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YouTube says new creators will need double, or 8,000+, watch hours over the past year or 20M Shorts views in the last 90 days to start earning money from Feb. 1 (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
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YouTube will raise the monetization eligibility thresholds for new creators to at least 8,000 watch hours in the past year or 20 million Shorts views in the last 90 days, effective February 1.
The higher bar means new channels will take longer to qualify for ad revenue, which can delay cash flow and affect growth planning. Engineers building creator-support tools must adjust analytics and notification logic to reflect the new criteria. Existing creators are not subject to the change, so platform behavior will diverge based on account age.
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Eligibility for new creators now requires double the previous watch-time requirement (8,000 hours) or a Shorts-view threshold of 20 million in three months.
Only accounts created after the policy change are affected; legacy creators keep the older thresholds.
Tools that monitor creator metrics must be updated to check both the annual watch-hour total and the 90-day Shorts view count.
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