Most Expensive YouTube Videos

Here are the YouTube videos that cost the most money!

February 17, 2023・

19 min read

Once upon a time, YouTube was all about grainy home videos of cats with funny faces, bedroom karaoke, and kids biting their brother’s finger. Currently, YouTubers create expensive, high-quality content with budgets that sometimes rival Hollywood productions.

From videos with giant stacks of cash, to mad inventions and even space-rocket launch attempts, YouTube may be free to watch, but it isn’t free to produce. Let's explore the videos with the biggest budgets, checking out some of the most expensive YouTube videos ever made!

A Magnet Sandwich

They say some men just want to watch the world burn, but back in 2015 YouTuber TechRax settled for wrecking an 18-karat gold Apple Watch. Over the years, TechRax has destroyed enough iPhones and iPads to stock an entire apple store, but at $10,000, the gold apple watch is one of his most expensive purchases.

An extravagant watch deserves an extravagant death, for the YouTube views, of course. So TechRax placed the gadget in between two powerful Neodymium magnets, before slowly pushing them together.

Neodymium is used to make the world’s strongest magnets, and once TechRax’s were close enough to attract each other, they shot together with 650lbs of force, squeezing the watch like a magnet sandwich. The collision was so powerful, parts of the magnets snapped off during the impact, and the watch, understandably, didn’t survive, the screen exploding with a blast of sparks.

It looked like the $10,000 watch had kicked the bucket, however, when TechRax put the gadget on charge, it did make a charging indicator sound, proving it was somehow still alive. Totally unusable, of course, but alive, nonetheless.

I’m not sure whether TechRax bothered to get the watch repaired, but after the video was released, he could definitely afford it. Currently, average content creators on YouTube earn around $5 per 1,000 views in ad revenue, with the exact amount varying from YouTuber to YouTuber.

At these rates, TechRax’s 7,000,000 views will have earnt him around $35,000, enough to buy three more gold apple watches, with some spare change to repair the original one!

Homemade Hoverbike

Colin Furze is a YouTuber from Stamford, England, known for his insane inventions. Over the years, the plumber-turned-mad scientist has created real Assassin’s Creed blades, backyard bunkers, and, most famously, a working homemade hoverbike.

With over 50 million views, ‘Homemade Hoverbike’ is Furze’s most viewed video and likely his most expensive, the cost to build the flying bike clocking in at upwards of $16,000. The bike uses two parajet motors, giant fans that are typically used for powered paragliding.

At $5,000 to $8,000 a fan, these motors pack a lot of power, and once Furze had constructed the bike out of aluminum, they were strong enough to allow him to take flight with a bit of trial and error.

The approximate total cost of around $16,000 might seem like a lot, but at 50 million views and counting, this video could’ve earnt Furze over $250,000, making the cost of his functioning hoverbike seem like a bargain.

Crushit’s Gold Bar

When it comes to making YouTube videos, the team at Crushit have always crushed it, literally and figuratively. The channel has crushed all kinds of things with their hydraulic press, from batteries to cell phones, to bars of solid gold.

For that latter feat, Crushit’s bar was 1 kilogram of 24 Karat Gold, worth $40,000 back in 2016, a pretty high price to pay for something you’re immediately going to destroy. When it came time to crush, the bar was easily squashed by the hydraulic press, the gold folding down like an overpriced piece of paper.

Despite its value, gold is actually one of the softest metals, so the stainless-steel hydraulic press managed to crush the bar until it was nothing more than a shiny blob, the metal offering almost no resistance.

Of course, even after being crushed, the bar was still worth $40,000, and today, the value of that same kilo of gold has risen to around 60 grand, making that bar a pretty good investment.

That extra $20,000 added to the value of the gold was a nice bit of pocket money for Crushit, not that the team needed it. At 18 million views, the video would’ve earnt around $90,000, allowing Crushit to buy another gold bar, with tens of thousands left over!

Video Game High School

Today, high-budget YouTube videos are pretty common, with YouTubers like MrBeast spending a fortune every time they create a piece of content. But one of the earliest YouTubers to create high-budget content on the platform was Rocketjump, an online production company founded by Freddy Wong.

Rocketjump’s most successful series was Video Game High School, an online show that started in 2012, taking place in a fictional world where competitive gaming is the most popular professional sport. The characters attend VGHS, a wacky high school that trains talented gamers to become professionals.

The show was a hit, running for 3 seasons, growing in size and budget each year. These episodes required expensive sets, stunts, special effects and actors' salaries, meaning that by the final season, the budget had risen to around $2.5 Million, each of its 6 episodes costing 416 grand to make.

At the time, spending 416K on a YouTube video was unprecedented, and the episodes were among the most expensive videos on the platform. The funds were largely sourced through sponsors and crowdfunding, and they certainly didn’t go to waste.

