Statistics on 3,250 Educational YouTube Channels

I conducted a large-scale collection of educational YouTube channels worldwide and across multiple languages, classifying 3,250 channels with at least 100,000 subscribers into 18 categories and 43 languages. The survey date was October 1, 2026. Median subscribers were 569,000, and the simple total was approximately 7.49 billion (this is not a count of people, because the same viewers may subscribe to multiple channels).

Download the full dataset

Download the CSV data package for all 3,250 channels

yasue.org's attachment API does not accept CSV files directly, so the CSV has been embedded in a PDF data package. You can save youtube_learning_channels_2026-10-01.csv directly from your PDF viewer's “Attachments” panel. The CSV includes channel name, category, estimated primary language, subscriber count, YouTube URL, channel ID, verification status, description, Wikidata URL, verification date, and selection score.

Key findings

Education and test preparation is the largest category by channel count, followed by substantial groups in technology, business, science, and mathematics.
Subscriber counts follow an extreme long-tail distribution: the mean is 2.303 million, while the median is 569,000. Very large channels pull the average sharply upward.
English is the largest language, but it is far from the only one. The dataset identifies 43 languages, including Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, and Arabic.
The areas most likely to grow next are AI literacy and workforce reskilling, multilingual practical know-how, interactive learning videos, connections between short-form video and long-form lessons, and health, finance, and legal explainers that foreground credibility.

Methodology

Extracted approximately 23,000 candidates with YouTube channel IDs and subscriber-count records from Wikidata Query Service.
Rechecked each channel's public status, public subscriber count, name, description, tags, and other information on YouTube.
Excluded channels with fewer than 100,000 subscribers, deleted or suspended channels, and channels without a Videos tab.
Classified normalized names, descriptions, and Wikidata descriptions using multilingual keywords plus occupation and institution information.
Applied exclusion criteria for dedicated entertainment, sports broadcasts, corporate advertising, music distribution, and similar content, removing obvious false positives.

“Educational” here is not limited to formal schooling. It is a broad operational definition that includes explainers, professional skills, cooking, DIY, health, finance, law, documentaries, public knowledge, and early-childhood learning. Since YouTube has no official “educational” flag, this is not a census; it is a large-scale snapshot built from public information using reproducible criteria. False positives and false negatives may remain in borderline cases. Subscriber counts are also rounded values displayed by YouTube and change daily.

Statistics by category

Category	Channels	Share	Median subscribers	Simple total subscribers
Education & Test Preparation	658	20.2%	424,000	1,077,606,000
DIY, Crafts & Practical Skills	332	10.2%	712,500	696,327,000
Business, Finance & Careers	316	9.7%	700,500	673,099,000
Documentaries & General Knowledge	297	9.1%	563,000	599,404,000
Science & Mathematics	289	8.9%	731,000	745,118,000
Technology & Programming	285	8.8%	398,000	465,217,000
Health & Medicine	255	7.8%	511,000	377,049,000
History, Society & Humanities	213	6.6%	499,000	397,466,000
Cooking & Food Skills	162	5.0%	859,000	419,320,000
Law & Public Affairs	97	3.0%	437,000	186,816,000
Early Childhood Education	88	2.7%	3,095,000	1,394,044,000
Art, Music & Design Skills	58	1.8%	882,500	116,889,000
Transport & Engineering	53	1.6%	429,000	71,109,000
Sports & Exercise Instruction	42	1.3%	584,500	54,099,000
Agriculture, Nature & Animals	35	1.1%	822,000	99,562,000
Language Learning	34	1.0%	704,000	64,410,000
Religion & Spiritual Culture	19	0.6%	1,040,000	35,263,000
Self-Development & Communication	17	0.5%	267,000	13,317,000

Education and test preparation is the core category by channel count, but highly practical areas—technology, business, health, DIY, and cooking—also form large clusters. Cooking, DIY, and early-childhood learning in particular have a small number of enormous channels that strongly raise total subscriber counts. By contrast, law and public policy, agriculture, religious studies, and independent-living support have fewer channels and offer considerable room for future development.

