How Much Do Vtubers Make in 2025

Do vtubers make money? They do but it completely depends on the number of subscribers and loyal fans in their fan base.

What is a VTuber and How Do They Earn Money?

The VTuber industry provides a lot of possibilities for various streamers to become virtual YouTubers. VTubers are people who use an animated virtual avatar to communicate with their communities. Most of them get their vtuber income from several sources where subscriptions, gits, and promotions are the most decent.

To achieve those results they use motion capture technology to entertain people and catch audience preferences. Many successful VTubers increase income through branded merchandise.

They inform their audience about live streams on social network platforms such as Twitter or Instagram weekly, providing an accurate schedule, so they could be prepared in advance.

Understanding VTuber Income Levels

Let’s answer the common question of how much money vtubers make. Any amazing personality after deciding to become a VTuber started creating a model to have consistent income streams. At the same time, we have two kinds of VTubers.

The first one is independent VTubers who have been building their careers without supervision from any talented agency. You can even believe how challenging this way is when you don’t have a smart mentor who would help you avoid pain points and disappointments.

The second one is a huge part of VTubers which was introduced as upcoming talent and produced by Hololive and NIJISANJI talent agencies.

Aspiring VTubers

An aspiring VTuber can make different money. It could be from several thousand a year to up to a million a year or popular streamers such as Gawr Gura. Those streamers who work with Hololive and NIJISANJI can have higher incomes at the beginning because they are introduced widely as the new seed of talent. This triggers collaborations between them and other VTubers from the same company.

We shouldn’t forget that in those cases the company owns characters and it charges a significant amount of percentage of the income. At first, it could be great but the ar the project goes on, they would like to be independent but it’s not possible because of the contract.

Emerging Content Creators

The VTuber world community works with the most advanced technologies to bring their characters to life. Among them, we can define streamers who use 2D avatars or 3D avatars which are more entertaining. The switch from 2D to 3D started several years ago when technologies allowed capturing emotions.

The streamers work with several kinds of streams where they have gaming streams, chatting, watching content, and collaboration streams. That’s why financial success depends on how interesting the content is for the community.

Established VTubers

You can find any popular VTuber with a loyal fan base and be surprised by the number of followers:

• We have Gawr Gura in first place among VTubers worldwide with 4,520,000 subscribers and 541 videos on the channel.
• The second place belongs to Houshou Marine with 3,530,000 subscribers and over 1,300 videos.
• Kizuna AI closes the top 3 spots with 2,980,000 subscribers and 113 videos.

Gawr Gura and Houshou Marine are members of Hololive production and Kizuna AI is a VTuber of Kizuna AI Inc.

Top VTuber Earnings and Comparisons

It’s common for VTubers not to disclose their income and salaries. Most likely this is a part of the contract. Anyway, we can predict some numbers based on the number of subscribers and merchandise store popularity.  A loyal fanbase with the right content creation is a revenue-generating factor.

Highest-Paid VTubers

As we mentioned there are top-rated as well as highest-paid VTubers. So, most likely they have an income of over one million annually which in the digital world is an amazing result.

A VTuber’s salary is widely affected by the number of viewers engaged in their streams, subscribers on Twitch or YouTube, the popularity of their merchandise, and a commission that the company charges from a VTuber Salary.

• Gawr Gura has over $700k from ad revenue and over $1,1M earnings from superchat.
• Houshou Marine has over $1,6M from ad revenue and $2,7M from superchat.
• Usada Pekora has over $1M from ad revenue and almost $3M from superchat.

VTubers vs. Traditional Streamers

There is no difference between monetization options or big differences between YouTube and Twitch. All of them work with the audience to bring the most interesting content to the streams. As traditional streamers, they can stream, play games, do various activities or promote products or services, sing, chat, or watch any content on the web.

vtubers earn as well as classic streamers depending on clicking on advertisements and super chat donations. Both of them work with sponsored content to get more money from time to time.

Many successful VTubers not only do proactive streams they always like sitting back and chatting, letting people have more opportunities to chat with them and even ask something personal.

Income Sources for VTubers

If we talk about an average vtuber salary it depends on the revenue they generate. Almost 40% of VTubers have their income from donations and tips during streams. We can expect that approximately 25% of income comes from subscription plans. To grow these numbers, streamers create extra content or provide extra perks such as unique emojis or communication in the chat.

Sponsorship is a good option and it can bring up to 22% in the income pool. The bigger the audience is the higher the chances are to receive amazing invites from the various marketing companies. The digital world of VTubers can rely on merchandise sales in their store to get up to 20% of the total income.

YouTube Super Chats and Donations

Different platforms provide various possibilities to get donations through Superchat and tips. Some independent VTubers can run their Patreon pages to get some coins on a monthly or piece of content basis from the fan base.

