YouTube Dislike Ratio: How to View It & What It Means
The like-to-dislike ratio is one of the most informative signals on YouTube. Here is everything you need to know — how to view the ratio on any video in 2026, how to interpret it, and how it affects a video's performance on the platform.
What Is a YouTube Dislike Ratio?
The YouTube dislike ratio — also called the like-to-dislike ratio or like/dislike ratio — is the proportion of a video's engagement that comes from likes versus dislikes. It is typically expressed as a percentage: likes ÷ (likes + dislikes) × 100%. A video with 90,000 likes and 10,000 dislikes has a like ratio of 90%, or a dislike ratio of 10%.
Before November 2021, this ratio was easy to calculate from the publicly visible like and dislike counts displayed on every YouTube video. After YouTube removed public dislike counts, the ratio became invisible to ordinary viewers — though creators can still calculate it using the data available in their YouTube Studio Analytics dashboard.
Third-party tools like our YouTube Dislike Viewer restore visibility to this ratio using Return YouTube Dislike estimates. When you look up a video on our tool, you see the estimated like count, estimated dislike count, and a visual ratio bar showing the like percentage at a glance.
How to View the YouTube Dislike Ratio on Any Video
Since YouTube hides the public dislike count, viewing the dislike ratio requires a third-party tool or extension. The simplest method for any device:
Copy the YouTube video URL from your browser address bar, or tap Share → Copy Link in the YouTube app.
Visit youtubedislikeviewer.org in any browser.
Paste the URL into the input field and click View 👎.
The estimated like count, dislike count, and like-to-dislike ratio bar are displayed. The ratio percentage is shown as a number and as a visual bar.
For automatic ratio display while browsing YouTube, install the Return YouTube Dislike Chrome extension or the Firefox addon. These show the like/dislike ratio bar below every video automatically.
What Is a Good YouTube Like-to-Dislike Ratio?
Dislike ratios vary widely by content type, audience, and context. Here is a practical reference guide:
Typical for viral music videos, beloved entertainment content, and universally appealing material. Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, for example, sits at approximately 97.4% likes. This tier indicates strong, widespread approval.
A solid like ratio for most content categories. Educational videos, tutorials, and how-to guides often fall in this range when they are accurate and well-produced. This range indicates the content delivers on its promise for most viewers.
Still positive overall, but with notable dissatisfaction. Common for opinion videos, product reviews (where some viewers disagree with the conclusion), political commentary, and videos covering controversial topics where audiences naturally split.
Significant viewer dissatisfaction. Typical for videos that failed to deliver on their title's promise, misleading thumbnails (clickbait), product announcements that disappointed fans, or company communications that faced backlash.
More dislikes than likes. This level of ratio is often seen on videos that triggered coordinated dislike campaigns, major corporate failures, deliberate controversy, or scam content that was exposed. YouTube Rewind 2018 fell below 10% likes.
How Does the Dislike Ratio Affect YouTube Recommendations?
The dislike ratio's effect on YouTube's recommendation algorithm is indirect and context-dependent. YouTube has never published a formula that mechanically reduces a video's reach based on its dislike ratio. Instead, dislikes are one of many satisfaction signals the algorithm evaluates alongside watch time, average view duration, click-through rate, comments, shares, and post-viewing surveys.
A Mozilla Foundation research study examined the effectiveness of different user signals in controlling YouTube recommendations. The study found that clicking the Dislike button reduced the likelihood of the disliked video being recommended again to that user by approximately 12%. This is a personalized effect — it affects your individual feed, not the video's global performance.
For context, the same study found that clicking "Not interested" was more effective (54% reduction in recommendations of that video), and "Don't recommend this channel" was most effective (43% reduction). This suggests that for controlling your personal feed, explicit "Not interested" signals are more powerful than the dislike button.
At a macro level, if a very large proportion of viewers dislike a video and also abandon it quickly (short watch time relative to video length), the combined negative signals can reduce how aggressively YouTube's algorithm promotes the video in homepage feeds and suggested videos. But a high dislike ratio alone, without accompanying poor watch time, is unlikely to dramatically suppress a video's reach — particularly for well-established channels.
Reading the Dislike Ratio by Video Type
Tutorials & How-To Videos
A like ratio below 85% on a tutorial is a significant red flag. It often means the instructions are incorrect, outdated, or not working for a meaningful proportion of viewers. Check dislikes before following any tutorial — especially for medical, financial, or technical topics where bad advice has consequences.
Music Videos
Music videos from major artists typically achieve 95%+ like ratios. A music video in the 80–90% range may indicate divisive material or an unpopular artistic direction. Below 80% for a mainstream release suggests genuine audience rejection of the content.
Corporate & Brand Announcements
Corporate videos announcing price increases, game features removal, policy changes, or controversial decisions often attract high dislike rates regardless of production quality. A 50–70% like ratio on a brand announcement signals significant consumer backlash worth researching before making related purchasing decisions.
News & Opinion Content
News and commentary videos naturally attract more polarized reactions than entertainment content. A 75–85% like ratio for opinion content is often normal given that opinions inherently disagree with some viewers. Focus less on the absolute ratio and more on whether the dislike pattern appears organic or coordinated.
Game Trailers & Announcements
Gaming community audiences are vocal. A game trailer with a 60% or lower like ratio is a strong signal of gamer dissatisfaction — often a useful early indicator of a troubled release months before review scores appear. Conversely, a 95%+ like ratio on a game trailer suggests strong pre-release enthusiasm.
Product Reviews & Unboxing
For product review videos, compare the like ratio to the reviewer's typical ratio across other videos. If a reviewer consistently gets 95%+ likes but a specific review has 75% likes, the anomaly may indicate audience disagreement with the review's conclusions rather than general content quality issues.
Most-Disliked YouTube Videos in History
Before YouTube removed public dislike counts in November 2021, some videos accumulated staggering dislike totals. These cases offer useful reference points for understanding what extreme dislike ratios look like in practice:
YouTube's own promotional video became the most-disliked video in history — a symbol of the disconnect between YouTube's corporate direction and its creator/viewer community.
With billions of views, even a small dislike percentage produced massive absolute numbers. High dislikes here reflected the polarizing nature of children's content rather than poor quality.
Held the record for most-disliked video for years. Reflected early-2010s internet culture's organized campaigns against Bieber's music specifically.
These historical examples illustrate that the absolute dislike count must be read in context. A video with millions of dislikes but billions of views may have a perfectly healthy overall ratio, while a video with a few thousand dislikes but only ten thousand views may be performing catastrophically by ratio standards.
Using YouTube Dislike Viewer to Check Ratio
Our YouTube Dislike Viewer tool shows the like-to-dislike ratio for any YouTube video. When you paste a video URL and click View 👎, the results display:
- → The estimated total like count (e.g., 19.1M)
- → The estimated total dislike count (e.g., 511K)
- → A visual ratio bar showing the percentage of interactions that are likes
- → The exact percentage next to the bar (e.g., 97.4%)
- → View count and upload date for context
The ratio bar transitions smoothly from red (low like ratio) to green (high like ratio), giving an immediate visual impression of audience sentiment before you even read the numbers. For videos with millions of views, these estimates closely reflect the actual ratio visible to the creator in YouTube Studio.
You can also use the URL parameter system to share dislike ratio checks: add ?v=VIDEO_ID to our tool's URL to pre-load a specific video. For example: youtubedislikeviewer.org/?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ loads the Rick Astley video directly. This makes it easy to share dislike ratio checks with others.