How much does YouTube pay in Singapore?

Why Singapore pays what it does

Singapore is where a large share of Asia-Pacific advertising budget is decided, and the domestic audience is wealthy, English-speaking and digitally saturated. Financial services, travel, insurance and property advertisers all bid seriously for it, which is why Singaporean RPM sits well above the rest of Southeast Asia.

The limit is size. Under six million people means a Singapore-only channel runs out of audience quickly. The creators who do well here almost always serve a regional or global English-speaking audience and treat the Singaporean slice as the part that pays best. English also means you compete directly with US and UK creators for the same viewers, which is the tradeoff.

Niches that pay best in Singapore

Category matters more than country. These are the ones where Singapore has advertiser depth that other markets do not.

The full picture is on our niche RPM table, which covers 18 categories with the ranges that apply regardless of market.

Shorts earn on a different scale

Shorts in Singapore typically return $0.03–0.12 per 1,000 views, against $4–9 for long-form. That is not a rounding difference, it is a different revenue model. Shorts revenue comes from a pooled fund split across all creators after music licensing, rather than from ads sold against your specific video.

The practical consequence is that a Shorts-heavy month will drag your blended RPM down hard while nothing at all is wrong with your channel. If you publish both, look at the two figures separately in Analytics before you conclude anything about your rate.

Getting paid from Singapore

US tax withholding

Singapore has no income tax treaty with the United States, so the US-viewer share of your YouTube royalties is generally withheld at 30%. This surprises a lot of Singaporean creators. It applies only to American views, and filing the AdSense tax form is still required even though it will not lower the rate.

Payment and currency

AdSense pays above $100 by bank transfer in SGD. IRAS treats YouTube income as trade income once it is more than a hobby, and GST registration becomes relevant past the registration threshold.

Monetization requirements

The YouTube Partner Programme is open in Singapore. You need 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days. There is also a lower entry tier at 500 subscribers that unlocks fan funding but not ad revenue.

None of this is tax advice. The withholding rate depends on the form you filed in AdSense rather than on where you live, so confirm yours in your own account, and take the local side to an accountant once the income is real.

Publishing for a Singaporean audience

One time zone, no daylight saving, a compact urban audience, and one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world. Evening slots concentrate hard. Singapore also shares SGT with Malaysia, the Philippines, most of Indonesia's neighbours and Perth, so a single schedule covers a much larger regional audience than the domestic one.

Every benchmark you read is stated in the audience's local time, which is the step most creators skip. Publishing at 10:00 a.m. your time does nothing if your viewers are asleep. Our full guide to publishing times covers the conversion and the six-week test that finds your own answer.

What raises your RPM faster than moving country

• ·Cover a subject advertisers compete for. Moving from entertainment to finance changes your rate more than moving from Singapore to the United States would.
• ·Check Analytics, Audience, Top geographies. If you have Western viewers you did not know about, you are already earning above the Singapore band and comparing yourself to the wrong number.
• ·File the AdSense tax form. Creators lose real money to the 30% default simply by never completing it.
• ·Stop treating AdSense as the business. Sponsorships, affiliate revenue and your own products out-earn ad revenue for most channels above a modest size, and they do not care what your country's CPM is.

Questions creators in Singapore ask