# Actual Database — full text
> Numbers we measured, not numbers a model guessed.

Generated: 2026-10-25

---

# How Many Page Views You Need Before Ad Money Arrives (Payout Math, Not Hype)

URL: https://actualdatabase.com/page-views-needed-to-earn/
Verified: 2026-10-25

**Quick answer:** At a $5 RPM you need about 20,000 monthly page views to clear $100, and about 200,000 to clear $1,000. RPM, not traffic, is the whole game: a $40 RPM niche needs 2,500 views for the same $100. Ad networks also hold payouts until a threshold, usually $100, so small sites can be profitable on paper and still see no money for months.

- $100 per month requires 20,000 page views at a $5 RPM, 50,000 at $2, or 2,500 at $40 (calculated 2026-10-25).
- $1,000 per month requires 200,000 page views at a $5 RPM, or 25,000 at a $40 RPM (calculated 2026-10-25).
- Google AdSense pays out at a $100 threshold, issued between the 21st and the 26th of the following month (checked 2026-10-25).
- A page view from tier-1 English traffic is typically worth 5–50x a page view from tier-3 traffic in display-ad RPM terms (estimate, 2026-10-25).
- At 300 page views per article per month, clearing $100 at a $5 RPM takes about 67 published articles (calculated 2026-10-25).

## The only formula that matters

```
monthly revenue = page views / 1000 × RPM
page views needed = target revenue ÷ RPM × 1000
```

Everything else — niche, design, posting schedule — is a way of moving one of those two numbers. RPM is the one most people ignore, and it varies by a factor of fifty between niches.

## Page views required for a revenue target

| RPM | $100 / month | $500 / month | $1,000 / month | $5,000 / month |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $1 (tier-3 general) | 100,000 | 500,000 | 1,000,000 | 5,000,000 |
| $5 (English general) | 20,000 | 100,000 | 200,000 | 1,000,000 |
| $15 (B2B software) | 6,700 | 33,300 | 66,700 | 333,300 |
| $40 (finance, legal, insurance) | 2,500 | 12,500 | 25,000 | 125,000 |

*Rows are arithmetic, not forecasts: they assume every page view serves a paid impression. Real sites typically see 60–85% of views monetised, so add 20–40% to the figures.*

## Quick calculator

<form class="calc" onsubmit="return false">
  <label>Monthly page views <input id="pv" type="number" value="20000" min="0" step="1000"></label>
  <label>RPM in USD <input id="rpm" type="number" value="5" min="0.1" step="0.5"></label>
  <p class="calc-out">Estimated monthly revenue: <strong id="calc-rev">$100</strong></p>
</form>
<script>
(function () {
  var pv = document.getElementById('pv');
  var rpm = document.getElementById('rpm');
  var out = document.getElementById('calc-rev');
  if (!pv || !rpm || !out) return;
  function fmt(n) {
    return '$' + n.toLocaleString('en-US', { maximumFractionDigits: 0 });
  }
  function update() {
    var v = parseFloat(pv.value) || 0;
    var r = parseFloat(rpm.value) || 0;
    out.textContent = fmt((v / 1000) * r);
  }
  pv.addEventListener('input', update);
  rpm.addEventListener('input', update);
  update();
})();
</script>

## When the money actually arrives

Revenue is not payment. Three gates stand between a page view and your bank account:

1. **Threshold.** AdSense holds the balance until it reaches $100. At $20 per month, the first payment is five months away.
2. **Schedule.** Payments issue between the 21st and 26th of the month following the month in which the threshold was crossed, and only after tax and identity verification clear.
3. **Verification.** Address PIN by mail, tax status (a W-8BEN for non-US publishers), and a payout method. Each of these can silently hold funds for a month.

[[ad]]

## The number people forget

Page views per article. If a page earns 300 views per month, then $100 per month at a $5 RPM needs **67 pages**, not 20,000 views of willpower. Work backwards from that: pages that answer one specific question with a number in it beat pages that summarise a topic, because the specific question is what people type.

## What this model gets wrong

It assumes traffic you can actually get. A $40 RPM topic is usually a topic where the top ten results are owned by companies with a decade of domain authority, so the arithmetic says 2,500 views and reality says zero. Pick the niche where you can add a fact nobody else has published, then let the RPM follow.

