No. YouTube as a whole can't saturate, but a specific niche can, and the way you tell is one question: are there channels that started in the last 3 to 6 months already making money? If new channels are making 30k a month and their videos aren't even good, the niche is wide open and your results are a skill problem. If no new channel has gotten in and the biggest ones are barely making that, the niche is the problem. I've been doing faceless channels for seven years, I coach over 800 people building them, and when YouTube terminated or demonetized an estimated 3 million plus channels in its AI crackdown, my channels had record months. The crackdown cleared out the garbage. If you make a genuine channel, this is the best opportunity I've seen.
- "Is faceless YouTube saturated?" is the wrong question. The right one is whether a specific niche has new channels winning in it right now.
- Market saturation just means more channels are doing the thing. If lots of them make 20 or 30 grand a month, that's money on the table, not money gone.
- The bad kind of saturation looks like this: every channel is old, nobody has gotten in recently, and the new ones are failing. I learned that one the hard way in a niche where it took us about two years to get results.
- The 3 million plus channels hit by the AI crackdown fit a few patterns: fake AI news, fictional AI storytelling, raunchy kids content, re-uploads of other people's clips, sexualized content, low-effort spam. Explainers, documentaries and researched storytelling were fine.
- A saturated niche with a huge audience (sports, cars) takes longer, maybe a year or two, but you're pretty much guaranteed to get results if you stick with it.
- The channels that fail in "saturated" niches aren't losing to competition. They're uploading generic videos with no emulator, no angle and no reason for YouTube to recommend them.
The Correct Question
"Is faceless YouTube saturated?" is the wrong question. The right question is "Is this specific niche saturated?"
YouTube is a 2.7 billion user platform with over 800 million videos and 500 hours of content uploaded every minute. As a whole it cannot saturate, because demand keeps growing. But a niche inside YouTube absolutely can get crowded to the point where new channels struggle to break through. This page has always said that, and seven years of running these channels hasn't changed my mind.
What has changed is how loud the question got. Faceless channels had been around for a while when I recorded the controversy video, but they were blowing up on social media. I had just put up a post that got around 1.3 million views on the first post of the thread alone. That kind of attention brings two reactions at once: "it's too good to be true" and "everyone's doing it, so it's saturated."
Then came the crackdown. Since YouTube's July 15th update aimed at AI channels, an estimated 3 million plus channels have been terminated or demonetized. I saw people on X freaking out, and I coach over 800 people building faceless channels, so I hear every version of the fear.
Here's where I'm coming from on it. I have a bunch of my own faceless channels. We even use some AI to produce the videos. We haven't had issues, and we were making record months while that list of terminated channels was growing.
The rest of this page is how I tell the difference between a niche that's full and a niche that's open, what got cleared out and why that helps you, and the filter that actually decides who wins.
Why It Feels Saturated Right Now
A lot of the "faceless YouTube is dead" talk in 2026 is really about the terminations. So I went through the terminated channel list someone posted on X and looked for patterns. Here's what I found, next to what I actually build.
| What was getting terminated | What I build instead |
|---|---|
| Fake AI political and news channels. About half the list looked like this: sensationalized, pushing an agenda, or just made up | I have a geopolitics channel and it's perfectly fine. We do real research, take different perspectives and try to get the facts accurate |
| Fictional AI storytelling ("talented woman quietly builds a house", AI meditation and travel channels) | AI used to supplement a video I'm actually making, not AI as the content |
| Raunchy kids channels playing it off as not being kids content | Nothing for kids |
| IP violations: MrBallen and Joe Rogan re-upload pages, clipping channels, compilations of other people's content | Short clips and images used to tell a story I'm telling. Downloading last week's game and re-uploading it is stealing |
| Sexualized content, gambling, fake space news, low-effort spam (dozens of near-identical videos in a short period) | Long format explainer, documentary, storytelling and researched news content with real production behind it |
Two things stood out. First, YouTube owns a video AI product itself, so Google and YouTube like AI. What they took a strong stand against was fictional AI stories played off as real, and general AI slop. Second, the occasional good channel got flagged, usually because every thumbnail looked the same, and those channels were getting reinstated after they posted about it on X.
That's why I read the crackdown as good news. YouTube is competing against Netflix, TikTok, Instagram and X, and it wants real, valuable content on the platform. The ways I teach people to build faceless channels had nothing to do with anything on that list. If anything, the market got less crowded for anyone making a real video. The full pattern breakdown is in why YouTube is terminating AI channels.
Repeat thumbnail styles were the one thing that caught channels that didn't deserve it. Ten in a row that look identical reads as a spam channel to the system. Switch the style every other video, even though I know that's not the best thing for click-through rate.
The Saturation Test I Actually Run
Say you've uploaded 20 or 30 videos and you're not making money. Should you start a new niche? Before you blame saturation, I want you to be very specific.
If so, the niche is fine and you've got a skill problem. Genuinely. The opportunity is right there and other people are taking it.
