# Free YouTube CTR Calculator > Enter impressions and views to get your YouTube click-through rate, with honest context on what counts as good and why CTR alone does not decide whether a video succeeds. Free, no signup. Free, no account required. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded. ## How to use it 1. **Find your numbers.** In YouTube Studio, open a video's Analytics and the Reach tab. You need impressions and impressions click-through rate, or impressions and views. 2. **Enter them.** Type the impressions and the views. The click-through rate is calculated as views divided by impressions. 3. **Read it in context.** Compare against the typical ranges shown, and check retention before you change anything. ## What counts as a good YouTube CTR YouTube's own creator guidance notes that half of all channels sit somewhere between roughly 2% and 10% impressions click-through rate. That range is wide because CTR depends heavily on where the impressions came from: a video shown mostly to subscribers on the home feed will out-click the same video shown to strangers in suggested. This makes cross-channel comparison close to meaningless. The useful comparison is against your own videos, in the same niche, from the same traffic sources. ## Why a higher CTR is not automatically better A thumbnail that overpromises lifts click-through and destroys retention, and YouTube weighs watch time far more heavily than clicks. A video with 6% CTR and 50% average view duration will generally be promoted over one with 10% CTR and 20%. So read the two together. If CTR rises and retention falls after a thumbnail change, the new thumbnail is writing a cheque the video cannot cash — and the algorithm notices faster than the audience does. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you calculate YouTube CTR? Divide the number of views that came from impressions by the number of impressions, then multiply by 100. If a thumbnail was shown 20,000 times and got 1,200 clicks, that is 1,200 ÷ 20,000 × 100 = 6% click-through rate. ### What is a good click-through rate on YouTube? About half of all channels fall roughly between 2% and 10%. Where you should sit inside that depends on your traffic sources — subscriber-heavy home feed impressions click far better than suggested-video impressions from people who have never heard of you. Compare against your own back catalogue, not someone else's screenshot. ### Why did my CTR drop when my views went up? Almost always because YouTube widened the audience. As a video is shown to people outside your usual viewership, more of them scroll past, so the rate falls even as total clicks rise. A falling CTR alongside rising views is usually a good sign, not a bad one. ### Should I optimise for CTR? Optimise for clicks the video can honour. CTR only helps if the people who clicked stay — YouTube promotes watch time above clicks, so a misleading thumbnail that lifts CTR and cuts retention makes things worse, not better. --- Use it at https://thumbn.so/youtube-ctr-calculator — part of [Thumbn](https://thumbn.so), AI thumbnail generator for YouTube, TikTok and Reels.