Statistics by language (top 20)

Language	Channels	Share	Median subscribers
English	2,239	68.9%	634,000
Japanese	158	4.9%	312,500
Russian	128	3.9%	476,500
Portuguese	99	3.0%	1,140,000
German	79	2.4%	408,000
Chinese	76	2.3%	419,000
Arabic	72	2.2%	590,000
Spanish	69	2.1%	644,000
French	68	2.1%	482,000
Multilingual	29	0.9%	867,000
Turkish	29	0.9%	341,000
Italian	27	0.8%	322,000
Korean	23	0.7%	742,000
Indonesian	21	0.6%	1,580,000
Polish	16	0.5%	467,000
Ukrainian	15	0.5%	392,000
Bengali	10	0.3%	1,354,000
Dutch	10	0.3%	382,000
Hindi	8	0.2%	2,170,000
Vietnamese	7	0.2%	297,000

English's high share reflects not only global demand for a common language, but also collection bias: the completeness of Wikidata descriptions, language detection from channel descriptions, and the frequent inclusion of English. It therefore cannot be interpreted as meaning that roughly 70% of global learning demand is in English. More importantly, educational channels with more than 100,000 subscribers exist in 43 languages, with substantial communities in Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese-speaking markets.

Top 20 by subscriber count

Channel	Category	Language	Subscribers
Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes	Early Childhood Education	English	203,000,000
Vlad and Niki	Early Childhood Education	English	151,000,000
Like Nastya	Early Childhood Education	English	133,000,000
Toys and Colors	Early Childhood Education	English	83,000,000
5-Minute Crafts	DIY, Crafts & Practical Skills	English	80,500,000
Infobells - Hindi	Early Childhood Education	English	72,800,000
LooLoo Kids - Nursery Rhymes and Children's Songs	Early Childhood Education	English	62,600,000
आचार्य प्रशान्त - Acharya Prashant	History, Society & Humanities	Hindi	61,000,000
Billion Surprise Toys	Early Childhood Education	English	57,700,000
shfa	Education & Test Preparation	Arabic	56,700,000
Maria Clara & JP	Early Childhood Education	Portuguese	50,700,000
Você Sabia?	Documentaries & General Knowledge	Portuguese	47,300,000
★ Kids Roma Show	Early Childhood Education	English	45,600,000
TEDx Talks	Education & Test Preparation	English	44,700,000
BRIGHT SIDE	Science & Mathematics	English	44,500,000
BabyBus - Preschool Songs & Learning Cartoons	Early Childhood Education	English	44,100,000
Ryan's World	Science & Mathematics	English	40,400,000
D Billions	Early Childhood Education	English	37,400,000
Bayashi TV	Cooking & Food Skills	English	37,200,000
Nick Jr.	Technology & Programming	English	35,700,000

The top channels include early-childhood content, practical know-how, and general knowledge. This shows that “learning” is not confined to lecture-style content; it is embedded in songs, demonstrations, stories, experiments, and how-to videos. However, the line between learning and entertainment is blurred in children's content and edutainment, so further filtering based on your purpose is recommended when using the CSV.

Top 5 channels by category and subscribers

The following channels are ranked by their public subscriber counts as of October 1, 2026. Each channel is normalized to one primary category, so the list includes channels spanning multiple fields as well as edutainment at the boundary between learning and entertainment.

Education & Test Preparation

shfa — About 56.7 million subscribers; primary language: Arabic. Focuses on lessons, talks, exam preparation, and structured learning.
TEDx Talks — About 44.7 million subscribers; primary language: English. Focuses on lessons, talks, exam preparation, and structured learning.
Dhruv Rathee — About 32.9 million subscribers; primary language: English. Focuses on lessons, talks, exam preparation, and structured learning.
Vsauce — About 25.2 million subscribers; primary language: English. Focuses on lessons, talks, exam preparation, and structured learning.
TED-Ed — About 22.9 million subscribers; primary language: English. Focuses on lessons, talks, exam preparation, and structured learning.

DIY, Crafts & Practical Skills

5-Minute Crafts — About 80.5 million subscribers; primary language: English. Teaches skills through demonstrations, including crafts, makeup, repairs, and life hacks.
James Charles — About 23.7 million subscribers; primary language: English. Teaches skills through demonstrations, including crafts, makeup, repairs, and life hacks.
Manual do Mundo — About 20.5 million subscribers; primary language: Portuguese. Teaches skills through demonstrations, including crafts, makeup, repairs, and life hacks.
HowToBasic — About 17.8 million subscribers; primary language: English. Teaches skills through demonstrations, including crafts, makeup, repairs, and life hacks.
NikkieTutorials — About 15.4 million subscribers; primary language: Afrikaans. Teaches skills through demonstrations, including crafts, makeup, repairs, and life hacks.