Now the other side. Are there no new channels, and are the biggest channels barely making 30k a month? Then it's probably not a good niche, at least not for ad revenue.
| What you see in the niche | What it means |
|---|---|
| New channels, started a few months ago, making bank, with no bigger channel or outside audience promoting them | The niche is open. If you're not getting results, it's a skill issue |
| Only big channels, all of them old, and nobody new has gotten in | The bad kind of saturation. Pick something else |
| No new channels and even the big ones aren't making money | A terrible niche for ad revenue. Only worth it if you have a business behind it |
| Lots of channels and lots of them making 20 or 30 grand a month | The good kind of saturation. The money is there, go get your share |
Use viewstats.com to check what channels are making. It's pretty accurate.
The part of this test that catches people isn't the money. It's the emulator. When someone asks me for a channel review after 20 or 30 uploads, I ask who they're emulating, and the answer is usually "I saw a channel one time" or "Bright Side" or "Infographics Show." Those are such broad channels that they tell you nothing. If you can't send me the link to the specific new channel winning with your format, you weren't competing in a saturated niche. You were guessing.
Two fixes follow from the test:
- Too broad? Go to a sub niche with less competition but the same interest. General basketball becomes basketball documentaries, basketball drama, or championship game breakdowns.
- Too niche? Increase your audience by adding pop culture. "How to hire lawyers for your law firm" is tiny. "Lawyer reacts to Suits" is still about lawyers, but it has viral potential, because there are a lot more people in that marketplace to begin with.
The rest of my channel-review checklist is in why you're not getting views on YouTube.
Niches That Are Currently Oversaturated
This page has always listed these, and I'd still stay out of them as a first channel:
- Generic "make money online", flooded with low-quality content since 2020
- General personal finance basics, where Dave Ramsey and 5,000 clones dominate
- Motivation compilation clips, algorithmically suppressed, no original value
- Generic "top 10 facts" without a specific category, so there's no clear audience to build
- Basic productivity and morning routines, extremely competitive and low CPM
The thing they have in common is my definition of the bad kind of saturation: a bunch of people have been in the niche a very long time, no one is getting in recently, and a lot of the channels that do start are failing.
I learned this with my own money. I went into a niche that was super old, full of 100 million dollar companies. I asked around and everybody said it takes two to three years to get results. I thought they were wrong and it was a lack of experience on their end. It took us about two years. So now I hate getting into anything super old or saturated in that sense, and I ask on every niche whether someone has gone viral in it within the last six months. Eight months to a year is the outer edge.
There's also a version of this I see in channel reviews: a space video, then a fitness video, then a montage, on one channel. Those are very oversaturated topics on their own, and with no content strategy behind them it's throwing stuff at the wall. The health niche works, I have students making a thousand dollars plus a month in it. It only works when you go in with a strategy you feel good about.
Where Real Opportunity Exists in 2026
Here's the list this page has carried, with what I'd add to each after the crackdown.
| Angle | Why it's open | What I'd add |
|---|---|---|
| Profession-specific finance ("investing for nurses") | 10x less competition than "investing" | The big finance channels don't need the views. A specific audience they ignore is the only way in |
| AI and technology explainers for non-tech audiences | Massive search volume, growing fast | Explainer is one of the formats that got paid in the crackdown. Make a real video, don't let the AI be the video |
| Regional history | US Civil War is crowded, specific regional or cultural history is not | Documentary and storytelling with research behind it is exactly what YouTube kept |
| Alternative history angles | New theories emerge constantly | Careful here. Fake news and sensationalized channels were half the terminated list. Research it like my geopolitics channel or skip it |
| Specific health conditions ("diabetes management") | Beats "health tips" by miles | Students of mine make a thousand plus a month in health. Be intentional from the first upload |
| International business and global entrepreneurship | Underserved, growing audience | Validate it with the test above before you start |
| Trade and blue-collar business (plumbers, electricians, contractors) | Ignored niche | Same |
| Senior and retirement content | Massive demographic, terrible content supply | Same |
One more that isn't on the old list, because it's a method, not a niche: one-off, research-heavy ideas. The geopolitical channel I'm modelling on the channel I grew from dead to $16,000 a month has almost half its videos as one-off ideas on proven packaging. We're building toward that on purpose, because content that takes real research doesn't get too heavily saturated.
The Good Kind of Saturation
Here's where beginners get it backwards, and it screws them over royally. Market saturation just means there's more channels doing the thing. If everybody in a niche is making 20 or 30 grand a month and there are lots of them, that's good. That means you can do 20 or 30 grand a month. (The full definition, and why you don't want to be the only person in a market on your first channel, is on how to pick a YouTube niche.)
Sports is my favorite example.
There are a lot of channels making sports videos, and there's always demand for more, because the audience is huge. In my tier list I put basketball in S tier all day. The amount of people I've helped make $10,000 a month with basketball and the most brain dead video ideas is insane. I'd start a basketball channel even though I'm not into basketball.
The trade with a big saturated niche is time. Basketball, football, cars: there are a lot of other channels in that space, so it's going to take a little longer to get results, maybe a year or two. It's not the most beginner friendly path. But you are kind of guaranteed to get results, because the audience is there.
