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A subscriber to a channel on the American video-sharing platform
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
is a user who has chosen to receive the channel's content by clicking on that channel's "Subscribe" button, and each user's subscription feed consists of videos published by channels to which the user is subscribed. The ability for users to subscribe was introduced in October 2005. YouTube began publishing a list of its most-subscribed channels in April 2006. An early archive of the list dates to May 17, 2006. Since May 2006, when Smosh occupied the top position with just 2,986 subscribers, at least 11 other YouTube channels have held the top spot; these include the channel for the American fictional web series '' lonelygirl15'', American comedian Brooke "Brookers" Brodack, American fictional character
Fred Figglehorn Frederick "Fred" Figglehorn is a fictional character who appears in the YouTube web series ''Fred'' (stylized as "FЯED") created by American Internet personality Lucas Cruikshank from 2006 to 2015 and revived from 2020 to 2021. The characters' ...
, Swedish gamer Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg, American comedian Ryan Higa, American media personality Ray William Johnson, American public speaker
Judson Laipply Judson Laipply ( ; born March 22, 1976) is an American internet celebrity from Bucyrus, Ohio. He served as the state president of The Ohio Association of Student Councils from 1993 to 1994. He is best known for his performance in the "Evolution ...
, English pensioner Peter Oakley, and the official channels for Indian music record label T-Series, as well as
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
itself. The most-subscribed YouTube channel is MrBeast, having 405 million subscribers as of June 15, 2025, and gaining subscribers by an average of about 320,000 per day.


100 most-subscribed channels

The following table lists the 100 most-subscribed YouTube channels, as well as the primary language, country, and content category of each channel. The channels are ordered by number of subscribers. Those whose displayed subscriber counts are identical, are listed so that the channel whose current growth rate indicates that its displayed subscriber count will exceed that of the other channel is listed first. Automatically generated channels that lack their own videos, such as Music and News, and channels that have been made effectively obsolete as a result of the transferral of their content, such as JustinBieberVEVO and TaylorSwiftVEVO are excluded. , 32 of top 100 channels listed primarily produce content in English while 29 primarily produce content in Hindi. All 100 channels have surpassed 47 million subscribers. All Top 50 channels have surpassed 61 million subscribers. Fourteen of the channels have surpassed 100 million subscribers and only two have more than 200 million subscribers: MrBeast and T-Series. MrBeast is the only channel that has more than 300 and 400 million subscribers.


Historical progression of most-subscribed channels

The following table lists the 20 distinct runs as the most-subscribed YouTube channel recorded since May 2006. Only runs lasting at least 24 hours are included. Twelve different channels have held the position, with PewDiePie holding the title a record four times. He also holds the records for the longest time as the most-subscribed channel (1,920 days in his third run), the shortest time as the most-subscribed channel (four days in his second run), and the longest overall combined time as the most subscribed channel (2,017 days). In second place is Smosh, which held it three times, while third place is tied between
nigahiga Ryan Higa (born June 6, 1990), also known as nigahiga ( ), is an American internet personality. Best known for his comedy videos on YouTube, Higa began making YouTube videos in 2006 and was one of the most popular creators on the platform in i ...
, T-Series, and YouTube's own channel, which have all held it twice each. YouTube's own official channel, then known as "YouTube Spotlight", briefly held the title in late 2013; one factor that contributed to the channel's rise to the top spot was the site's autosuggestion for new users to subscribe to the channel upon registration. Geriatric1927 had the shortest overall time as the most-subscribed YouTube Channel only holding the achievement for 28 days. Overall of the twelve channels who have held the record, seven featured individual males, one (Brookers) featured an individual female, two (T-Series, YouTube Spotlight) were brand channels, one (Smosh) was a duo of males which later became a collective and production company, and one (lonelygirl15) was a webseries. Nine of the channels were based in the United States, one (geriatric1927) was based in England, one (T-Series) was based in India, and one (PewDiePie) was based in Sweden.


Timeline

Timeline of the most-subscribed YouTube channels (May 2006 – present)


Milestones and reactions

Following the third time that Smosh became the most-subscribed YouTube channel, Ray William Johnson collaborated with the duo. A flurry of top YouTubers including Ryan Higa, Shane Dawson, Felix Kjellberg, Michael Buckley, Kassem Gharaibeh, the Fine Brothers, and Johnson himself, congratulated the duo shortly after they surpassed Johnson as the most-subscribed channel.


PewDiePie vs T-Series

In mid-2018, the subscriber count of the Indian music video channel T-Series rapidly approached that of Swedish web comedian and Let's Player PewDiePie, who was the most-subscribed user on YouTube at the time. As a result, fans of PewDiePie and T-Series, other YouTubers, and celebrities showed their support for both channels. During the competition, both channels gained a large number of subscribers at a rapid rate, and surpassed each other's subscriber count on multiple occasions in February, March, and April 2019. T-Series eventually permanently surpassed PewDiePie, and on May 29, 2019, it became the first channel to reach 100 million subscribers. In 2024, when MrBeast surpassed T-Series, he tweeted that his fans had "avenged" PewDiePie. In the lead-up to MrBeast's channel becoming the most-subscribed, T-Series issued a call for subscribers. Meanwhile, MrBeast urged his fans to not see the competition between his channel and T-Series as "this country versus that country", while also warning against anyone becoming hateful.


See also

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List of most-viewed YouTube channels The list of most-viewed YouTube channels is topped by T-Series, an Indian record label known for Hindi film music. T-Series became the most-viewed YouTube channel on February 16, 2017, and has over 300 billion total views . 50 most-viewed c ...
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List of most-viewed YouTube videos YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The site indicates view counts of each uploaded video, making it possible to keep track of the most viewed, many of which continue to exist while others are n ...
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List of most-liked YouTube videos A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
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List of most-disliked YouTube videos __FORCETOC__ This list of most-disliked YouTube videos contains the top 42 videos with the most dislikes as of December 12, 2021, as derived from the American video platform, YouTube's, charts. The dislike count was taken directly from the pag ...
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List of YouTubers YouTubers are people mostly known for their work on the video sharing platform YouTube. The following is a list of YouTubers for whom Wikipedia has articles either under their own name or their YouTube channel name. This list excludes people who ...
* List of most-viewed Indian YouTube videos


Notes


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Most-subscribed YouTube channels YouTube Subscribers Youtube channels * Subscribed Users