Work out what ads could earn from your mobile app, game or website before you build the business plan around them. Choose a network, describe your audience, and get a daily, monthly and annual range with a breakdown by ad format.
Google's own network: broad advertiser demand, simple setup and steady fill in most regions.
Slider runs from 10 to 10 million on a log scale.
$4,033
Likely range $2,823 to $5,444 per month
$806.57 per 1,000 daily users each month · 5,000 DAU
Google AdMob
The same inputs run through every mobile ad network in the model. Change anything in the calculator tab and this table updates too.
Android · Casual Game · Balanced global mix · 5,000 DAU
| Rank | Network | Monthly | Per 1,000 users | Relative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AppLovin MAX | $4,923 | $984.55 | |
| 2 | Google AdMobSelected | $4,033 | $806.57 | |
| 3 | ironSource / LevelPlay | $3,994 | $798.83 | |
| 4 | Unity Ads | $3,945 | $789.01 | |
| 5 | Vungle / Liftoff | $3,422 | $684.36 | |
| 6 | Meta Audience Network | $3,301 | $660.29 | |
| 7 | Chartboost | $2,956 | $591.23 | |
| 8 | InMobi | $2,855 | $570.91 |
Rankings reflect the model's benchmark tables, not a promise that one network will outperform another for your app or site.
Formats differ in how much advertisers pay for them and how much they cost your users in attention. The position marker below is relative: it shows where a format usually sits in an eCPM ranking, not what any one network pays.
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Five small calculators for the sums people do on the back of an envelope: turning eCPM into money, pageviews into income, a monthly goal into the audience you need, downloads into lifetime revenue, and a daily balance into a payout date. Each one runs in your browser as you type.
Revenue: $250.00
eCPM = revenue ÷ impressions × 1,000
Use the impressions and earnings from the same date range and the same country filter, or the number will mislead you. eCPM explained walks through it.
The estimate multiplies how many ads your audience sees by what advertisers typically pay for each, adjusted for where your users live, what your app or site is about, and how many ads reach a paying advertiser. Three steps get you there, and each one changes the result you see immediately, so there is no submit button to press and nothing to wait for.
Select iOS, Android or website, then the ad network you use or want to try. The category list, formats and audience unit switch to match.
Enter daily active users or monthly sessions, move the geography slider toward the countries your visitors come from, and tick the formats you run.
Read the monthly range, check the format split, then open the compare tab to see how other networks would rank for the same audience.
Each calculator below is tuned to one network, with its own rate table, example scenarios, payout notes and answers to the questions people ask before they sign up. Mobile pages cover app and game networks; web pages cover publishers who sell display space on a site.
Every mobile network in our model in one table. Pick the region tier and platform, then sort any column to see who pays most for that format. Figures are our benchmark estimates for a typical app, in US dollars per 1,000 impressions, before category adjustments.
| AppLovin MAX | $14.50 | $9.80 | $1.10 | $4.00 | $6.00 | 90% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unity Ads | $13.00 | $9.00 | $0.80 | n/a | n/a | 84% |
| ironSource / LevelPlay | $12.50 | $8.50 | $0.85 | $3.00 | n/a | 86% |
| Google AdMob | $12.00 | $8.00 | $0.90 | $3.50 | $5.50 | 88% |
| Vungle / Liftoff | $12.00 | $8.20 | $0.70 | $3.20 | n/a | 80% |
| Meta Audience Network | $10.50 | $7.50 | $0.85 | $4.20 | n/a | 80% |
| Chartboost | $10.00 | $7.20 | $0.70 | n/a | n/a | 78% |
| InMobi | $9.00 | $6.00 | $0.65 | $3.00 | n/a | 78% |
Select a column heading to sort.
Rewarded video pays the most almost everywhere because users opt in and watch to the end. For context on what moves these numbers, read why eCPM is low and mobile eCPM benchmarks.
What 1,000 pageviews earn in each niche on the network of your choice. Finance and business content earns about three times what news and entertainment does on the same network, because advertisers pay according to what the reader might buy next.
$7.00 per 1,000 pageviews · Google AdSense
Reference layout: four ads per page, 60% viewable. Each bar links to the matching estimate page, and high CPC niches explains why the order looks like this.
Pick a market to see where it sits in our model and what the same casual game and the same blog would earn there. The page for each country goes further, with every network, every format and a note on how publishers there get paid.
Blog, 100,000 pageviews: $700 a month
Three questions, one honest starting point. The answer reflects how networks usually behave for an audience like yours, not a ranking anyone paid for.
Advertisers do not spend evenly. Budgets build through autumn, peak in November and December, then reset in January. The same traffic can earn around 40% more in December than in an average month and about a fifth less in January. Hover or tab through the bars to see each month.