**Sources:**
- Google AdSense payment thresholds and schedule: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1709871
- Google AdSense revenue share: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195
- Ad network entry requirements: https://purpleads.io/blog/top-ad-networks-for-publishers/

---

# Free Static Hosting Limits Compared: Cloudflare Pages vs Netlify vs Vercel vs GitHub Pages

URL: https://actualdatabase.com/free-static-hosting-limits/
Verified: 2026-10-25

**Quick answer:** On our capture date, Cloudflare Pages was the only widely used free tier with unmetered bandwidth and a written commercial-use allowance. Netlify Free allowed 100 GB of bandwidth and 300 build minutes per month, Vercel Hobby allowed roughly 100 GB but prohibited commercial use, and GitHub Pages allowed 1 GB of published site with 100 GB per month of soft bandwidth and was not intended for e-commerce.

- Cloudflare Pages free tier: unmetered bandwidth and requests, 500 builds per month, 20,000 files per site, 25 MiB per file (checked 2026-10-25).
- Netlify Free: 100 GB bandwidth per month, 300 build minutes per month, 125,000 serverless function invocations (checked 2026-10-25).
- Vercel Hobby: about 100 GB bandwidth per month, commercial use prohibited by the plan terms (checked 2026-10-25).
- GitHub Pages: 1 GB published site size, 100 GB per month soft bandwidth, 10 builds per hour, not intended for commercial e-commerce (checked 2026-10-25).
- Only Cloudflare Pages among these four states a commercial-use allowance that does not depend on a paid plan (checked 2026-10-25).

## Why this table exists

Hosting quota pages are long, undated, and written for lawyers. The question people actually ask is narrower: *can I put ads on it, and will it fall over at 50,000 page views?* This page answers only that, and prints the date each figure was confirmed so you can tell whether it still holds.

## The comparison

| Host | Bandwidth | Builds | Commercial use | Custom domain | Notable cap |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Cloudflare Pages | Unmetered | 500 / month | Allowed | Yes, free | 20,000 files, 25 MiB per file |
| Netlify Free | 100 GB / month | 300 minutes / month | Allowed | Yes, free | 125k function invocations |
| Vercel Hobby | ~100 GB / month | Included | Prohibited on Hobby | Yes, free | Fair-use enforcement |
| GitHub Pages | 100 GB / month soft | 10 builds / hour | Not intended for e-commerce | Yes, free | 1 GB published site |

*Verified 2026-10-25 against each vendor's own limits page. See [Sources](#sources).*

## What actually breaks first

Bandwidth is almost never the binding constraint for a text site. A 60 KB HTML page with a 20 KB stylesheet serves **12,000 page views per GB**, so Netlify's 100 GB is roughly 1.2 million views. What breaks first, in order:

1. **Build minutes** on sites that rebuild thousands of pages on every commit.
2. **File count caps** when a generator emits one file per tag, per author, per pagination page.
3. **Plan terms**, not quotas. A site that gets popular on a plan that forbids commercial use gets suspended for the wrong reason.

## The trap that costs people their ad account

AdSense verifies site ownership by asking you to place a record on the domain. That works on `example.com` and fails on `yourproject.pages.dev`, because you do not control the apex record of a domain you do not own. Buy the domain first (about $10 per year), attach it to the host, then apply.

## Decision rule

- Text, tools, docs, data pages → **Cloudflare Pages**.
- Needs serverless functions or form handling → **Netlify**, until build minutes become the constraint.
- Next.js with a commercial plan → **Vercel paid**, because Hobby forbids the commercial part.
- Repository documentation only → **GitHub Pages**.

[[ad]]

## How to keep this table honest

Run the same four pages through a diff weekly: fetch each limits page, hash the body, and alert on change. Re-verify any row that changed, update the date, and note what changed. A table that is silently six months stale is worse than no table, because people cite it.

**Sources:**
- Cloudflare Pages limits: https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/
- Netlify pricing and free tier: https://www.netlify.com/pricing/
- Vercel pricing and fair use: https://vercel.com/pricing
- GitHub Pages usage limits: https://docs.github.com/en/pages/getting-started-with-github-pages/github-pages-limits