How loud are YouTube videos? Median -16.3 LUFS across 50 videos (2026)
Recent long-form videos from big YouTube channels sit at a median of -16.3 LUFS. I measured 50 of them, from 25 top channels, in September 2026: loudness ran from -24.3 to -7.4 LUFS, 12 were louder than -14 and 9 quieter than -20. In a playback check, YouTube turned the loud ones down to -14, so mixing louder bought nothing.
How loud are YouTube videos?
Across 50 recent long-form videos from 25 large channels, integrated loudness ran from -24.3 to -7.4 LUFS, with a median of -16.3. Half of the videos sat between -18.2 and -14.1. In a playback check, YouTube turned the loud ones down to -14 and left the quiet ones quieter than everyone else.
| Measure (50 videos, 25 channels) | Result |
|---|---|
| Median integrated loudness | -16.3 LUFS |
| Middle half of the videos | -18.2 to -14.1 LUFS |
| Quietest and loudest | -24.3 and -7.4 LUFS |
| Louder than -14 LUFS | 12 of 50 |
| Quieter than -20 LUFS | 9 of 50 |
| True peak above 0 dBTP | 29 of 50 |
| Player check (5 videos, Sep 27, 2026) | Files at -7.4 to -13.2 LUFS played at -14.0 dB; files near -24 played at about -20 |
| Median speech pace | 179 words per minute (middle half 164–191) |
| Median length | 28.4 minutes (33 of 50 ran 20 minutes or longer) |
How it was measured: the two most-viewed recent long uploads of each channel, the audio YouTube serves, ITU-R BS.1770 integrated loudness and true peak. Details in the method, every video in the full table.
- 12 of 50 videos were louder than -14 LUFS. The loudest were both MrBeast uploads, at -7.4 and -10.4.
- 9 of 50 were quieter than -20 LUFS, including both videos from Wendover Productions (-24.3 and -23.5), Ali Abdaal and OverSimplified, and one each from Simple History, Joshua Weissman and Grian.
- The same channel can move a lot between uploads: Joshua Weissman measured -23.1 on one video and -12.3 on the next; Simple History -24.3 and -14.1.
So there is no shared house standard among the biggest channels. What there is, is a player that evens part of it out.
Written by Kevin Tabares, long-form YouTube editor since 2015: 1,250 videos and 147.6M+ views tracked on YT Jobs.
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What does YouTube do with loud and quiet videos?
YouTube's player shows what it does in "Stats for nerds", on the line "Volume / Normalized", which reports the content loudness of the audio it is playing and the target it aims for. I opened five of the measured videos on September 27, 2026 and read that line:
| Video | Loudness of the file (LUFS) | Player: content loudness / target |
|---|---|---|
| MrBeast, "Last To Leave Grocery Store" | -7.4 | -14.0 dB / -14.0 dB |
| Joshua Weissman, "I Tried Fast Food That No Longer Exists" | -12.3 | -14.0 dB / -14.0 dB |
| Veritasium, "Something is jamming GPS over Europe" | -13.2 | -14.0 dB / -14.0 dB |
| Ali Abdaal, "What To Do With Your Life" | -23.9 | -20.7 dB / -14.0 dB |
| Wendover Productions, "How the Channel Tunnel Works" | -24.3 | -20.2 dB / -14.0 dB |
The three loud videos all played at the -14 target: the extra loudness was simply taken away. The two quiet ones played at about -20, six decibels under the target, and the player did not raise them further (it showed "100%/100%"). A viewer who watches a Wendover video right after a MrBeast video hears it noticeably quieter.
Two limits on this check: it is five videos in one desktop browser session, and the player served its "DRC" audio version (the line read "100%/100% DRC"). Other devices and apps may behave differently. The pattern matched on all five, though.
What loudness should you mix to?
For a voice-led long-form video, around -14 LUFS integrated is the practical target. Louder than that gets turned down, so a harder limiter only costs you dynamics. Much quieter than that, and your video plays softer than the one before it in someone's queue. Two more things from the data:
- Leave headroom on the peaks. 29 of the 50 files YouTube served had true peaks above 0 dBTP after YouTube's encoding. A master that already sits at 0 has nowhere to go when it is encoded.
- Check your own uploads the same way. Right-click a video, open "Stats for nerds" and read "Volume / Normalized". If the content loudness is well under -14, your mix is playing quieter than most of what your viewers watch.