With VGHS accruing over 150 million views during its 3-season run, and getting nominated for several digital media awards, making it one of the first examples of a YouTube series that felt like a Hollywood production.

High Stakes Hide and Seek

Now, the YouTuber you’ve been waiting for: MrBeast. Over the last few years, MrBeast’s channel has grown at blistering speeds, seeing real name Jimmy Donaldson become the 5th most popular YouTuber on the platform, boasting over 100 million subscribers.

If MrBeast’s subscribers formed a country, they’d be the 16th largest in the world, beating out Turkey, Germany, France and the UK.

Most of MrBeast’s citizens (or subscribers) have been drawn in by the huge amounts of money that the YouTuber gives away in his videos. It wouldn't even be possible to include all of his multi-thousand-dollar challenges, considering his annual YouTube video budget is reportedly over $48 million.

So instead of making this article a MrBeast compilation, let's focus on a few of his most creative, outlandish, and expensive videos, starting with the YouTuber’s unique spin on Hide and Seek.

You might think hide and seek is just a game for kids, but back in 2021 MrBeast decided to raise the stakes, playing a round of the childhood game with a $1 Million cash prize. If that wasn’t outlandish enough, the game took place in the SoFi stadium, home of the NFL’s LA Rams and LA Chargers.

Usually, the 70,000-seat stadium is used to play football, but MrBeast rented out the entire arena to mess around with his friends, the ‘hiders’ including Logan Paul, Bella Poarch, Zach King and other famous content creators.

The competitors hid in the stadium, while MrBeast and his team hunted them down. After hours of intense hiding and seeking, the King was crowned, with Zach King winning $1 Million for hiding in the ceiling of one of the stadium’s rooms.

The cash prize was obviously the video’s biggest expense although renting out SoFi stadium would’ve cost a very pretty penny too. Renting an entire major stadium is such an outlandish act, that info on how much it actually cost to produce is extremely scarce. However, we can use other celebrities to make an estimate.

Back in 2013, Kanye West rented out AT&T park in San Francisco, the home of the San Francisco Giants. Sources at the time reported that such an outrageously-extravagant act would cost around $220,000 for the day. So, if MrBeast got a similar deal for the SoFi Stadium, his little game of hide and seek could’ve cost upwards of $1.2 million as a grand total.

This budget was partially funded by MrBeast, and his sponsors, and with the vid garnering just over 67 million views, it could’ve earnt him upwards of $325,000 in revenue to invest into his other videos. And to think, we all used to play hide and seek on the playground for free.

A Block of Cash

This next video from MrBeast is all about money, the challenge revolving around a stack of $1 Million in cold hard cash. MrBeast put 4 contestants through a test of endurance, challenging them to place one hand on the block of money, and leave it on there for as long as possible, the last remaining challenger winning the million bucks.

When asked about the budget for the video, MrBeast later explained that the cash prize, coupled with renting the studio and the production costs, added up to around $1.2 Million. With all that money on the line, the challenge lasted 36 hours, 2 of the contestants managing to keep their hand on the cash for a day and a half.

Through endless waking hours of standing and occasionally peeing in a bucket, neither of them showed any sign of letting up until one of the contestants got a spasm in his knee, instinctively lifting his hand in pain and exhaustion. Needless to say, his regret was off the charts.

Once the challenge was over, Mr Beast gave the prize to the lucky winner. Hungry and sleep deprived, the winner definitely didn’t feel like a million bucks, but he’d won a fortune, and took the cash home.

He wasn’t the only person who earnt a block of cash. The video’s over 90 million views earnt MrBeast around $450,000 of his own, recouping some of that insane cash prize, ready for more insane projects, which we’ll soon be hearing about.

Dramatic Drone Shows

For their 50th anniversary in 2018, Intel decided to put on a record-breaking light show, launching 2,000 drones into the sky. The electronics company specializes in creating cutting edge electronic equipment, and the YouTube video they made to commemorate their anniversary was just as innovative.

The drones displayed dancing spacemen, floating brains, planet earth and of course, the company’s logo.

The video only achieved 163,000 views on YouTube, likely earning just $815. However, creating a viral YouTube video wasn’t Intel’s primary goal. At the time, this show set a new Guinness world record for ‘the most unmanned aerial vehicles airborne simultaneously,’ making Intel’s 50th anniversary a record-breaking event.

The show was pretty spectacular, but unfortunately, Intel’s record has now been beaten. Korean car manufacturer Genesis used 3,281 drones in their video, to celebrate the entry of their cars into the Chinese market. This show included the company’s logo and Genesis’ car models, beamed across the Shanghai skyline.

