Kwai in 2026: how much it pays, what it requires, and what an account is worth
Direct answer: Kwai pays per view, but the rate varies far more than industry sites admit — public estimates for Brazilian creators run from $0.11 to over $1.70 per thousand views, depending on niche, retention, and where the viewers are from. The Creator Program usually requires 10K followers and 100K views in 30 days; livestreaming unlocks earnings much earlier, with just a few hundred followers. And a Kwai account listed on the Brazilian market has a median asking price of $211.55 — in a review where price, oddly enough, barely tracks follower count. Before that, it's worth checking what's available for the platform at Kwai services.
\n\nThe short version
\n- Kwai monetization runs through four paths: views, live gifts, referrals, and brand deals. Only the first depends on the Creator Program.
- Estimates of how much it pays per thousand views differ by a factor of ten across public sources. Be skeptical of any number presented as definitive — including this article.
- Livestreaming is the fastest path to your first payout: the follower requirement is much lower than the Creator Program's.
- On Kwai Shop, the platform's commission runs around 20% plus a fixed fee per item, with a discount for new sellers.
- In the account marketplace, a Kwai profile's price doesn't rise along with its followers — the 50K-to-200K range had a lower median than the 10K-to-50K range in our sample.
How much Kwai pays per thousand views
\nThis is the question that comes up most, and it's where almost all Kwai content gets it wrong — pick a number, present it as fact, and move on. In practice, public estimates for Brazilian creators in 2026 span a wide range: some reports cite $0.11 to $0.64 per thousand eligible views, while others cite $0.85 to $1.70, with niches like education, finance, and tech running much higher.
\nThat divergence isn't sloppy writing — it reflects how the account is run. The rate changes with niche (finance advertisers pay more than entertainment), with retention (a video watched to the end is worth more than a one-second view), and with who's watching. On top of that, not every view is eligible: what counts toward the total is a subset of what shows up on your dashboard.
\nThe honest takeaway is this: treat any published CPM as a ballpark figure, not a promise. Anyone who needs the exact number to decide if it's worth it is probably counting on revenue that won't pan out.
\n\nWhat the Creator Program requires
\nThe most commonly cited requirements for joining the pay-per-view monetization program are:
\n- 10K followers
- 100K views in the last 30 days
- Minimum age of 18 years and a Brazilian account with a CPF
- Compliance with platform guidelines
Two caveats matter more than the list itself. First: there are records of lower requirements in earlier phases of the program, so confirm the current criteria inside the app itself before planning anything around it. Second, and more important: hitting the number doesn't guarantee approval. An account with low engagement or a suspicious pattern gets rejected even if it meets the minimum — which makes "inflating followers to get into the program" a strategy that tends to charge the price without delivering the entry.
\n\nLivestreaming is the fastest path
\nFor anyone who wants their first payout without waiting for 10K followers, livestreaming is the most accessible door: the requirement runs around a few hundred followers, and earnings come from the virtual gifts the audience sends, converted into the app's internal currency and cashed out later.
\nIn exchange, it's the format that demands the most presence: live income is a function of hours streamed and audience consistency, not published content. Anyone who doesn't plan to go live regularly shouldn't count on this revenue line.
\n\nKwai Shop: selling product instead of audience
\nThere's also the path of selling products through Kwai Shop, which doesn't depend on any creator program. The platform charges a commission of around 20% on the sale plus a fixed fee per item, with a reduced rate for new sellers in their first few weeks. For anyone who already has a product, this tends to be the platform's most direct monetization path — the money comes from margin, not CPM.
\n\nHow much a Kwai account is worth: what listings ask for
\nThis is where our own data comes in. We pulled listings for Kwai accounts posted on the Brazilian digital account marketplace and cross-referenced asking price with follower count.
\n\n| Follower range | Listings | Median price | Minimum | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3k to 10k | 7 | $127.18 | $53.00 | $423.94 |
| 10k to 50k | 15 | $211.55 | $23.32 | $2,119.67 |
| 50k to 200k | 4 | $137.15 | $105.99 | $254.36 |
| Above 200k | 7 | $402.74 | $148.38 | $847.87 |
The counterintuitive finding: price doesn't track followers
\nLook at the table again. The 50K-to-200K follower range has a median of $137.15 — lower than the 10K-to-50K range, which sits at $211.55. And within a single range, the spread is wild: among accounts with 10K to 50K followers, there's a listing at $23.32 and one at $2,119.67.
\nThe extremes tell the same story. The listing with the most followers in the whole sample — an account with 30.7 million — was asking $148.38. One with 34K was asking $2,119.67.
\nThat means that on Kwai, followers alone aren't the asset. What drives the price is what the account can actually do: whether it monetizes, in what niche, with what retention, and whether its history holds up to an audit. Buying based only on follower count is the easiest way to overpay for a profile that delivers nothing.
\nIt's worth noting what this sample can't tell us: only 4 listings reported active monetization — too few to say how much monetization adds to price. Anyone who quotes that number as an exact figure probably made it up.
\n\nBuy a ready-made account or grow from scratch?
\nIt depends on what you're trying to buy, and the answer changes with the goal.
\n- Want to monetize by views: buying a ready-made account shortens the path to the requirement, but you inherit its history — including bad engagement, which is exactly what gets an application rejected. Insist on seeing the dashboard first.
- Want a specific niche audience: then it makes sense, as long as the account has a real niche and isn't just a pile of generic followers.
- Just want a bigger number: don't buy a whole account for that. Boosting an account you already own is cheaper and carries no baggage — that's the case for followers or views on Kwai.
If you decide to buy the account, check the Kwai profiles for sale — negotiate and confirm the details directly with the seller through chat before paying — and go through the 11 warning signs of account-purchase scams first. The general guide to buying and selling accounts covers the full process, and the profile value calculator helps you check whether the asking price makes sense.
\n\nWhat this means in practice
\nIf you create on Kwai: don't plan revenue around a CPM published by someone else, and treat livestreaming as the shortest path to your first payout. If you want to buy an account: stop treating follower count as if it were the price, ask for the monetization dashboard and retention history, and be wary of a cheap listing with a huge follower count — in our sample, that's exactly where the strangest outliers show up.
\n\n\n\nRead also: Guides by social network
\nOther articles in this series, each covering a different metric or platform.
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