Measure your own video with the free YouTube Loudness Check: it runs in your browser (nothing is uploaded), reads the loudness, true peak and silences of your file, and places it among these 50 videos.
How the music bed sits under the voice is a separate question, measured on three narrated channels in how loud background music should be under a voiceover.
How fast do top YouTubers talk?
The median across the 50 videos was about 179 words per minute, counted from each video's captions over its full length. Half of the videos fell between 164 and 191. The slowest was a Markiplier gameplay video at about 105, where long stretches are play without talk; the fastest, an Ali Abdaal video at about 291. In 43 of the 50 videos, the voice started within the first second.
Speech pace is a style, not a rule: the explainers from Kurzgesagt, RealLifeLore and Johnny Harris sat at 155-170, while tech and money channels such as Marques Brownlee, Linus Tech Tips and Graham Stephan sat at 185-202. For how the picture changes on top of that voice, see cut pacing measured on real channels.
How long are their long-form videos?
The median length was 28.4 minutes, and 33 of the 50 videos ran 20 minutes or longer, from 10.6 minutes (a Marques Brownlee follow-up) to 80.9 minutes (a DanTDM gameplay video). The measuring tool picks each channel's most-viewed recent long uploads, so this describes what is working for these channels right now, not their average.
The full table
Two videos per channel, ordered from the loudest channel to the quietest. Each value is shown for both videos, separated by a slash.
| Channel | Loudness (LUFS) | True peak (dBTP) | Words / min | Length (min) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MrBeast | -7.4 / -10.4 | +2.8 / +3.4 | 189 / 182 | 43 / 37 |
| SmarterEveryDay | -13.2 / -11.8 | +1.1 / +3.5 | 210 / 157 | 49 / 47 |
| Vox | -13.0 / -13.2 | +1.1 / +0.7 | 191 / 157 | 42 / 51 |
| Dude Perfect | -13.4 / -13.0 | +1.4 / +2.3 | 144 / 115 | 19 / 17 |
| Veritasium | -13.2 / -15.4 | -0.9 / -0.4 | 169 / 177 | 34 / 48 |
| Sidemen | -13.4 / -16.1 | +0.9 / -0.3 | 178 / 168 | 51 / 46 |
| Colin and Samir | -14.3 / -15.4 | -1.3 / +0.6 | 212 / 202 | 12 / 30 |
| penguinz0 | -13.1 / -16.7 | +3.6 / +0.4 | 180 / 182 | 18 / 13 |
| jacksepticeye | -14.1 / -17.3 | +0.6 / -0.0 | 189 / 131 | 32 / 53 |
| Kurzgesagt | -15.4 / -16.0 | -1.9 / -2.2 | 161 / 170 | 15 / 14 |
| Marques Brownlee | -15.9 / -16.7 | +0.7 / +0.4 | 202 / 201 | 17 / 11 |
| RealLifeLore | -16.2 / -17.2 | -0.6 / -0.7 | 164 / 155 | 39 / 30 |
| LEMMiNO | -15.9 / -17.6 | +0.7 / +0.7 | 164 / 141 | 29 / 28 |
| Markiplier | -17.4 / -16.6 | -1.2 / -0.2 | 105 / 114 | 13 / 17 |
| Mrwhosetheboss | -17.0 / -17.3 | +0.6 / +0.5 | 177 / 192 | 25 / 17 |
| Johnny Harris | -18.2 / -16.3 | +0.9 / +0.3 | 158 / 160 | 40 / 33 |
| DanTDM | -16.1 / -18.6 | +0.5 / +0.2 | 172 / 182 | 33 / 81 |
| Linus Tech Tips | -18.6 / -16.3 | -2.4 / -1.6 | 191 / 185 | 24 / 20 |
| Joshua Weissman | -23.1 / -12.3 | +0.1 / +2.7 | 227 / 218 | 25 / 33 |
| Graham Stephan | -18.1 / -17.4 | +0.6 / +0.8 | 198 / 190 | 16 / 15 |
| Simple History | -24.3 / -14.1 | -11.3 / -0.5 | 166 / 164 | 34 / 20 |
| Grian | -21.9 / -19.5 | -7.2 / +0.3 | 177 / 166 | 23 / 29 |
| OverSimplified | -20.1 / -21.5 | +0.2 / -0.2 | 184 / 189 | 30 / 34 |
| Ali Abdaal | -20.5 / -23.9 | -6.1 / -3.0 | 248 / 290 | 25 / 20 |
| Wendover Productions | -24.3 / -23.5 | -4.1 / -4.4 | 182 / 181 | 23 / 17 |
The same table as a spreadsheet: youtube-loudness-2026.csv, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 (how to cite it). The same file is also on GitHub.
