For most of its life, Bilibili has been the platform Western audiences half-recognized from anime memes and “wait, China has its own YouTube?” trivia. That’s about to change. The company confirmed this month it’s taking its 17-year-old Chinese playbook global, and it isn’t being subtle about who it wants: the creators currently paying YouTube’s bills.
A Global App, Built City by City
Job postings tell you where. Bilibili is staffing up community manager roles in Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, São Paulo, Istanbul and Tokyo — a spread that looks less like a cautious pilot and more like a company trying to be everywhere at once.
A separate Singapore listing mentions “AI-powered content moderation systems” built for the international app, which is its own quiet admission that moderation is going to be a headache the second this thing leaves China.
The company’s Creator Hub account has been teasing the Bilibili global expansion for weeks without giving a launch date, though it has promised the international version will keep the same content library as the domestic one, just with “better localization and easier sign-ups.”
None of that is the interesting part, though. The interesting part is money.
So, How Much Does Bilibili Actually Pay Per 1,000 Views?
This is the number every creator actually wants, so here it is: Bilibili is reportedly offering around $0.70 per 1,000 views globally as part of its new creator competition program.
Bilibili recently invited me to speak about creating "red" content for foreign audiences.
Below are some parts from my speech.
They told me I had to speak in Mandarin and couldn't use hand cards. Fine. But on the day one or two Chinese used cards.
Not fair! 🤣 @bilibili_en… pic.twitter.com/jZhe7mPhdM
— Andy Boreham 安柏然 (@AndyBxxx) August 24, 2026
Run the math and a video that hits a million views would net roughly $700 — before the usual caveats kick in. The exact rate isn’t fixed; it moves depending on where your viewers are watching from and what category your content falls into, the same way YouTube’s RPM does.
For context, YouTube’s own RPM swings anywhere from roughly $1 to $22 per 1,000 views depending on niche, audience geography, and season, so Bilibili’s flat-ish $0.70 rate isn’t going to out-earn a finance or tech channel with a US-heavy audience. Where it gets interesting is for creators in categories or regions YouTube already pays poorly — for them, an extra $0.70 per thousand on top of existing YouTube income is closer to found money than a replacement paycheck.
To even qualify for payouts under the new program, Bilibili says creators need at least 100 subscribers and 2,000 valid public views — a noticeably lower bar than YouTube’s Partner Program, which requires 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours (or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days).
Bilibili also runs originality and copyright checks before approving anyone, and payouts can be trimmed by tax withholding or fraud screening, so the headline rate and what actually lands in your account won’t always match exactly.
Getting Started: How to Open a Bilibili Creator Account
If you want to test the water before the full global rollout lands, the process currently looks like this:
- Download the app or head to bilibili.com and create an account using an email or phone number. Overseas sign-ups are already open, even ahead of the English-language site.
2. Verify your identity. Bilibili asks for phone verification and, for full creator access, a real-name check — standard for most Chinese platforms, though the international version is expected to simplify this.
3. Upload consistently before applying for monetization. New accounts typically need a track record of original content — Bilibili checks for it — rather than being approved on day one.
4. Hit the threshold. Reach the required subscriber and view counts (100 subscribers / 2,000 valid views under the new global program) to unlock the application.
5. Apply through the Creator Center. Look for the Monetization or Incentive Plan tab, submit your details, and wait — approval has taken anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for existing applicants.
6. Set up payout. Historically, Bilibili paid domestic creators in yuan through Alipay or a mainland bank account, which was a real obstacle for overseas creators. Whether the global version supports PayPal or direct international transfers is one of the details Bilibili hasn’t fully spelled out yet — worth confirming before you count on the income.
The Rest of the Monetization Menu
Beyond the flat per-view rate, Bilibili already has a few other ways creators can earn that don’t exist in quite the same form on YouTube. There’s danmu, the platform’s signature move: comments that fly across the video in real time instead of sitting in a box underneath it, which creators can turn into revenue rather than just noise.
There’s direct fan support through B-coins and “Shells,” closer to tipping than to ad splits — one existing creator on the Chinese platform reported earning the equivalent of roughly $20-25 from a single video with over 100,000 views through this system alone, layered on top of any ad revenue. And there’s a brand marketplace reportedly in development that would pair creators straight with sponsors, cutting out some of the usual friction.
It’s a good pitch. It’s also, so far, partly a pitch — the international revenue-sharing terms haven’t been locked down or published in full detail, so any creator jumping in early is doing it on trust as much as paperwork.
Bilibili knows star power helps here too. MrBeast’s videos already run on the Chinese version of the platform, and he’s become something of a poster child for the kind of recognizable name Bilibili hopes will drag a Western audience along with it.
Can Bilibili Actually Beat YouTube?
The bigger question is whether any of this actually works. YouTube isn’t just an app — it’s two decades of ad infrastructure, payment systems and creator tools that Bilibili can’t replicate overnight. And the cautionary tale here isn’t hypothetical: Xiaohongshu, marketed abroad as RedNote, tried to capitalize on last year’s TikTok ban scare in the U.S. and mostly got treated as a novelty that people abandoned once the ban threat passed.
Bilibili is also walking into the same scrutiny every Chinese platform faces overseas — questions about censorship, data handling, who’s really moderating what.
Whether Bilibili turns into a real second income stream for creators or just another app people tried once depends less on danmu comments than on whether it can prove, with actual numbers, that the money is real. For now, it’s asking people to believe first and check the receipts later.
