State of the Hive Creator Economy
How much do creators actually earn on Hive? These numbers come straight from on-chain payout operations, indexed by Ecency. No ads, no platform cut, payouts settle on the blockchain.
Latest quarter: Q3 2026. Updated quarterly.
Creators paid
4,578
▼ 11% vs prev quarter
Rewards paid
1.87M HIVE
▲ 9.7% vs prev quarter
Estimated USD value
$87,920
▼ 11.2% vs prev quarter
Posts published
119,166
▼ 0.5% vs prev quarter
Estimated USD value of creator rewards per quarter
Creators earning per quarter
Content activity per quarter
PostsComments
Most active communities (Q3 2026)
Ranked by distinct authors who posted in the community this quarter.
| Community | Authors | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Actifit | 359 | 11,950 |
| Town Square | 318 | 1,829 |
| Worldmappin | 271 | 1,574 |
| Photography Lovers | 269 | 1,395 |
| LeoFinance | 260 | 2,487 |
| GEMS | 260 | 1,608 |
| Scrobble.life | 249 | 2,529 |
| Ladies of Hive | 215 | 1,216 |
| Liketu | 210 | 1,942 |
| Threespeak | 202 | 952 |
| Hive Gaming | 188 | 1,727 |
| Freewriters | 186 | 1,400 |
What does a creator earn? (Q3 2026)
Hive Power received per earning author this quarter. Like every creator platform, earnings are top-heavy: the median author earns a little, the top percent earns meaningfully.
| Median | 22 HP |
| Top 10% earn more than | 608 HP |
| Top 1% earn more than | 2,656 HP |
| Highest earner | 22,311 HP |
Want to be part of it? Join Ecency and start earning for what you share.
Curators earn too
On Hive, readers share in rewards: voting on a post pays the voter a curation reward. More people earn from curating than from writing.
Curators paid
11,129
▼ 2.1% vs prev quarter
HP to curators
3.1M HP
▲ 10.8% vs prev quarter
All quarters
| Quarter | Creators paid | HBD | HIVE | HP | USD est. | Posts | Comments | Curators | Curation HP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 2020 | 12,615 | 277,257 | 261,170 | 1,286,698 | $730,008 | 375,989 | 1,051,139 | 15,695 | 2,447,244 |
| Q3 2020 | 11,731 | 250,737 | 0 | 1,294,843 | $527,834 | 330,918 | 1,117,311 | 14,636 | 2,408,550 |
| Q4 2020 | 9,161 | 156,483 | 0 | 1,342,073 | $330,953 | 267,065 | 907,920 | 13,919 | 2,504,806 |
| Q1 2021 | 10,573 | 288,906 | 0 | 1,300,949 | $640,942 | 304,049 | 1,145,022 | 14,485 | 2,428,765 |
| Q2 2021 | 14,578 | 527,408 | 0 | 1,156,573 | $1,089,040 | 363,609 | 1,389,262 | 15,823 | 2,380,894 |
| Q3 2021 | 15,224 | 460,446 | 51,584 | 1,104,240 | $1,039,167 | 354,751 | 1,519,628 | 15,949 | 2,546,285 |
| Q4 2021 | 19,288 | 1,043,686 | 13,802 | 991,215 | $2,279,656 | 406,670 | 1,713,943 | 17,112 | 2,373,117 |
| Q1 2022 | 19,083 | 899,699 | 0 | 945,872 | $1,902,985 | 404,080 | 2,126,499 | 17,981 | 2,312,631 |
| Q2 2022 | 15,712 | 576,449 | 0 | 969,283 | $1,217,048 | 350,053 | 2,038,597 | 17,274 | 2,424,979 |
| Q3 2022 | 13,999 | 451,305 | 0 | 946,559 | $953,076 | 356,049 | 2,126,411 | 17,370 | 2,534,335 |
| Q4 2022 | 12,684 | 337,290 | 0 | 964,550 | $719,348 | 288,978 | 1,989,359 | 16,746 | 2,614,880 |
| Q1 2023 | 12,566 | 329,303 | 0 | 969,521 | $713,621 | 284,123 | 2,167,515 | 16,441 | 2,628,852 |
| Q2 2023 | 11,663 | 312,665 | 0 | 952,277 | $665,864 | 275,131 | 2,356,126 | 15,253 | 2,653,459 |
| Q3 2023 | 11,410 | 282,686 | 0 | 997,361 | $601,543 | 266,543 | 2,289,942 | 14,654 | 2,774,285 |
| Q4 2023 | 11,238 | 295,756 | 0 | 979,525 | $634,084 | 252,179 | 2,147,528 | 14,612 | 2,773,543 |
| Q1 2024 | 11,495 | 298,079 | 0 | 957,354 | $640,524 | 253,059 | 2,003,561 | 14,713 | 2,730,994 |
| Q2 2024 | 11,038 | 267,789 | 0 | 971,489 | $566,813 | 233,326 | 2,143,256 | 14,372 | 2,750,642 |
| Q3 2024 | 9,571 | 189,766 | 0 | 1,124,958 | $408,682 | 218,552 | 2,232,440 | 13,984 | 3,147,585 |
| Q4 2024 | 9,786 | 229,233 | 0 | 1,098,649 | $504,884 | 214,770 | 1,793,163 | 13,614 | 3,082,533 |
| Q1 2025 | 11,650 | 297,751 | 0 | 981,502 | $637,449 | 239,012 | 1,862,769 | 13,677 | 2,755,537 |
| Q2 2025 | 10,478 | 212,620 | 0 | 1,041,183 | $458,443 | 218,090 | 1,569,076 | 13,313 | 2,974,101 |
| Q3 2025 | 9,774 | 196,589 | 0 | 1,067,103 | $425,162 | 210,406 | 2,124,104 | 13,280 | 3,085,432 |
| Q4 2025 | 7,867 | 116,555 | 0 | 1,134,301 | $251,651 | 178,536 | 1,714,948 | 12,851 | 3,252,606 |
| Q1 2026 | 5,853 | 28,015 | 511,278 | 950,470 | $140,614 | 137,054 | 1,380,568 | 11,791 | 2,866,440 |
| Q2 2026 | 5,144 | 0 | 777,041 | 932,211 | $98,966 | 119,762 | 743,630 | 11,362 | 2,801,871 |
| Q3 2026 | 4,578 | 0 | 849,457 | 1,025,160 | $87,920 | 119,166 | 670,789 | 11,129 | 3,103,773 |
Methodology
- Rewards are author_reward operations recorded on the Hive blockchain, indexed by Ecency's own pipeline (30M+ operations since 2018). Figures are HIVE, HBD and Hive Power actually credited to authors, net of beneficiary redirects and excluding curation (voter) rewards.
- When HIVE's price is low, the network suspends HBD printing and pays the liquid half of rewards in HIVE instead. That is why recent quarters show liquid HIVE and little or no HBD.
- Post and comment counts exclude edits; posts are top-level publications only.
- USD estimates use quarter-average market prices and are approximate. Rewards denominated in VESTS before 2026 are converted with each quarter's historical chain ratio, sampled from conversion operations recorded on-chain during that quarter.
- Curation figures track curation_reward operations paid to voters, indexed from the chain the same way as author rewards. They are reported separately and never mixed into the author-reward totals.
- Data is licensed CC BY 4.0: reuse it freely with attribution to Ecency.