Business, Finance & Careers

SOMOY TV — About 28.9 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers management, finance, work skills, and career development.
Dhar Mann Studios — About 27.7 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers management, finance, work skills, and career development.
Technical Guruji — About 23.7 million subscribers; primary language: Hindi. Covers management, finance, work skills, and career development.
Dr. Vivek Bindra: Motivational Speaker — About 21 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers management, finance, work skills, and career development.
CNN — About 19.9 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers management, finance, work skills, and career development.

Documentaries & General Knowledge

Você Sabia? — About 47.3 million subscribers; primary language: Portuguese. Broadens knowledge through news, factual explainers, and documentaries.
WatchMojo.com — About 25.8 million subscribers; primary language: English. Broadens knowledge through news, factual explainers, and documentaries.
FactTechz — About 21.6 million subscribers; primary language: English. Broadens knowledge through news, factual explainers, and documentaries.
BBC News — About 20.1 million subscribers; primary language: English. Broadens knowledge through news, factual explainers, and documentaries.
VICE — About 19.2 million subscribers; primary language: English. Broadens knowledge through news, factual explainers, and documentaries.

Science & Mathematics

BRIGHT SIDE — About 44.5 million subscribers; primary language: English. Focuses on science, mathematics, experiments, and logical explanations.
Ryan's World — About 40.4 million subscribers; primary language: English. Focuses on science, mathematics, experiments, and logical explanations.
TED — About 27.9 million subscribers; primary language: English. Focuses on science, mathematics, experiments, and logical explanations.
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell — About 25.6 million subscribers; primary language: English. Focuses on science, mathematics, experiments, and logical explanations.
DrossRotzank — About 24.2 million subscribers; primary language: Spanish. Focuses on science, mathematics, experiments, and logical explanations.

Technology & Programming

Nick Jr. — About 35.7 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers digital products, software, programming, and technology trends.
NBA — About 24.5 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers digital products, software, programming, and technology trends.
Marques Brownlee — About 21.3 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers digital products, software, programming, and technology trends.
Apple — About 21.1 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers digital products, software, programming, and technology trends.
Channel 24 — About 17.1 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers digital products, software, programming, and technology trends.

Health & Medicine

Tibo InShape — About 26.9 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers medicine, psychology, exercise, and health maintenance.
Doc Tops — About 16.5 million subscribers; primary language: Spanish. Covers medicine, psychology, exercise, and health maintenance.
Doctor Mike — About 15.1 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers medicine, psychology, exercise, and health maintenance.
Oum Walid — About 14.4 million subscribers; primary language: Arabic. Covers medicine, psychology, exercise, and health maintenance.
Psych2Go — About 13.2 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers medicine, psychology, exercise, and health maintenance.

History, Society & Humanities

आचार्य प्रशान्त - Acharya Prashant — About 61 million subscribers; primary language: Hindi. Explains history, society, ideas, and culture.
National Geographic — About 26.5 million subscribers; primary language: English. Explains history, society, ideas, and culture.
Turma da Mônica — About 21.8 million subscribers; primary language: Portuguese. Explains history, society, ideas, and culture.
Gato Galactico — About 20.6 million subscribers; primary language: Portuguese. Explains history, society, ideas, and culture.
T3ddy — About 19.3 million subscribers; primary language: English. Explains history, society, ideas, and culture.

Cooking & Food Skills

Bayashi TV — About 37.2 million subscribers; primary language: English. Shares cooking, recipes, and food culture through demonstrations.
Village Cooking Channel — About 31 million subscribers; primary language: English. Shares cooking, recipes, and food culture through demonstrations.
Gordon Ramsay — About 22 million subscribers; primary language: English. Shares cooking, recipes, and food culture through demonstrations.
HikakinTV — About 19.8 million subscribers; primary language: Japanese. Shares cooking, recipes, and food culture through demonstrations.
Czn Burak — About 18 million subscribers; primary language: Turkish. Shares cooking, recipes, and food culture through demonstrations.