December: Index 1.36 (+36%)
Read why revenue drops in January and how to prepare for Q4 for what to do about it.
Fourteen networks at a glance: what they are for, the formats they sell, what it takes to join and how they pay. Filter by type, then open the calculator, a comparison or the estimates for any of them.
Google's own network: broad advertiser demand, simple setup and steady fill in most regions.
Rewarded video · Interstitial · Banner · Native · App open
Strong in rewarded and interstitial video for games, backed by Unity's own install demand.
Rewarded video · Interstitial · Banner
Bidding-first mediation with deep game demand; often tops the leaderboard for games.
Rewarded video · Interstitial · Banner · Native · App open
Social-graph targeting lifts eCPMs, especially with Tier 1 audiences.
Rewarded video · Interstitial · Banner · Native
Mediation plus network, widely used by hypercasual and casual game studios.
Rewarded video · Interstitial · Banner · Native
Video-led network with solid results in rewarded and interstitial placements.
Rewarded video · Interstitial · Banner · Native
Strong reach in Asia and emerging markets, which helps Tier 3 heavy audiences.
Rewarded video · Interstitial · Banner · Native
Game-focused network with dependable interstitial and rewarded demand.
Rewarded video · Interstitial · Banner
Open to nearly every site, no traffic minimum, and the easiest place to start.
Display (banner) · In-article / native · Sticky / anchor · Interstitial
AI-driven layout testing and a lower entry bar than premium managed networks.
Display (banner) · In-article / native · Sticky / anchor · Video (outstream) · Interstitial
Contextual ads that work best on English-language content with US or UK readers.
Display (banner) · In-article / native · Sticky / anchor
Managed ads for mid-sized publishers, with a lower traffic bar than the top tiers.
Display (banner) · In-article / native · Sticky / anchor · Video (outstream) · Interstitial
Premium managed network for content sites; needs a meaningful session count to join.
Display (banner) · In-article / native · Sticky / anchor · Video (outstream) · Interstitial
Premium managed network focused on creator-led sites with strong Tier 1 traffic.
Display (banner) · In-article / native · Sticky / anchor · Video (outstream) · Interstitial
Beyond the calculators, every figure in the model is laid out in browsable tables: head-to-head network comparisons, estimates for each app category and website niche, earnings by audience size, country views and a deep dive on each ad format.
The most visited pages in our estimate library, grouped by the question they answer. Every number comes from the same model as the calculator above.
Every ad dollar starts with an impression: one ad shown to one person. Networks pay for impressions in thousands, and the price per thousand is the eCPM. A rewarded video in the United States can fetch ten dollars or more per thousand views, while a banner in a low-income market may fetch pennies, which is why where your audience lives matters as much as how big it is. If the term is new, the guide to eCPM in plain English is the best place to begin.
Apps and websites measure income differently. Apps think in daily active users and impressions per user, so format choice and frequency do most of the work. Websites think in pageviews and RPM, so niche, traffic source and ad density do. Mobile eCPM benchmarks and website RPM by niche show typical ranges for each side.
Most developers start with a single network such as Google AdMob or, for sites, Google AdSense. As traffic grows, adding competition usually lifts income. Mediation platforms like AppLovin MAX and Unity Ads let several buyers bid for the same impression, and our comparison of mediation and single-network setups explains when the extra work pays off.
A few habits make the calculator more useful. Run it three times, once with cautious inputs, once with your best guess and once with an optimistic case, and plan around the cautious one. Change one slider at a time so you can see which lever moves income most. And compare the estimate with a real week of data as soon as you have one, because the gap between the two is the most honest measure of how your own setup behaves.
Retention is the quiet multiplier for apps. Ten thousand downloads with weak retention can leave only a few hundred people opening the app a month later, and those few hundred are the audience advertisers pay for. That is why our downloads pages count active days per install rather than installs, and why a small lift in day-7 retention often beats a new ad placement. The ARPDAU and LTV guide shows the arithmetic.
For websites, the order of operations matters. Approval first: AdSense wants original, useful pages and clear ownership. Then layout: a few well-placed units usually beat many poorly placed ones, as the placement guide explains. Then demand: once traffic and revenue grow, managed networks such as Mediavine and Raptive typically pay well above AdSense, and our AdSense alternatives guide lists the current entry requirements.
Policy keeps the money flowing. Invalid clicks, misleading placements and missing consent messages cost far more than any optimisation can add back, because a limited or closed account earns nothing at all. Our guides on invalid traffic, policy violations and consent messages cover the common traps.
Finally, remember that earning is not the same as being paid. Networks hold a threshold, usually around one hundred dollars, before they release a payment, and the money can take weeks to arrive. The AdMob payment guide covers the mechanics step by step.
Tick off what your site already has. Your progress stays in this browser only. The full reasoning behind each item is in the AdSense approval checklist guide, and the two most common rejections have their own guides: low value content and policy violations.
