Channel Memberships

What are channel memberships on YouTube?

Channel memberships are a YouTube fan-funding feature: viewers pay a monthly fee and get members-only perks in return — loyalty badges, custom emoji and exclusive content. For the creator, memberships turn the most loyal part of the audience into recurring revenue.

Why memberships matter

Ad revenue moves with seasons, topics and advertiser demand; membership payments arrive every month for as long as members stay. Inside YouTube monetization they are the closest thing to predictable income, and the revenue also feeds your RPM, lifting what a channel earns per 1,000 views even when ad rates dip.

For a broader playbook on paid fan support, see the SubSub guide on turning subscribers into a reliable source of income.

How memberships work for viewers

A viewer joins on the channel page or under a video, picks a level and pays monthly. Members must be at least 18 years old (19 in Korea and Algeria) and accept the YouTube Paid Terms of Service.

• Levels can be upgraded or downgraded at any time in the membership window.

• A membership can be cancelled at any time at youtube.com/paid_memberships; perks stay active until the end of the paid billing cycle, and partial periods are not refunded.

Who can turn on memberships

Memberships sit inside the fan-funding features of the YouTube Partner Program. The official requirements are:

• the channel meets the minimum requirements for fan funding features;

• you live in one of the available locations — the list includes Ukraine, the US, the UK and most of Europe;

• the channel is not set as made for kids and doesn't have a significant number of videos set as made for kids;

• the channel doesn't have a significant number of ineligible videos — videos set as made for kids or videos with music claims;

• you (and your MCN, if you belong to one) have accepted YouTube's terms, including the Commerce Product Module, and comply with them.

Some music channels can't turn on memberships — for example, channels under an SRAV contract. The full location list is on the official help page.

How to turn on memberships and set up perks

1. In YouTube Studio, open the Earn section — memberships are managed there.

2. Accept the memberships terms and turn the feature on.

3. Create levels at different prices and attach perks to each level.

Perks are up to you, but YouTube forbids 5 categories:

• downloads of content available on YouTube, including music;

• in-person 1:1 meetings;

• anything that only some members get at random — contests, lotteries, sweepstakes;

• perks marketed to children, or attractive or inappropriate for them;

• perks that encourage children to ask their parents to pay for a membership.

If a channel is terminated, violates monetization policies, loses monetization after leaving or switching a content owner, or is set as made for kids, its memberships are paused: perks and payments stop and new joins close. After more than 120 days on pause the program ends and members get their last payment back.