Law & Public Affairs

GMA Public Affairs — About 28.5 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers law, politics, public policy, and current affairs.
Al Jazeera English — About 18.2 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers law, politics, public policy, and current affairs.
ARY News — About 16.4 million subscribers; primary language: Multilingual. Covers law, politics, public policy, and current affairs.
Rtv News — About 11.1 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers law, politics, public policy, and current affairs.
MS NOW — About 10 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers law, politics, public policy, and current affairs.

Early Childhood Education

Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes — About 203 million subscribers; primary language: English. Provides early-childhood learning and edutainment through songs, stories, and play.
Vlad and Niki — About 151 million subscribers; primary language: English. Provides early-childhood learning and edutainment through songs, stories, and play.
Like Nastya — About 133 million subscribers; primary language: English. Provides early-childhood learning and edutainment through songs, stories, and play.
Toys and Colors — About 83 million subscribers; primary language: English. Provides early-childhood learning and edutainment through songs, stories, and play.
Infobells - Hindi — About 72.8 million subscribers; primary language: English. Provides early-childhood learning and edutainment through songs, stories, and play.

Art, Music & Design Skills

José Totoy em Português (BR) — About 21.8 million subscribers; primary language: Portuguese. Covers creative skills such as drawing, video, music, and design.
Bob Zoom — About 9.04 million subscribers; primary language: Portuguese. Covers creative skills such as drawing, video, music, and design.
Soft White Underbelly — About 7.11 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers creative skills such as drawing, video, music, and design.
Jazza — About 6.73 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers creative skills such as drawing, video, music, and design.
Bob Ross — About 6.61 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers creative skills such as drawing, video, music, and design.

Transport & Engineering

Supercar Blondie — About 22.3 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers automobiles, aviation, transport, machinery, and engineering technology.
Donut — About 9.35 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers automobiles, aviation, transport, machinery, and engineering technology.
Vincent Raditya — About 5.91 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers automobiles, aviation, transport, machinery, and engineering technology.
Sam Chui — About 3.91 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers automobiles, aviation, transport, machinery, and engineering technology.
Shmee150 — About 2.88 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers automobiles, aviation, transport, machinery, and engineering technology.

Sports & Exercise Instruction

Swami Ramdev — About 11.7 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers yoga, fitness, martial arts, and exercise skills.
Move With Nicole — About 6.21 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers yoga, fitness, martial arts, and exercise skills.
Shilpa Shetty Kundra — About 3.81 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers yoga, fitness, martial arts, and exercise skills.
Melvin PZ9 — About 3.27 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers yoga, fitness, martial arts, and exercise skills.
PFL MMA — About 2.72 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers yoga, fitness, martial arts, and exercise skills.

Agriculture, Nature & Animals

Brave Wilderness — About 21.8 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers agriculture, gardening, wildlife, and the natural environment.
The Dodo — About 18.8 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers agriculture, gardening, wildlife, and the natural environment.
Dean Schneider — About 11.2 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers agriculture, gardening, wildlife, and the natural environment.
iPanda — About 9.51 million subscribers; primary language: Japanese. Covers agriculture, gardening, wildlife, and the natural environment.
Epic Gardening — About 4.12 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers agriculture, gardening, wildlife, and the natural environment.

Language Learning

English with Lucy — About 14.2 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers foreign-language comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary, and intercultural communication.
Xiaomanyc 小马在纽约 — About 7.11 million subscribers; primary language: Chinese. Covers foreign-language comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary, and intercultural communication.
Duolingo — About 6.92 million subscribers; primary language: Japanese. Covers foreign-language comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary, and intercultural communication.
DW Español — About 5.6 million subscribers; primary language: Spanish. Covers foreign-language comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary, and intercultural communication.
Easy German — About 3.3 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers foreign-language comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary, and intercultural communication.

