2025 • 8 min read
Social media isn’t just fun and games. For content creators and brands, it can be a high-stakes world where careers are made and broken. Let’s find out which social media platform pays the most in 2025.
We'll cover:
Which social media platforms support monetization?
Which social media platform generates the most money?
Which social media platform pays creators best?
Who pays more, TikTok or Instagram?
Which social media platform pays the most for views?
Which social media platform pays the most in 2025, full-stop?
Which social media platforms support monetization?
Before we discuss the ins, outs, and roundabout ways of earning money on social media, let’s start with the basics. Which social media platforms support monetization? Here’s a quick checklist of the main players:
YouTube: When you think of content monetization, you probably think of YouTube, right? Unlike most of the platforms we’ll cover, YouTube clearly pays creators per ad view. The value changes depending on the content, but ads aren’t the only way to earn money on YouTube. Subscriptions, Super Chat, and YouTube Shopping all help to top up the ol’ bank.
Facebook: Facebook’s been around longer than all the other platforms on this list, but does it offer the most reliable payouts? It offers monetization via several avenues, including ads, Subscriptions, and the Brand Collabs Manager.
Instagram: Given that Instagram sits under the same parent company as Facebook, its monetization options are pretty similar. Sponsored posts and affiliate marketing are both big drivers on the platform.
X/Twitter: X/Twitter only introduced monetization in 2023, and it comes in two forms: Subscriptions and Ads Revenue Sharing.
Snapchat: Snapchat might not seem super-bankable compared to giants like YouTube and Facebook, but it’s got a few tricks up its sleeve. An official Revenue Share Program, paid partnerships, and other rewards are available on the platform.
TikTok: TikTok offers a surprisingly broad spread of monetization options, including brand partnerships, TikTok Shop, subscriptions, and more.
Twitch: Content creators have made tons of money on Twitch, through a combination of ads, subscriptions, and sponsorships.
Kick: Kick is very similar to Twitch, but offers more competitive payouts.
Pinterest: Even though Pinterest is mainly considered a discovery platform, it still provides monetization via sponsored Pins and affiliate links.
Which social media platform generates the most money?
On paper, the social media platform with the most cash should pay the best, right? Facebook and Instagram are comfortably the two biggest social media platforms in terms of revenue, the former especially leading the charge between 2010 and 2022. That makes sense, given both have been around since the initial social media boom, and are now the two core pillars of Meta’s offering.
YouTube follows in third place, with TikTok and Snapchat trailing behind. But just because Facebook and Instagram make the most money, it doesn’t mean they make you the most money.
Just think of all the experiments and investments Facebook and Instagram pull off. That’s not a bad thing — social media platforms need to change to survive! — but it means that there’s a smaller slice of the pie for creators to nibble on.
Which social media platform pays the most?
So, which is the highest-paying social media platform? It’s all measured on a case-by-case basis, meaning we have to break this down into smaller chunks. But, according to Epidemic Sound’s own research of 1,500 monetizing creators…
YouTube is the top platform for generating income in 2025.
In fact, 28.6% of respondents said that.
TikTok wasn’t far behind at 18.3%, with Facebook at 16.5%, Instagram at 11.8%, and X/Twitter at 6.3%. So, despite Facebook and Instagram raking in the most revenue, users still make more money on YouTube and TikTok.
According to our 2023 report, YouTube is the primary source of income for creators earning more than $200,000 per year. However, the main source of income for creators earning under that amount might surprise you — it’s TikTok. Despite coming late to the monetization party, the ByteDance-owned app has more than made up for it.
Who pays more, TikTok or Instagram?
Because of its relatively new position in the market, TikTok is often viewed as a ‘lesser’ way of making money on social media. In 2025, though, that’s just not the case.
Our research shows that monetizing creators rely on TikTok much more heavily than Instagram. Even for content creators making less than $10,000 per year, 28.6% cite TikTok as their primary income source, compared to just 7.3% for Instagram.
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Which social media platform pays the most for views?
The amount of viewers has often been used to measure how much money you’re making on social media. But as more payment options become available — gifts, sponsorships, subscription models, and more — the focus on views has become less important. In fact, there’s no concrete way to determine which social media platform pays the most for views.
With that in mind, let’s look at how well the five core social media platforms pay creators, and if they pay per view.
1. YouTube
Once a video is monetized, established YouTubers can expect to receive around $0.018 per ad view. That means you’ll bank around $18 for every 1,000 ad views on your video. This is partially based on cost per mille (CPM), which is the amount an advertiser pays a website or platform per 1,000 ad views.
Some YouTubers earn more, some less — it all depends on the traffic and effectiveness of any ad-supported video. This is calculated by revenue per mille (RPM). Different RPM factors include which industry your video and the ads target, the watch-through rate, viewers’ location, and more. RPM also includes other in-platform monetization methods, like subscriptions and Super Chat.
YouTube Shorts has also stepped into the monetization game, weighing in between $0.03 and $0.07 per 1,000 views. That’s clearly much lower than earnings on the main YouTube feed, but Shorts content relies on virality and high-volume view counts to bump those numbers up.
2. Facebook
Facebook’s payments per 1,000 views aren’t cut-and-dry. Some folks have reported receiving as little as $1 for 1,000 ad-supported views, and as much as $20 on the other end of the spectrum. A happy medium seems to sit between $8.75 and $10 per 1,000 views.
As we saw with YouTube, Facebook’s payouts largely depend on the ads being served. If the ads and content are high-value, the RPM is likely better, resulting in a chunkier payout per view.
3. TikTok
TikTok payments aren’t set in stone. Rather, they come from the TikTok Creator Rewards Program. At the moment, it’s estimated that you can pull in between $0.02 and $0.04 for every 1,000 TikTok views once signed up to the Creator Rewards Program.
Like YouTube Shorts, payments on TikTok are lower than on other platforms, as it’s a much more bite-sized, viral beast. The thinking behind it is that a video might take off and do huge numbers — that $0.02 doesn’t look so little when you’re pulling in millions of views per video.
4. Instagram
Instagram’s a curious case. It’s a high-traffic, Meta-owned platform, but it doesn’t pay creators for ad-supported views in the same way that Facebook or YouTube do.
However, Instagram creators can still make decent money via brand partnerships, affiliate marketing, gifting, and more. Nano-influencers with 1,000 to 10,000 Insta followers can expect to receive between $10 and $100 per sponsored post. That’s a ballpark figure, though — it all depends on the individual terms of that creator’s deal with the brand behind the sponsorship.
5. X/Twitter
X/Twitter doesn’t pay per video view. Rather, it pays per verified post impression, meaning that the user making the impression must be an X/Twitter Premium account. On average, you can expect to make around $0.0085 per 1,000 verified impressions. This is all part of the X/Twitter Ads Revenue Sharing program, which also includes a subscription-based payment model.
Which social media platform pays the most in 2025, full-stop?
Knowing which social media platforms pay-per-view and which don’t is a good start. But which social media platform pays the most, full-stop, in 2025? Unfortunately, there’s no definitive answer. Sure, YouTube makes up the largest portion of creators’ income, but that isn’t the case for everyone — YouTube might not be the right home for your content.
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