Ali Abdaal @aliabdaal YouTube

A medical student’s side channel: ten months at 23K views, then a study-tips video at 5.5M and 1M subscribers two and a half years later

Ali Abdaal started posting his own videos in June 2017, in his final year at Cambridge medical school: admissions tips and student vlogs, with a median of 23K views. On April 4, 2018 he posted a 21-minute guide to evidence-based revision; it reached 5.5M views. He kept studying and productivity at the centre, passed 1M subscribers by September 2020, left medicine in 2021 and turned the channel into a company. Since 2024 growth has slowed.

Report: v1
Data as of: 2026-11-09
Sample: 1494 videos

How to study for exams, April 4, 2018: 5.49M views

At a glance

What it is: Evidence-based study, productivity and life advice.
Who watches: Students and young professionals (our reading of the topics).
How it earns: His courses and products, sponsors, ads, a book; $4.6M revenue in 2022 by his account.
How it broke out: An evidence-based revision guide in April 2018 reached 5.49M.

Subscribers Fact

6.71M

+20–30K a month in 2025–26

The turn video Derived

239×

5.49M against a 23K median

To 1M Self-reported

~3 years

Jun 2017 → his Sep 2020 Q&A

Revenue, 2022 Self-reported

$4.6M

his own figure, the whole business

Summary

The play

Teach the thing you are visibly good at, backed by evidence and your own results (“I’m a final-year medical student at Cambridge”), then widen the topic one step at a time: study, productivity, money, life.

Can you copy it? Our read

The early half is the useful part: ten months of med-school content at a 23K median, then one evidence-based study guide that set the direction for everything after. The later half, a team, courses and a book, is a business built on that audience, and its growth has slowed since 2024.

What it takes: Real, visible credentials in the topic you teach, and the discipline to post twice a week for years.
Startup cost: A camera and a desk at the start; a team of about a dozen later.
Time to a verdict: About two long videos a week from 2017 to 2021.
Window: Study and productivity are crowded now. The opening still works for anyone with proof in a skill people search for.

Key findings

Expertise on screen, evidence in the script
79 long videos before the turn had a median of 23K. The evidence-based revision guide reached 5.49M, 239 times that; videos from then to the end of 2019 had a median of 186K. See play 2.1 (subscribers)
Two a week, then wider topics
65 videos in 2017, 83 in 2018, 102 in 2020. Topics moved from study to productivity, tech, money and life, and the yearly median rose to 587K by 2023. See play 2.2 (subscribers)
Since 2024, slower
The long-video median fell to 242K in 2025 and 181K in 2026. Monthly subscriber gains fell from about 100K in early 2024 to 20–30K. See play 3.1 (subscribers)

What this channel is

Platform: YouTube, long videos and Shorts
Format: How-to guides and talking head
On camera: Ali
Team: 12 full-time in 2023 (self-described)
First own video: Jun 20, 2017 (covers from 2016)
Length: Median 15 minutes

Every number is tagged

Fact straight from public data
Derived calculated from facts
Estimate from published pay ranges
Self-reported what the creator says
Our read our judgement

01How it happened

How the subscriber count grew

YouTube 6.71M
Fact
Self-reported

YouTube subscribers. Hollow dots are his own numbers: milestone Q&As (5,000, 50K, 100K, 1M, 2M, 4M) and the year-end counts in his 2022 income video. Solid dots from November 2023 are measured month ends, rounded to the nearest 10K.

Colour = views against the channel median

under 1×
1–3×
3–10×
10× and up

Each bar is one video in the order posted. Gaps are breaks in posting.

Phase	Dates	Long videos	Format	Median views
0	2016 – Apr 2017	8	Acoustic covers with friends	20K
1	Jun 20, 2017 – Apr 3, 2018	79	Applying to medicine (BMAT, interviews), Cambridge vlogs; 5,000 subscribers on March 21, 2018	23K
2	Apr 4, 2018 – 2019	126	Evidence-based study techniques, iPad notes, tech for students; 100K by December 2018	186K
3	2020 – 2021	186	Productivity, money, books; 1M by September 2020, 2M by August 2021; leaves medicine in November 2021	446K
4	2022 – 2023	131	A company: a team, courses, a book; Shorts jump to 190 in 2023; 4M by May 2023	573K
5	2024 – Nov 2026	166	Business and life advice; growth slows to +20–30K subscribers a month	304K

Hottest and coldest

Top 5 by views

9 Passive Income Ideas - How I Make $27k per Week2021-04-1514M
How I Type REALLY Fast (156 Words per Minute)2020-08-1811M
How to Invest for Beginners2020-10-119.44M
How I ranked 1st at Cambridge University - The Essay Memorisation Framework2019-04-099.05M
My Evidence-Based Skincare Routine2022-06-288.96M

Bottom 5 by views

Temples of Siem Reap (Cambodia) - Cambridge Medical Elective #092017-08-163.36K
Sunset over Phnom Penh (Cambodia) - Cambridge Medical Elective #062017-08-083.93K
The Bat Caves of Battambang (Cambodia) - Cambridge Medical Elective #082017-08-124K
Tailored suits in Hoi An (Vietnam) - Cambridge Medical Elective #112017-08-195.24K
The Temple in the Sky (Cambodia) - Cambridge Medical Elective #042017-08-015.92K

The five most-viewed long videos are all personal how-tos with a number or a result in the title: 9 Passive Income Ideas – How I Make $27k per Week (14.0M), How I Type Really Fast (11.0M), How to Invest for Beginners (9.4M), How I ranked 1st at Cambridge (9.1M) and My Evidence-Based Skincare Routine (9.0M). Since 2025 the coldest are general advice: How to Find a Career You Genuinely Love (51K), How to Get Rich Without a Degree (64K), a sales training video (66K) and What 8 Years on YouTube Taught Me (67K). Our read

Reading the numbers

Derived

23K

median views before the turn

79 long videos, June 2017 to April 3, 2018.

Self-reported

5K → 100K

subscribers, March to December 2018

His own Q&A milestones.

In the creator’s words Self-reported
We’re on 5,000 subscribers!! This is incredible.
Ali Abdaal, Q&A video description, March 2018 · View source