Religion & Spiritual Culture

Alafasy — About 12.2 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers religion, sacred texts, philosophy, and spiritual culture.
Omar Hisham Al Arabi — About 3.83 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers religion, sacred texts, philosophy, and spiritual culture.
ARY Qtv — About 3.53 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers religion, sacred texts, philosophy, and spiritual culture.
The official channel of KSA Qur’an TV — About 2.75 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers religion, sacred texts, philosophy, and spiritual culture.
اقرأ | Iqraa — About 2.07 million subscribers; primary language: Arabic. Covers religion, sacred texts, philosophy, and spiritual culture.

Self-Development & Communication

Steven Furtick — About 3.64 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers leadership, parenting, personal growth, and communication skills.
Simon Sinek — About 2.8 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers leadership, parenting, personal growth, and communication skills.
FirstCry Parenting — About 1.65 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers leadership, parenting, personal growth, and communication skills.
Robin Sharma — About 1.03 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers leadership, parenting, personal growth, and communication skills.
Brendon Burchard — About 1.01 million subscribers; primary language: English. Covers leadership, parenting, personal growth, and communication skills.

Recent trends

1. Language barriers are falling rapidly

In 2025, YouTube expanded multi-language audio to millions of creators and reported that videos with multi-language audio received, on average, more than 25% of watch time from viewers in non-primary languages. In February 2026, automatic dubbing expanded to every channel and 27 languages; by December 2025, average daily viewers watching more than 10 minutes of automatically dubbed content exceeded 6 million. Learning videos are especially well positioned to benefit across borders because their visual structure is clear and easy to translate.

2. AI is moving from “answers” to dialogue that supports understanding

In 2025, Google signaled a shift toward making YouTube and Search more conversational, allowing users to ask questions while learning. YouTube itself has introduced examples of conversational AI being used in academic videos for supplementary explanations and quizzes. The learning experience is beginning to shift from standalone video to video plus questions plus knowledge checks.

3. Expert knowledge and practical skills are converging

In this dataset, education and test preparation, technology, business, science, and health alone account for more than half of all channels. The line between school knowledge and professional skills is thinning, and themes viewers can immediately try—such as coding, AI, investing, medicine, cooking, and DIY—are especially strong.

4. Short-form and long-form content are becoming a pathway, not competitors

YouTube's 2025 creation tools strengthened AI support for producing Shorts and clips from long-form content. In educational content, short-form video is likely to serve discovery, long-form video understanding, and live streams or communities question-and-answer support.

Predictions for the next popular genres

Leading contender: AI literacy and occupation-specific AI use

The broad topic of “how to use AI” will split into practical applications by profession, including teaching, medicine, legal work, marketing, accounting, research, and manufacturing. Channels that go beyond prompt collections to cover validation, source checking, evaluation design, copyright, and misinformation mitigation will become stronger.

Leading contender: practical know-how localized for multiple languages

Visual subjects such as cooking, DIY, software, mathematics, and science experiments work well with automatic dubbing. Major English-language channels will expand into non-English markets, while specialists in non-English markets will find it easier to enter English-language markets. The assumption of one channel per language will break down.

Promising: videos that combine dialogue, quizzes, and learning materials

More content will let viewers ask AI questions after watching, verify key ideas through quizzes, and continue to related videos. Channels designed around whether viewers have understood—not merely passive watch time—will be easier to differentiate.

Promising: health, finance, and law that sell credibility

The easier generative AI makes it to mass-produce explanatory videos, the more important it becomes who is speaking, what the evidence is, and when the information was updated. Channels that show credentials, link primary sources, disclose conflicts of interest, and maintain correction histories are likely to grow.

Underserved opportunity: digital skills for older adults and regional languages

Demand is growing for native-language explanations of smartphones, fraud prevention, public-administration procedures, telehealth, and AI assistance. The current large-channel distribution is heavily weighted toward English, leaving substantial room for community-focused education in regional languages.

Notes on using the data

Subscriber counts are rounded public figures as displayed on October 1, 2026.
The dataset does not include channels with private subscriber counts, channels without a Wikidata channel ID, or channels not discovered through the search process.
Languages were estimated from each channel's stated language, description, script, and language detection. Channels in multiple languages are labeled Multilingual.
Each channel is assigned one primary category, although many channels span multiple categories in practice.
Total subscribers are not deduplicated and therefore do not represent unique users.
To make borderline cases auditable, the CSV retains descriptions, source URLs, and selection scores.