MrBeast made $300M while nearly half of US creators earn under $10K: the pay gap

The creator economy has a famous top and a huge, quiet bottom. Forbes says MrBeast earned $300 million in a year, while a 2026 survey says 48.7% of US creators earn less than $10,000 a year. Both can be true, and here’s the math.

Fair warning on sources: the surveys come from companies that sell creator services, and different surveys count different people, so treat every figure below as an estimate.

The top

Forbes’ 2026 Top Creators list, published June 23, had 50 people earning a combined $1.02 billion, up from $853 million the year before, according to Complex and Tubefilter. MrBeast was first at $300 million and Dhar Mann second at $65 million. Forbes says its earnings figures are estimates.

The middle and bottom

The Influencer Marketing Factory, an influencer-marketing agency, surveyed 1,000 US creators for its 2026 report. A guest post on Digital Information World describing the report gives this split:

• 48.7% earn under $10,000 a year
• 45.6% earn $10,000 to $100,000
• 5.7% earn $100,000 or more

The same post says 51.5% of those creators saw their earnings grow in 2025, and that 76% of TikTok creators in the agency’s data get fewer than 1,000 views per post. The agency’s report has its own interests: it sells marketing services to brands.

Where the money pools

CreatorIQ, which sells creator-marketing software, published a report on Jan 21, 2026. It says the top 10% of creators earned 62% of total payments in 2025, up from 53% in 2023, and the top 1% earned 21%, up from 15%.

The release also says creators earned an average of $11.4K per campaign, while the median creator earned $3K. It doesn’t say that $3K is a yearly figure, so it can’t be compared directly with MrBeast’s $300 million a year. We left that comparison out on purpose.

Why the gap exists

Forbes’ own framing, per Tubefilter, is that the top earners are building companies: retail brands, production studios and streaming deals. That’s a different game from posting for brand deals.

The takeaway

A few creators earn like CEOs because they run companies. Many earn side income. If you’re aiming for the top, the pattern in Forbes’ list is owning a product or a show, not just chasing views.