How was this measured, and what was left out?
For each of 25 channels, the tool took the two most-viewed long uploads among the recent ones and downloaded the audio YouTube serves. Loudness is ITU-R BS.1770 integrated loudness and true peak (the measure behind LUFS), cross-checked with FFmpeg's own loudness filter on two videos, which gave identical values to the decimal. Words per minute come from each video's captions. 44 of the 50 videos were published in 2026; LEMMiNO, OverSimplified and SmarterEveryDay upload rarely, so their picks are from 2020, 2021 and 2025. Three channels I meant to include (Casey Neistat, Binging with Babish and Gemini Tay) could not be read by the tool and are not in the data.
I also measured cut rates and faces on screen, and I am not publishing them. On gameplay footage the cut detector counted camera movement as cuts (nine "cuts" in 30 seconds of a single continuous Markiplier shot), and the face detector missed small facecams. A number I can't stand behind doesn't go on this page. The cut rates that did hold up, on narrated documentaries, are in the pacing data.
More on what changed this year on the platform: what changed on YouTube in 2026.
Can I use this data, and how do I cite it?
Yes. The data and the chart are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license: you can copy, chart and republish them, including in commercial work, as long as you credit the source, link to this page and name the license (CC BY 4.0).
Download: youtube-loudness-2026.csv. 50 rows, one per video, in the same order as the table above: channel, channel URL, video (1 or 2), integrated loudness (LUFS), true peak (dBTP), words per minute and length (minutes). Words per minute are rounded to whole words, as in the table; length is to a tenth of a minute.
Short credit (articles, videos, slides):
Source: Kevin Tabares, Umbrella Creators, "How loud are YouTube videos? 50 videos measured (2026)", umbrellacreators.com, CC BY 4.0Full citation (APA):
Tabares, K. F. (2026). How loud are YouTube videos? 50 videos measured (2026) [Data set]. Umbrella Creators. https://umbrellacreators.com/blog/youtube-loudness-lufs-study-2026Embed this chart (copy into your page's HTML):
<a href="https://umbrellacreators.com/blog/youtube-loudness-lufs-study-2026"><img src="https://umbrellacreators.com/data/youtube-loudness-2026-lufs.svg" width="440" height="462" style="max-width:100%;height:auto" alt="Loudness of 50 YouTube videos from 25 large channels: median -16.3 LUFS, 12 louder than -14 LUFS, 9 quieter than -20 LUFS"></a>
<p>Chart: <a href="https://umbrellacreators.com/blog/youtube-loudness-lufs-study-2026">Kevin Tabares, Umbrella Creators</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a></p>If you find a mistake in the data, email me and I will correct it with a note.
Another data study from the same editor: 1,142 long-form Roblox and gaming videos: views by niche, upload day and title habits.
Cited by: LensPOV, Best video editing software for YouTube (export loudness section, October 2026).
FAQ
What LUFS should I mix YouTube videos to?
Around -14 LUFS integrated is a practical target for voice-led long-form. In a 2026 playback check, YouTube turned louder videos down to -14, so mixing hotter bought nothing, while videos mastered near -24 still played at about -20, quieter than the rest.
How loud are popular YouTube videos?
Across 50 recent long-form videos from 25 large channels, integrated loudness ran from -24.3 to -7.4 LUFS, with a median of -16.3. A quarter were louder than -14.1 and a quarter quieter than -18.2, so there is no shared standard among big channels.
Does YouTube normalize loudness?
In my check it turned loud videos down: MrBeast, Veritasium and Joshua Weissman videos measured -7.4 to -13.2 LUFS in the file and showed a content loudness of -14 dB in the player. Quiet videos near -24 showed about -20 and were not raised further.
How fast do YouTubers talk?
The median in the 50 videos measured was about 179 words per minute, with half between 164 and 191. The slowest was a Markiplier gameplay video at about 105, the fastest an Ali Abdaal video at about 291.
All the numbers: every measured number from these studies in one list: YouTube editing statistics 2026.