It starts with where your videos come from

The first question asks where your material actually originates, because everything else depends on that answer. Original footage follows a different path than a reaction, a compilation, or a reworked clip. If your material is fully your own, the next two questions simply don’t appear — there’s nothing for them to evaluate.

If it isn’t, the calculator also asks what you add to the source material and why someone would watch your version instead of the original. Together, those answers separate real analysis from a video that only exists because the source footage does.

Recognition matters as much as origin

Right after that, it asks what identifies your videos as yours — face, voice, editing, branding, or nothing specific — and who narrates them. A channel can use fully original footage and still feel interchangeable with a dozen others. This step exists to catch that.

One video never tells the story — the pattern does

From here, the calculator stops looking at a single video and starts comparing your last 10–20: how much they differ visually, how much the scripts vary, and what actually changes between uploads — topic, script, editing, visuals, narration, or only the title. It also asks about automation and whether you could show your production process. None of this judges one video; it only makes sense as a pattern across a channel.

Rights are checked on their own track

Copyright comes next, deliberately separate. A license doesn’t settle whether your channel looks original, and originality doesn’t settle whether you have the right to use something. Folding the two together would blur two problems that get resolved in completely different ways.

Audience changes the ad equation, not the eligibility

These questions aren’t about approval — they’re about what happens to the ads afterward. Content aimed at children loses personalization and a few features, which changes revenue without removing it.

History doesn’t disappear, it gets factored in

The last questions look backward: past applications, active strikes, past removals. An active strike or a current removal gets flagged on its own, since it blocks revenue right now regardless of everything else. A past rejection, with nothing currently active, becomes context rather than a verdict.

Why the result is a map, not a score

Instead of one number, the calculator keeps six areas separate — reused content, channel identity, content variety, rights, audience, and standing — because a channel can be fully original and still look templated, or fully licensed and still feel interchangeable. Each card opens on its own to show exactly which answers led to it.

This doesn’t predict YouTube. It compares you to what YouTube already published.

The calculator has no access to your channel and no view into how a reviewer will actually decide. It compares your answers with the examples YouTube itself has published on reused content, mass-produced content, copyright, and audience classification. Think of it less as a test and more as a mirror held up against a public rulebook.