YouTube revenue revealed for first time and it’s higher than Netflix

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YouTube recently shared its financial results for the first time, and the numbers are impressive. The platform earned over $60 billion in 2025 from a combination of ads and subscriptions, surpassing Netflix’s revenue for the same period. This information was released by YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet.

As a big Alphabet fan, I was really excited to see their latest earnings report! For the first time ever, they’re finally showing us exactly how much revenue YouTube brings in overall – not just from ads, but everything. It’s awesome to get the full picture of how YouTube is doing!

YouTube’s revenue surpassed that of Netflix, which made $45.18 billion in 2025. Looking at the broader entertainment industry, only Disney earned more, bringing in $95.7 billion last year.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, announced that the company has surpassed 325 million paid subscriptions for its services like YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and Google One. This demonstrates that YouTube is now earning revenue from sources beyond just advertising.

As a big YouTube fan, I was looking at their latest earnings, and advertising is still a huge part of how they make money. They brought in $11.38 billion from ads worldwide in the last three months of 2025, which is up almost 9% from the year before. It’s a little disappointing though, because analysts were expecting even higher numbers. Sundar Pichai mentioned that they didn’t get as much money from political ads this year compared to 2024, and that affected how much brands spent on advertising.

The CEO highlighted increasing user activity on the platform, noting that viewers spent over 700 million hours watching podcasts on YouTube through TVs in October 2025. He also stated that YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket subscription service had its most subscribers ever, though he didn’t disclose the specific numbers.

Alphabet announced strong fourth-quarter results, with revenue reaching $113.8 billion and net income of $34.5 billion – both figures higher than analysts predicted. Looking ahead, CEO Sundar Pichai stated the company intends to invest between $175 billion and $185 billion in AI by 2026.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan recently shared that over a million channels were using YouTube’s AI tools every day in December 2025. He also announced that YouTube Shorts is now averaging 200 billion views daily, and that new features and more affordable YouTube TV plans are coming this year.

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2026-02-05 14:18