Creator economy statistics 2026, each with source and date

Goldman Sachs Research estimated the creator economy at about $250 billion in April 2023 and projected it could reach $480 billion by 2027. That is the most cited market-size figure, and like most numbers on this page it is an estimate, not a count.

Every statistic below has a named source and a date, and we say whether it is a forecast, a survey result or a company’s own claim. Links to each source are listed at the bottom of the page. We checked every figure against its original publication in October 2026 and left out numbers we could only find in secondary coverage.

How big is the creator economy?

The two best-sourced market figures come from Goldman Sachs, which sizes the whole economy, and the IAB, which measures only US brand advertising spent on creators. They measure different things, so they should not be compared with each other.

Goldman expected influencer marketing and ad revenue sharing on short-form video platforms to drive most of that growth, and said its creator-economy growth estimate roughly matched its forecast for global digital advertising. The IAB said US creator ad spend was growing about four times faster than the media industry overall, which it put at 5.7%.

How fast is creator ad spending growing?

US creator ad spend more than doubled between 2021 and 2024, according to the IAB, from $13.9 billion to $29.5 billion. Growth is continuing but slowing in percentage terms.

The IAB figure counts money brands deliberately spend on creators through direct partnerships, paid amplification of creator content and planned placements next to creator content. It excludes affiliate commissions, subscriptions, tips and merchandise, so it is a floor for creator income from brands, not a total for creator income. The same report found 48% of ad buyers described creators as a “must buy,” behind only social media and paid search.

How many creators are there?

Somewhere between 50 million and 303 million worldwide, depending on who is counting and how they define a creator. The spread comes from definitions. Adobe counts anyone who posts creative work online at least monthly with the goal of growing a following, a far wider net than a count of people who earn money.

Goldman expected its 50 million figure to grow 10% to 20% a year over the following five years. Adobe’s study, run with Edelman Data and Intelligence, surveyed about 9,000 online creators in nine countries in May 2022 and counts influencers as the subset with 5,000 or more followers.

MBO Partners’ count is the narrowest and the most useful for the US. It covers only independent workers who earned money creating digital content, from a survey of 6,575 US adults that included 886 independent creators.

How much do creators earn?

Most creators earn little, and a small share earns a living. Three surveys with different methods point the same way.

The Linktree figures come from a 2021 survey of 9,576 Linktree users, so they describe Linktree’s user base rather than all creators. Goldman expected the professional share of about 4% to stay steady even as the total number of creators grows.

How much do platforms pay creators?

The biggest published payout figures come from the platforms themselves. They are company claims, not audited totals, and several include payments to record labels and media companies, not only independent creators.

A few cautions apply. Substack counts paid subscriptions, not unique paying readers, so one person paying for three newsletters counts three times. Spotify’s music figure is royalties paid to rights holders such as labels, publishers and distributors, who then pay artists under their own contracts. Spotify’s podcast figure combines ad revenue and Spotify Partner Program payments.

Where do newsletter subscribers come from?

Platform networks now drive a large share of newsletter growth, at least on Substack. Substack told TechCrunch in February 2024 that its recommendations feature drove 50% of all new subscriptions and 25% of new paid subscriptions on the platform.

That is a company-reported figure from a single platform, and it describes the network as a whole, not what any one writer can expect. Our guide on how to start a paid newsletter covers how recommendation networks work on each platform.

Which of these numbers are estimates?

Almost all of them. Only the platform payout totals describe money that actually moved, and those are self-reported by companies with a reason to present large numbers.

Which popular creator statistics did we leave out?

We excluded figures we could not trace to an original publication. The main one is a widely repeated Goldman Sachs estimate of 67 million creators in 2025 rising to 107 million by 2030, which we found only in secondary coverage and not on a Goldman Sachs page.

We also left out survey results that circulate without a named sample or year, and any creator count from a listicle that does not cite its own source. If you are citing a number from this page, cite the original publisher and the year in the Published column, not CreatorPaper, so readers can check it.