Creator guide · Data insights
Which YouTube niches get sponsored most? Sponsorship rates across 27 niches
The share of 10K–1M channels with a sponsor, niche by niche: photography, crypto and music lead, cooking and pets trail. Big niches are not the best sponsored.
By DiscoverSponsors · 5 min read
Some niches are easy to sponsor and some are hard, and creators usually find out which one they are in by pitching for six months. This is the measured version.
We took every active channel in the DiscoverSponsors index with between 10K and 1M subscribers, the range where most working creators live, grouped them by niche tag, and measured the share of channels in each niche with at least one sponsored video in the last 14 months. The index is built from public video information retrieved through the official YouTube Data API and held 562K sponsored videos across more than 55K channels as of September 2026. A channel can carry more than one niche tag, so it can appear in more than one row.
The ranking
| Niche | Channels (10K–1M) | Share with at least one sponsor | Avg sponsors, when sponsored |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photography | 391 | 84.9% | 7.1 |
| Crypto/Web3 | 418 | 79.7% | 7.4 |
| Music | 426 | 79.3% | 5.9 |
| AI/Software Tools | 1.0K | 78.9% | 6.6 |
| Business | 345 | 77.1% | 6.7 |
| Lifestyle | 382 | 72.3% | 5.9 |
| Real Estate | 329 | 70.8% | 6.9 |
| Gaming | 1.8K | 69.9% | 5.1 |
| Sustainability/Eco | 411 | 69.8% | 6.5 |
| Productivity | 625 | 66.4% | 5.4 |
| Finance | 1.0K | 66.1% | 5.4 |
| Tech/Gadgets | 3.3K | 64.9% | 5.4 |
| Fashion | 1.1K | 64.2% | 5.2 |
| Entertainment | 1.1K | 63.4% | 5.0 |
| Automotive | 2.1K | 61.9% | 5.1 |
| Home/DIY | 1.3K | 60.9% | 5.8 |
| Travel | 3.1K | 60.1% | 4.1 |
| Beauty/Makeup | 2.6K | 58.7% | 4.8 |
| Sports | 790 | 58.6% | 4.9 |
| Mental Health/Wellness | 822 | 56.7% | 5.8 |
| Outdoor/Adventure | 3.4K | 56.2% | 4.8 |
| Parenting | 772 | 55.7% | 6.7 |
| Education | 2.1K | 55.2% | 4.5 |
| Fitness | 1.0K | 54.0% | 4.8 |
| Pets | 495 | 45.5% | 5.3 |
| Food/Cooking | 3.1K | 42.5% | 4.4 |
| Crafts/Handmade | 383 | 35.5% | 2.6 |
Gear and software niches are sponsored twice as often as cooking
The top of the table is niches where the audience buys a specific kind of product and the product is easy to demonstrate. Photography leads: 84.9% of 10K–1M photography channels in the index have a sponsor, and sponsored photography channels work with 7.1 brands on average, the second-highest count of any niche. Crypto, music and AI tools follow, all around 79%, with crypto channels carrying the most sponsors per channel (7.4).
The bottom is niches with huge audiences and no obvious product. Food and cooking is one of the largest niches in the index, with more than 3K channels in this band, and only 42.5% of them have a sponsor. Pets (45.5%) and crafts (35.5%) are lower still. These audiences are valuable, but the brands that fit them (meal kits, cookware, pet food, craft supplies) are fewer and pickier than the VPNs, hosting companies and gadget makers that sponsor half of YouTube.
Big niche does not mean well sponsored
The four largest niches in this band, outdoor and adventure (3.4K channels), tech and gadgets (3.3K), travel (3.1K) and food (3.1K), sit in the middle or the bottom of the ranking. Outdoor is at 56.2%, travel at 60.1%. The niches where a creator is most likely to have a sponsor are mostly small: photography has under 400 channels in this band, business under 350. Fewer creators competing for brands that need exactly that audience.
What this means for your pitch
- If you are in a top-ten niche, the question is not whether sponsors exist but which ones already work with channels your size. Three in four comparable channels have one; pitch the brands that sponsor the others.
- If you are in a bottom-five niche, expect fewer brands and more competition for each. The sponsors that do work in cooking, pets and crafts sponsor many channels at once, so the smallest channel each brand has sponsored is the number to look for.
- Niche tags overlap, and that is useful. A cooking channel that also fits home and DIY or sustainability can pitch the sponsors of those niches, where the rate is 15 to 25 points higher.
Every niche has its own page listing the brands sponsoring it, with the sponsored videos as evidence, under sponsor categories; the top-5 countries and niches are ranked on the leaderboards.
Method and limits
- Channels are tagged by niche from their public description and uploads; a channel can carry several tags and then counts in each. Tags with fewer than 300 channels in this band are omitted.
- Sponsored means the video's description or paid-promotion disclosure names the brand that paid for the integration, from public video information retrieved through the official YouTube Data API; the window is videos published from July 2025 to September 2026.
- Channels with sponsors are somewhat easier to discover than channels without, so every rate here is an upper bound on the platform-wide rate. The ranking between niches is the finding.