Anime is the same story in a smaller room. When I built my niche research page, there were 30 or 40 anime channels, a highly saturated market, and you can still make a lot of money pretty quickly in it if you figure out how to get into the algorithm.
Don't confuse a crowded niche with a cheap one. Music, comedy, gaming, drama and Reddit channels are broad and crowded, and they pay something like fifty cents per thousand views. Five million views there is about twenty five hundred dollars. The same views on a space channel at an eight dollar RPM is about forty thousand dollars. Avoid the second problem first.
How to Find Unsaturated Angles
The four checks this page has always recommended still hold:
- Search your niche keyword on YouTube and sort by upload date. Are there strong-performing new channels in the last 6 months? That means the algorithm is still rewarding new entrants.
- Look at view-to-subscriber ratios. A channel with 5K subscribers getting 100K+ views on videos is a sign the algorithm is boosting that content.
- Check keyword difficulty on TubeBuddy or vidIQ. You want search demand with low to medium competition.
- Look for audience segments the existing channels underserve. Same broad topic, different demographic, new opportunity.
Here's how I do the same thing in practice. Pick three niches, find the channels having success in each one, and decide from that sheet. Then go deep on the one you picked: find 20, 30, 40 or 50 channels, and not only in your niche. If you're doing basketball, you want baseball, football and soccer channels too, because the formats travel. Then find the videos going viral right now and respin them, the same way a format spreads on TikTok or Twitter. That's the whole ideation skill.
Validate the gap, not the niche. One student who was still in high school started his channel in December and had a $40,000 month the month before I recorded that training. A busy executive with no YouTube experience got to $10,000 a month. Neither of them found an empty niche. We helped them find out what videos that marketplace wanted and wasn't getting.
The Real Filter
The channels that fail in "saturated" niches aren't failing because there's too much competition. They're failing because they're producing generic, undifferentiated content with no angle, no hook, and no reason for YouTube to recommend it over established channels.
The question I get in every live training proves it. We'll be on the step where we make the videos, before a single one has been uploaded, and someone asks "isn't YouTube oversaturated?" We haven't made anything yet. You can't be crowded out of a market you haven't put anything into. Make the videos, give people something, then worry about getting paid.
What actually separates the channels that win from the ones that don't is two skills, and neither is "finding an empty niche." The first is ideation: knowing what the marketplace wants to watch right now. The second is finding and leading the right people, because a lot of my results come from having more talented people on the team, not from working more hours than you. I've had channels where I worked less than an hour a month and they made 30, 40, 50 or $60,000 a month. One of my channels has done over $700,000, with $262,000 of that in a single year. None of that came from an uncrowded niche. The long version is in the faceless YouTube controversy, answered.
A well-researched channel with a clear audience, strong scripts, and consistent publishing will grow in almost any niche. The saturation argument is mostly a rationalization for not starting. The crackdown just removed a few million channels that were never going to beat you anyway.
Video Chapters
- 0:00The YouTube apocalypse
- 0:32Make good content and you'll be fine
- 1:37Political and fake news channels
- 3:16AI storytelling
- 5:13Raunchy kids content
- 5:59IP and copyright violations
- 6:56Community guideline issues
- 8:15Wrongly flagged channels
- 9:24Repeat thumbnails
- 10:23General AI slop and what I teach instead
FAQ
Is faceless YouTube saturated in 2026?
No. Devon Canup says YouTube as a whole cannot saturate, but a specific niche can. His test is whether channels that started 3 to 6 months ago are already making money in it. If they are, the niche is open and poor results are a skill issue. If no new channel has gotten in and the biggest ones are barely making 30k a month, the niche is the problem.
Is it too late to start a faceless YouTube channel?
Devon Canup says the opposite. After YouTube terminated or demonetized an estimated 3 million plus channels in its AI crackdown, his own faceless channels had record months, and he says that if you make a genuine channel it is the best opportunity he has seen. The terminated channels were fake AI news, fictional AI storytelling, re-uploads and low-effort spam.
Is a saturated YouTube niche bad?
Not usually. Devon Canup defines market saturation as more channels doing the thing, and says that if lots of them make 20 or 30 grand a month, you can too. It is only bad when every channel is old, nobody new has entered recently and the new channels are failing.
How do you know if a YouTube niche is too competitive?
Devon Canup asks one question: are there channels that started about 3 months ago making 30k a month without a bigger channel promoting them? He checks earnings on viewstats.com. If the answer is yes, the niche is fine. If there are only old big channels and nobody new, he picks a different niche.
Can a sports channel still work on YouTube?
Yes. Devon Canup says sports niches have such a large audience that they cannot get too saturated unless there were something like 10,000 channels in one. He ranks basketball in S tier and says he has helped many people make $10,000 a month with it. The trade is that a crowded niche can take a year or two to get results.
What kind of faceless channels got terminated by YouTube?
From the terminated channel list Devon Canup reviewed: fake AI political and news channels, fictional AI storytelling, raunchy kids content, re-uploads of creators like Mr. Ballin and Joe Rogan, sexualized content, gambling and low-effort spam. Explainer, documentary and researched storytelling channels, including his geopolitics channel, were fine.
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