What Is a Good Like-to-View Ratio on YouTube? (Measured)
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Short answer: a like rate around 2% is normal on YouTube. Measured across 309 large channels on October 28, 2026, the median channel’s long-form videos earned 2.11% of their views as likes, about one like per 47 views. The middle half of channels sat between 1.38% and 3.15%. Smaller channels run higher and the biggest run lower: the median is 2.82% for channels under 1 million subscribers and 1.35% for channels over 25 million.
These are our own measurements from YouTube’s public data, not figures copied from other guides. The method and the full dataset are in our study of 312 big YouTube channels.
How to calculate it
Like-to-view ratio = likes ÷ views × 100
A video with 40,000 views and 900 likes has a like rate of 2.25%. Two rules make the number useful:
- Use videos at least a week old. A brand-new video’s first viewers are mostly subscribers who got the notification, so its ratio can be quite different from where it settles once recommendations and search take over.
- Take the median of several videos, not one. Like rates swing from video to video. On the median channel in our data, the best video’s like rate was 2.9 times its worst within the last 15 uploads.
Likes are the only reaction you can read: YouTube made dislike counts private in November 2021. Comments are public but are not part of this ratio.
What a normal like rate looks like
| Percentile of channels | Like rate (long-form) |
|---|---|
| 10th | 0.89% |
| 25th | 1.38% |
| Median | 2.11% |
| 75th | 3.15% |
| 90th | 4.24% |
So a like rate of 1.4% or above puts a channel in the top three quarters of big channels, and 4.2% or above puts it in the top tenth. Fewer than one channel in 30 (9 of 309) sat below 0.5%.
By channel size
| Subscribers | Channels | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 281K–1M | 32 | 1.69% | 2.82% | 4.16% |
| 1M–5M | 131 | 1.61% | 2.30% | 3.38% |
| 5M–10M | 46 | 1.40% | 2.08% | 3.12% |
| 10M–25M | 64 | 1.33% | 1.84% | 2.55% |
| 25M+ | 36 | 0.75% | 1.35% | 2.27% |
The median drops at every step. Bigger channels are recommended to more people who have never subscribed, and a casual viewer is less likely to like a video than a fan is. Judge a channel against its own size band: 1.5% is below average at 1M–5M subscribers and above average at 25M+.
By niche
| Niche | Channels | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gaming | 29 | 1.81% | 2.55% | 3.70% |
| Food | 60 | 1.59% | 2.40% | 3.70% |
| Fitness | 53 | 1.73% | 2.17% | 3.28% |
| Tech | 58 | 1.27% | 1.87% | 2.77% |
| Finance | 53 | 1.22% | 1.82% | 2.83% |
| Entertainment | 56 | 0.89% | 1.77% | 3.02% |
Gaming and food audiences like the most; entertainment the least, and with the widest spread. Tech and finance sit low on likes but high on views per subscriber (10.3% each), which fits search-driven viewing: someone who found a phone review through Google watches it and leaves without liking it.
Shorts have a higher like rate
On YouTube Shorts the median like rate was 2.74%, against 2.11% for long-form, and Shorts had the higher rate on 179 of 249 channels (72%). That happens even though YouTube counts every replay of a Short as a view, which pushes a Short’s like rate down. Benchmark Shorts and long-form separately. More in YouTube Shorts vs long-form views.
When a like rate is a warning sign
A like rate on its own proves nothing about authenticity. These patterns are worth a second look:
- One video far out of line with the rest. In our data, 8% of videos had a like rate more than double or less than half their own channel’s median. That is normal variation. A pattern is something else, such as every sponsored video sitting at half the like rate of the rest.
- Very high views with very few likes, across many videos. A like rate in the bottom tenth for the channel’s size, sustained, can mean views are arriving from somewhere other than an audience: autoplay embeds, ads, or bought views.
- A like rate far above the top of the range. Likes can be bought too. A channel at 15% on every video, with comments that do not match the volume, deserves a closer look.
Then check the signals a ratio cannot show. Our free authenticity checker reads a YouTube or Twitch channel’s public data and explains each signal with a confidence level, and the methodology says exactly what it measures. For a full engagement benchmark, including comments, see what a good YouTube engagement rate is, or run any channel’s numbers through the YouTube engagement rate calculator.
Limits
The 309 channels are established creators from our directory, with 281,000 to 524 million subscribers. Very small channels are not in the sample, and their like rates usually run higher. Figures use each channel’s 15 most recent long-form uploads that were at least seven days old, read on October 28, 2026. Every video is in the dataset.
Sources: YouTube’s public upload feeds and channel pages, read October 28, 2026; YouTube Official Blog, “An update to dislikes on YouTube” (November 10, 2021); TechCrunch, “YouTube is changing how YouTube Shorts views are counted” (March 26, 2025).
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