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Roblox's top 1,000 creators averaged $1.4 million each as platform paid out $1.7 billion last year
Roblox told its developer conference that creators earned roughly $1.7 billion in the year to 30 June 2026. The median of the 42,000 people in its payout program got about $1,500 of it, and the tier averages show where the rest went.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Roblox told its Developers Conference that creators earned approximately $1.7 billion over the past year, with the biggest sums going to hits including Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot.
- Figures the company presented at the event put its top 10 creators at an average of $65.7 million over the 12 months ending 30 June 2026.
- Averages fall away quickly below that, with the top 100 at $10.8 million and the top 1,000 at $1.4 million over the same period.
- More than 42,000 creators take part in the Developer Exchange program, and the median participant received approximately $1,500 in those twelve months.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost The median DevEx participant is clearing about $125 a month, so the cost of tooling, asset purchases and unpaid development time falls on people the payout pool barely reaches.
- constraint With roughly 82% of the money sitting in 1,000 accounts, a studio's revenue model on Roblox has to assume a hit, and there are only so many seats in that band.
- decision Anyone using the 50% growth figure to justify headcount now has to decide which number the plan is priced against, because a bigger pool concentrating at the top does not raise the middle.
- exposure Creators who converted Robux to rent money are exposed to the outcome of child safety investigations they have no part in and no way to hedge.
Multiply each tier average by the number of creators in it and the $1.7 billion sorts itself into a few hundred people. Ten creators at an average of $65.7 million is $657 million [3], about 39% of the annual total [1]. A hundred at $10.8 million is $1.08 billion, roughly 64% [2]. A thousand at $1.4 million is $1.4 billion, about 82% [3]. That leaves around $300 million for the other 41,000-odd participants in the Developer Exchange program, an average of about $7,300 each [4]. Dexerto reported the tier averages and the annual total as part of the same set of figures shown at RDC, and does not say whether the tier averages are drawn from that total, so treat the shares as approximate [13].
The median in the program is approximately $1,500 [7], which works out to about $125 a month [6]. The mean of the group outside the top 1,000 sits roughly five times its median [9], so the same concentration repeats inside the bottom 41,000.
The growth number needs the same arithmetic. DevEx earnings are up around 50% year over year [2], which puts the prior twelve months near $1.13 billion [8], and cumulative payouts since the program launched in 2013 have passed $5 billion [8]. So roughly a third of everything DevEx has ever paid went out in the last year alone [7]. Roblox attributed the top of the range to specific hits, naming Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot, whose creators each earned tens of millions [10].
The platform's own standing is part of a creator's risk. During CEO David Baszucki's keynote, a YouTuber ran onto the stage wearing a shirt reading "kids deserve better" and was removed from the event [11]. Roblox has faced repeated scrutiny over child safety, which has prompted several investigations [12]. Everyone converting Robux to dollars through DevEx [9] is exposed to how those investigations end.
For anyone staffing a team against a user-generated-content platform, the useful exercise is to name the tier your plan requires, then count the slots in it. There are ten slots paying an average of $65.7 million, a hundred paying $10.8 million, a thousand paying $1.4 million, and more than 42,000 people in the program [6]. The top-10 average is 43,800 times the median [5]. If the hiring plan only pencils out at top-1,000 revenue, it is a plan that requires a hit, and the platform has 1,000 of those seats against 42,000 entrants.
What to watch
- Whether Roblox publishes percentile bands for DevEx payouts instead of top-tier averages, which would show where the 1,000th creator actually sits.
- Whether the roughly 50% year-over-year growth in DevEx earnings repeats, and whether the median moves with it.
- How the child safety investigations resolve, and whether any resulting platform rules touch creator monetization.