MrBeast takes number one spot on Forbes top creators [Full list]

The leaderboard: one whale, 49 minnows

MrBeast's $300 million dwarfs the rest of the top five combined. Dhar Mann sits at $65 million in second. Steven Bartlett takes third with $52 million, Markiplier lands fourth at $38 million, and Rhett & Link close out the upper tier at $37 million. Add those four together and you get $192 million — still $108 million short of Donaldson's solo output.

The top 10 also includes Codie Sanchez ($31 million), IShowSpeed ($30 million), Mark Rober ($30 million), Druski, and Charli D'Amelio. Their presence signals something worth noting: the money is no longer concentrated solely in long-form YouTube. Finance education, live-streaming, sketch comedy and short-form dance are all viable revenue verticals when scaled correctly.

The macro number that matters

Forbes pegs combined earnings of the top 50 creators at $1.02 billion for the trailing twelve months. That's a 20% year-over-year jump from the $853 million recorded in 2025, and an 80% increase from the inaugural 2022 list. The publication's own framing — "the creator economy is no longer trying to break into show business; it is show business" — reads less like analysis and more like a victory lap for the industry.

The methodology leans on estimated gross earnings, audience size, engagement rates and business ventures. Gross earnings, not net — worth remembering when evaluating how much of that revenue actually converts to profit after production costs, staffing, and ad-spend overhead.

Donaldson's diversification playbook

What separates MrBeast from peers isn't view count alone — it's vertical integration. Beast Industries acts as a holding company. Feastables and Lunchly are consumer-packaged-goods plays. Viewstats is a data/analytics tool. Then there's the YouTube channel itself, Amazon Prime's Beast Games, and an audience of 873 million followers across platforms. The creator-as-media-company thesis, once a pitch-deck slide, now has a balance sheet to back it up.

For anyone monetising attention at scale, the Forbes list is less a celebration and more a competitive benchmark. The top tier is consolidating faster than the long tail is growing — and that's the structural trend worth tracking heading into 2027.