The drones used in these light shows look absolutely spectacular. It’s almost unfathomable to think all those colored lights are thousands of individual quadcopters, usually made out of lightweight plastic and Styrofoam, with powerful LEDs built in.

With the computing power, planning, and sheer quantity of drones required, a show with around 500 drones will cost you $299,000, meaning Genesis’ 3,281-drone show could’ve cost just shy of $2 Million.

Justin Bieber: Seasons

Justin Bieber is one of the most famous people on the planet, so it’s easy to forget that he was once just an unknown Canadian kid, singing cover songs on his YouTube channel.

In 2020, the Biebmeister decided to return to his roots, partnering with YouTube to create an original series called Justin Bieber: Seasons, a music documentary following the creation of his fifth studio album.

The series was one of YouTube’s biggest investments to date, the platform spending $20 Million on the 10-part series. Reportedly, most of the money was paid to Bieber’s teams to give YouTube the exclusive rights to the documentary.

$2 million per episode seems like a hefty price tag for a documentary but YouTube trusted that Bieber’s star-power would pull in the big bucks. The gamble seemingly paid off, the series gaining over 227 million views in total in the first 3 months, as Beliebers flooded to YouTube to watch the documentary.

And here’s an interesting point of note: the money YouTube creators receive for their views is only about 45% of the advertising revenue a video actually makes; the rest is taken by YouTube. And considering the series was uploaded by and managed by YouTube themselves, the company would’ve earned more than double the advertising revenue rate a standard creator would’ve for those 227 million views.

Though, considering this would net around $2.7 million in revenue, that’s still a massive loss, so they likely had a few sponsorship deals and other methods in place to help make the money back too. Either way, that 227 million view-count still pales in comparison to the 2.7 billion views on Bieber’s ‘Baby’ music video.

Though, considering YouTube would’ve also received around a 55% cut of the advertising revenue from that video, they’re certainly not too upset.

The Priciest Pokémon

When Pokémon first arrived in 1996, kids around the world fired up their Gameboys, turned on their TVs and begged their moms to give them $4 for a pack of Pokémon trading cards. Currently, those same booster packs can be worth a small fortune, with 1st edition boxes of packs selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This price inflation has turned the children’s game into an investment opportunity, and nobody’s more passionate about it than YouTuber Logan Paul. Logan has publicly purchased some of the world’s most expensive cards, encrusting them with diamonds and wearing them around his neck.

In 2021, Paul uploaded a video called ‘I spent $2,000,000 on Pokémon cards,’ and the title wasn’t clickbait. The video showed Paul buying 6 first edition boxes of packs, priced from $325K to $350K.

At over 9 million views, this video would’ve only earnt Paul around $45,000. However, once he owned the most valuable Pokémon collection in the world, and controlled the market, Logan put all of the first edition packs up for auction. Nobody knows how much the poke-baron earned on his cards but he reportedly earnt a heavy profit on his investment.

Despite spending millions on Pokémon, Logan still hasn’t caught them all and the YouTuber continues to spend a fortune on the cards. Since uploading the aforementioned video, Paul has bought an ultra-rare Pikachu Illustrator card for $5.2 Million, making it the most expensive Pokémon card of all time.

In true Logan Paul fashion, the YouTuber then placed the card in an 80-thousand-dollar diamond pendant. He wears the card around his neck at public events, letting everybody know that when it comes to collecting Pokémon, he’s the very best, like no one ever was.

Squid Game in Real Life

Let’s return to YouTube’s big-big-big spender now, with Mr. Beast’s most expensive video ever: ‘Squid Game in Real Life’. If you haven’t seen Netflix’s hugely popular 2021 South Korean show, Squid Game, the series follows 456 contestants, battling through deadly versions of children’s games. All attempting to win a prize of 45.6 billion Won, or $38 million.

The show was the perfect source material for parodies on YouTube, and not long after Squid Game’s release, MrBeast posted one of YouTube’s most creative videos to date, a real-life version of the show. He built near-perfect replicas of the tv show’s elaborate sets, before recruiting 456 contestants to compete for a $456,000 prize.

The contestants took part in less-deadly versions of the challenges seen in the show, battling it out at ‘red light, green light,’ ‘tug of war’ and the Dalgona challenge, a Korean children’s game that involves cutting shapes out of thin cookies.

During the video, MrBeast revealed that it cost $3.5 million to produce, the costs of the elaborate sets shared between MrBeast and the video’s sponsor. That said, the video currently sits at over 269 million views, meaning MrBeast likely earned upwards of $1.26 Million from ad revenue alone.

And considering the Beast regularly hits over 120 million views on videos that cost a lot less to produce, you can begin to see how this crazy fella keeps going.