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The terms you will meet in AdMob, AdSense and every mediation dashboard, in a sentence or two each. Type to filter. The A to Z glossary goes further.
All of our guides in one place. Filter by topic or search by keyword.
65 guides
The calculator, the tables and all generated pages read the same benchmark data, so figures never contradict each other. The methodology lists every assumption.
Every estimate comes with a likely range from 0.7 to 1.35 times the central figure, because real accounts vary by app, season and setup.
Data pages that are too thin or too similar to their neighbours are kept out of search results until they say something new.
No network pays to be ranked or recommended here. The ads on the site are served by Google and never influence the tables.
Our numbers are estimates. When you need the rule itself, go to the source. These are the pages we check when we update the site.
Payments, policies, mediation and reporting for app publishers.
Eligibility, payments, ad placement and the policy centre.
What content can and cannot carry Google ads.
Integration guides for Android, iOS, Flutter and Unity.
Ad units, line items and programmatic set-up for larger sites.
Mediation, bidding networks and SDK set-up.
Unity Ads and LevelPlay mediation guides.
The official ads.txt and app-ads.txt specifications.
How LCP, INP and CLS are measured, which ads can affect.
The tax form non-US publishers submit to US networks.
It is a planning range, not a forecast. The model multiplies your audience by benchmark eCPMs or RPMs for your region mix, category and format choices, then shows a band from 0.7 times to 1.35 times the central figure. Real accounts can land outside that band, especially in the first months. The methodology lists every assumption.
Dashboards reflect your actual ad setup, your actual advertisers and the season. A rewarded button that is hard to find, a banner that loads late, or a December spike in advertiser budgets can each move income by double digits. Use the calculator to set a reference point, then adjust the inputs until the shape matches what you see.
No. Every calculation runs in your browser, nothing is stored on a server, and there is no sign-up. The site uses cookies only for analytics and advertising, and only after you agree where the law asks us to ask. See the Privacy Policy for the detail.
eCPM is what you earn per 1,000 ad impressions, so it describes the ads themselves. RPM is what you earn per 1,000 pageviews or sessions, so it describes the whole page or visit, including how many ads it carries. The eCPM guide walks through both with worked examples.
It depends on who your users are. For games, bidding-based mediation often leads the leaderboard, while a site with mostly US readers may do better on a managed network once it clears the traffic bar. The compare tab ranks every network for your exact inputs, so you do not have to guess. Keep in mind that the ranking reflects typical benchmark tables, so use it to shortlist two or three networks worth testing rather than as a final verdict.
Income scales almost directly with audience, so a few thousand daily players with a decent Tier 1 share can reach a few thousand dollars a month, while a few hundred will pay a few hundred at most. Retention matters as much as installs, because daily active users, not downloads, create impressions. A game with 20,000 installs and weak retention may have only 1,000 people playing on a given day, and those 1,000 are the audience the calculator should use.
In our model, page RPM on AdSense runs from under a dollar for mostly Tier 3 traffic to around $7 for Tier 1 readers in a general niche, and more in finance or technology. The AdSense pay per 1,000 views guide explains why two sites with the same traffic can earn very different amounts.
From ads alone, usually cents to a few dollars per install over its first year, depending on retention, category and where users live. Finance and mid-core apps sit at the top. The downloads pages and the quick tools above turn a download count into a lifetime estimate.
AdMob is for mobile apps and AdSense for websites. They share one Google payments profile but serve different inventory, so a business with both an app and a site often uses both. See AdMob vs AdSense.
At the time of writing Mediavine asks for about $5,000 in annual ad revenue (its Journey programme takes sites with 1,000 Tier 1 sessions a month), Raptive asks for about 25,000 monthly pageviews and Ezoic asks new sites for about 250,000 monthly users. Requirements change, so confirm on each network's own page. The AdSense alternatives guide tracks them.
The usual causes are seasonality (January is always weak), a change in where your users come from, a new floor price, missing app-ads.txt lines, consent messages that stopped working, or invalid traffic filtering. Why is my eCPM low? walks through them in the order worth checking.
Google pays AdSense and AdMob earnings around the 21st of the month after the balance passes the payment threshold, which is $100 in the US. Other networks pay 30 to 65 days after month end. The payout tool above estimates a date, and the AdSense payment guide covers PINs, holds and payment methods.
Google may withhold US tax on earnings from viewers in the United States unless you submit tax information, and a tax treaty can reduce the rate. The AdSense tax info guide explains the W-8BEN process. It is general information, not tax advice.
Most successful free apps use both. Ads earn from the majority who never pay, while purchases or subscriptions earn far more from the few who do. Rewarded ads sit between the two. See in-app purchases vs ads for the break-even maths.