Channel Memberships and Subscriptions

They are brilliant ways to stand out from the crowd and say that I  support this VTuber. Popular VTubers have their stickers and emoji packs ready for those who are able to pay from $1 to $5 monthly for the subscription. It’s a completely honest price.

Ad Revenue

Different revenue streams provide ad revenue depending on how many people are on the streams and how VTuber convinces them to click on the ad to try a product or service. Gained popularity can be transferred into making revenue with other online brands.

Sponsorships and Brand Deals

These cases can work for any successful vtuber with exclusive content. Sponsorships can last several streams where the VTuber explains the advantages of the product or service. Brand deals can be a part of the background or appearance of the VTuber.

Merchandise Sales

Top-tier vtubers can work with their merchandise store because they have a huge and loyal audience. Hololive vtubers have their stores hosted on the parental company’s website, so it’s easy to navigate through.

Crowdfunding and Virtual Gifts

Crowdfunding works well for any kind of production. Even having a million YouTube subscribers, you can get your funds collected monthly from platforms such as Patreon or Kickstarter. It works great for those VTubers who draw art or sing songs. So, they can crowdfund creating their masterpieces by delivering them directly to the base before releasing them in public.

Virtual Gifts are great features to grab the maximum attention from the VTubers and all the people in the chat by their generosity. It’s widely respected because excluding a little commission, the money goes to the VTuber’s pocket.

VTuber Platforms and Their Benefits

Most of the VTubers prefer working with three platforms whereas Twitch is three times more popular than YouTube. As pros said it was because there are a lot of filters available on Twitch to find proper game streamers which is not available on YouTube so far. There is no monthly fee but people can use a subscribe option.

At the same time, YouTube provides offline promotion because people can find streams and watch them afterward and all of this puts the next streams higher in suggestion blocks because people are interested in those streams when they live and when they are recorded.

The third platform is Bilibili which has a below-average level of popularity among streamers.

Factors Affecting VTuber Income

• Consistency. VTubers who follow their schedules have higher incomes because they suggest people from the fan base their content be a part of fans’ day.
• Promotions and sponsorships. Independent streamers can easily collaborate with various brands without looking back on what the mother company thinks about it.
• Chatting and Q&A. Being a good fellow is an important part of streams because people can ask questions and receive an answer to discuss in the chat afterward.
• Collaborations. Even independent streamers quite often are associated with one of the major companies, Hololive or NIJISANJI, so those streams can bring all their fan bases together.

Independent VTubers vs. Agency-Affiliated VTubers

There are no versus factors. As we mentioned, any independent virtual YouTuber can collaborate with agency-affiliated ones to have so much fun. But this happens only if they are on the same scale. This rule doesn’t work within the agency because they try to support each other in making the most entertaining and engaging content.

As a result, high-quality content is the purpose of making collaborations and various events such as championships or challenges which appear from time to time.

Key Strategies for Maximizing VTuber Income

Several factors vary greatly but we mention the most common ones:

• An online content creator should work with real consistency which allows their fans to plan their days to watch some streams afterwards.
• Among the popular VTubers worldwide we may see that they focus on collaborations and various interactive activities such as events and offline venues.
• Working with the audience size to grow it, making various challenges where people can invite more fans and receive a reward from a VTuber.
• Among current VTubers, a significant role plays in receiving feedback from fans about what they want to receive in future streams.

Common Challenges VTubers Face

• Creating content consistently is such a big challenge for any VTuber because you can simply run out of ideas for future streams.
• Models have to change their virtual avatars from time to time. It’s common to do so every year. Various platforms offer many models to pick from.
• To diverse income streams, they have to come up with ideas for t-shirts and other merchandise to mention all of them during streams.
• more viewers means more responsibilities because you have to take care of a bigger number of harsh and rude people in the chat.
• Streamers can burn out because it’s hard to be consistently productive.

Tax Implications and Financial Management for VTubers

As usual, there are two cases. If a VTuber works with an agency they do a lot of work for them as a part of their job. diverse income streams can bring profits from various sources which should be systemized and prepared for taxation. We’ve never heard from VTubers that this part of their business is a pain point.

Independent VTubers have to do everything on their own which eats some of the time because they should visit an account once or provide them with all the information digitally. For many of them, it’s not the funniest part of being a streamer. Who loves to do taxes? Only accountants because they make money on such services.

Conclusion: How much do vtubers make in 2025

So, how much do vtubers make in 2025? The answer is simple: it’s from several hundred to over several million a year. Of course, a vtuber income can drive someone crazy but don’t forget that the top 1% of any business makes huge money whereas the next 10% make good money and the rest 89% make depending on many factors. The entertainment industry shows once again that talent, consistency, hard work, and collaborations create the base for quick growth and rewards. Worth noting that keeping an eye on trends makes your streams more interesting to people.