Red Bull Stratos

Back in 2012, Red Bull paid for daredevil Felix Baumgartner to break the world record for the highest sky-dive, the daredevil floating up to 127,852 feet in a stratospheric balloon, before diving back down to Earth.

The YouTube video immortalizing the event shows Baumgartner reaching 843mph, breaking the sound barrier, and eventually landing safely.

Needless to say, there was some seriously expensive equipment and production costs that went into the video: from Felix’s cutting-edge spacesuit, allowing him to breathe and travel up to the stratosphere without freezing, to the balloon-and-capsule-combo itself.

Media outlets reported that Red Bull invested more than $64.8 Million into the event, covering the costs to plan and develop the jump, pay Baumgartner, and use their own production company to film the feat and distribute it to other media outlets.

Baumgartner’s attempt was broadcast to the world on YouTube, but unfortunately, his record was broken just 2 years later by Alan Eustace, the ex-senior vice-president of engineering at Google, who dove from 20,000ft higher.

Rocket Science

They say that practice makes perfect, and back in 2017, Space X spent $804 Million proving it. Since Elon Musk founded the company in 2002, Space X has worked hard to create a reusable rocket ship, an invention that would make space travel far easier and cheaper.

In 2017, SpaceX uploaded a YouTube video to show the trial and error that went into developing the reusable rocket. The video shows all of Space X’s failed launches and landings between 2013 and 2017, with 12 orbital rocket boosters crashing, burning and even exploding in midair.

The video’s pretty funny, but the amount of money burning up on screen is no laughing matter. A Space X Falcon 9 costs $67 million a pop, so the 12 failed landings cost Space X around $804 million. At 27 million views, the video has only earnt around $135,000, which isn’t a great profit margin.

Though of course, creating viral videos wasn’t exactly the intention of this whole space venture. To most people, these losses are an incomprehensible amount of money, but to Elon Musk and his $220 billion net worth, it’s just another business expense.

Musk and Space X’s backers continued to pour money into the program, and the company was eventually triumphant. They’re now able to consistently land several different variants of their rockets, allowing them to reuse them for later launches. The failure video is great entertainment, but it also provides a valuable message, if at first you don’t succeed, try again, especially if you’re a multi-billionaire.

Space Oddity

Every great song deserves a great music video, but from expensive costumes to Hollywood special effects, they can get pretty expensive, often costing more to produce than the music itself. In 2013, Chris Hadfield released the greatest, and most expensive music video of all time, uploading a video to YouTube that cost $150 billion to produce.

Chris Hadfield is an astronaut, not a musician by trade, and his music video was a cover of David Bowie’s 1968 classic, ‘Space Oddity,’ recorded onboard the International Space Station.

Cover songs are rarely better than the original, but even Bowie himself called Hadfield’s rendition the ‘most poignant version of the song ever done.’ The video shows the astronaut floating through the space station and gazing down at Earth as he sings Bowie’s spacefaring lyrics.

The version is definitely pretty poignant, but it's also pretty pricy, the costs arising in a few separate ways. First of all, the set. Although the exact cost of the ISS isn’t public knowledge, experts estimate that the space station cost around $150 billion, making it a pretty expensive setting for a music video.

The ISS clearly wasn’t built in the 1990s solely to provide a set for Chris Hadfield’s song cover, but even when you don’t factor in the cost of the location, the video was still pretty pricy.

In space, time is money, and each second that an astronaut spends on the ISS reportedly costs around $90. Hadfield set up and filmed the entire video on his own, meaning that the few hours that he spent on the project potentially cost NASA millions of dollars.

As for the equipment used in the video, Hadfield’s guitar is a Larrivée P-01, a parlor guitar that was one of the many instruments placed on the ISS to keep astronauts sane. On Earth, the guitar costs around $2,000, however, this interstellar version of the instrument costs almost 100K, most of the money going towards shipping.

Launching cargo up to the ISS costs a ton of planning, fuel, and hence money, the amount calculated based upon the item’s weight. NASA intentionally chose a small, lightweight guitar for the space station, but they reportedly still had to spend around $100,000 to get it into orbit.

When you add all of that to the costs of hiring people to record the other instruments on Earth and mix and master the song, edit the video and so on, it gets a little tricky to put an exact total price on the production of the YouTube vid.

However, whether it cost $150 billion, or $150,000, Hadfield’s cover of Space Oddity is clearly one of the most elaborate videos of all time. Arguably, it might even be the pinnacle of human entertainment, showing the astounding things we’ve been able to do thanks to the incredible stage of human technology that we currently live in.

It’s one small step for man, one huge leap for 60s psychedelic pop, and a record-breaking-ly expensive video for YouTube, showing the incredible potential of the platform we all love.