How often YouTube creators reply to comments

Creators replied to 12.3% of top-level comments (1,320 of 10,727), so 88% got no reply from the person who made the video. The 95% confidence interval runs from 7.6% to 18.4%.

The typical channel replies far less often than that pooled figure suggests. The median channel answered 4.2% of its sampled comments, about 1 in 24, because a handful of very responsive channels lift the total.

The bigger the channel, the smaller the share of comments that get answered. Channels with 100k to 500k subscribers replied to 17.5% of comments, with a typical channel at 9.6%. Channels with 5M+ subscribers replied to 2.6%, with a typical channel at 1.4%.

63 of 89 channels (70.8%) replied to at least one sampled comment. 26 channels (29%) replied to none.

14 channels replied to more than half of their sampled comments. Most of the rest replied to very few: at least a quarter of channels replied to none, half replied to 4.2% or less, and three quarters replied to 33.3% or less.

Without the 5 most responsive channels, the overall rate falls to 11.0% and the median to 2.1%.

A second pass on the newest comments (still only those older than 7 days) instead of the top comments gave 11.7% replied, a median channel of 4.1%, and 64.0% of channels replying at least once. Same picture.

A comment counts as answered when the channel that uploaded the video posted at least one reply in its thread. We matched every reply's author channel id against the video's channel id through the public YouTube Data API v3. Nothing was scraped.

For each video we read up to 100 top-level comment threads in relevance order, the order viewers see first. The API shows only a few replies inline, so when a thread had more replies than it showed and the creator was not among them, we fetched the rest of the thread. That took 220 extra lookups, and no thread was left unresolved.

• Only comments more than 7 days old count, so every comment had a full week to get a reply (964 newer threads were left out).
• Comments written by the channel itself, mostly pinned comments, are left out (79 of them).
• A heart without a written reply does not count as a reply.
• The headline number and its rules were fixed before we looked at the results.
• The 95% confidence interval (7.6% to 18.4%) comes from a bootstrap over channels, because comments on one channel are not independent of each other.
• Collection used 2,904 units of the 10,000 daily API allowance, from one read-only key.

We ran one channel search for each of 18 niches: tech, education, gaming, beauty, finance, fitness, cooking, business, travel, DIY, health, self-improvement, music, photography, programming, automotive, science, parenting. The 50 top English relevance results per search gave 900 unique channels. We kept channels with a visible subscriber count of at least 100,000 and at least 10 videos, then drew up to 6 per niche at random (fixed seed 20261024), which gave 104 channels.

From each channel's newest 25 uploads we took the 3 most recent videos that were longer than 3 minutes (no Shorts), more than 7 days old, not a live stream or premiere, and open for comments with at least one comment. 15 channels had no such video, mostly Shorts-heavy channels or channels with comments off, and were dropped.

Final sample: 89 channels, 250 videos and 10,727 top-level comments, collected on 23 October 2026.

This study measures how often channel owners reply, on visible top comments of recent long-form videos from search-visible English-language channels with 100k+ subscribers. It does not measure what replies do, and it does not rank niches. The tier trend and the uneven spread across channels are the solid findings; these are the edges of what the data covers.

• The long tail. Channels came from the top relevance results of 18 English keyword searches, so the sample leans toward well-known, search-visible channels. It is not a random draw of every channel with 100k+ subscribers, and non-English channels are only partly covered.
• The whole comment section. We read up to 100 top comments per video. Top comments may be the ones creators answer most; the newest-comments pass came in close, at 11.7%.
• Hidden comments and deleted replies. Comments held for review, removed, hidden or limited to members are invisible to the API, and so are replies a creator later deleted.
• Replies from a team. A reply counts only when it comes from the channel's own account. A moderator or editor replying from a personal account is not counted.
• Older videos and other formats. Each channel contributes its 3 most recent eligible long-form videos. Shorts-only channels and channels with comments off are out of scope by design.
• Late replies and change over time. Replies were counted on 23 October 2026. This is one snapshot, not a trend across months.
• Single niches. Each of the 18 niches has 3 to 6 channels, too few for a niche ranking, so we do not publish one. Per-niche counts are in the summary file for anyone who wants to look.
• What replies do. The study counts replies. It does not measure their effect on views, watch time or subscribers.

Cite this study as Khalid (2026), Commently, with the page URL and the collection date of 23 October 2026.

Our study counts replies; it does not measure what they do. Buffer's analysis found that posts where the creator replied to comments saw higher engagement, from about +5% on Bluesky to +42% on Threads, with +30% on LinkedIn and +21% on Instagram. It covers six other platforms and not YouTube, it measures engagement rather than views or reach, and it is observational. Buffer sells social media tools, so it is not an independent source.