Most people looking for an AdSense alternative are in one of two situations. Either AdSense turned them down, or AdSense approved them and the money turned out to be disappointing.
The second group is much larger now than it used to be. AdSense stopped paying per click in early 2024 and started paying per impression instead, which removed the one thing that made small, high-intent sites viable. A site with a few thousand visitors and an audience that clicked could once earn real money. Now the same site earns whatever its impressions are worth, which is not much.
At the same time the networks that used to be out of reach came down to meet you. Raptive cut its entry requirement by 75 percent. Mediavine dropped its entry program to 1,000 monthly sessions. Both changes happened because search traffic has been falling across the whole industry and the networks would rather sign a smaller site than sign nothing.
This post was first published in 2016. Almost none of it survived. Five of the original fifteen networks have shut down, one was quietly killed by Amazon, and the two best options available today did not accept sites your size back then. Everything below reflects what is actually running in 2026.
The short version
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Best if you have any traffic at all: Journey by Mediavine. It starts at 1,000 monthly sessions, which is the lowest real bar of any quality network.
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Best once you pass 25,000 pageviews: Raptive. Highest RPMs in the business, and it now accepts sites four times smaller than it did in 2024.
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Best managed option in between: Monumetric, from 10,000 pageviews.
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Best straight swap for AdSense: Media.net. Same idea, same effort, different advertiser pool. No traffic minimum.
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Best for non tier-one traffic: Adsterra. Takes almost anyone, pays from $5, and works with audiences the premium networks will not touch.
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Best if you sell directly: BuySellAds, or just sell sponsorships yourself and keep everything.
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Do not bother with: Ezoic, unless you have 250,000 monthly users. It raised its minimum in February 2026 and is no longer an option for small sites.
Quick comparison
| Network | Entry requirement | Payout threshold | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Journey by Mediavine | 1,000 monthly sessions | $25 | Small sites that want a real upgrade |
| Mediavine | $5,000 annual ad revenue | $25 | Established content sites |
| Raptive | 25,000 monthly pageviews | $25 | Sites with mostly US, UK, CA, AU, NZ traffic |
| Monumetric | 10,000 monthly pageviews | $10 | The gap between AdSense and Mediavine |
| Media.net | No hard minimum | $100 | English content, tier-one audience |
| Sovrn Ad Management | No hard minimum | $25 | Small sites wanting a second demand source |
| Newor Media | Around 30,000 monthly visits | $50 | Managed service without the big-network wait |
| Setupad | Around 100,000 monthly visitors | €100 | European publishers, header bidding |
| Ezoic | 250,000 monthly users | $20 | Large sites and web apps only |
| Publift | 500,000 pageviews or $2,000 monthly ad revenue | Varies | Larger publishers wanting a managed partner |
| Adsterra | None | $5 | Global or non tier-one traffic |
| Infolinks | None | $50 | Extra revenue layered on top of display ads |
| BuySellAds | Approval based on quality | $20 | Selling space directly to advertisers |
Numbers move. Every network on this list changed something in the last eighteen months, so treat the table as a starting point and check the network’s own page before you apply.
How these were ranked
Four things decided the order:
- Can you actually join it? A network with brilliant RPMs and a 500,000 pageview minimum is not an alternative for most people reading this. Accessibility counts.
- Does it beat AdSense? Several popular “alternatives” pay less than AdSense and exist mainly because they approve anyone. Those are further down, with the reason stated.
- What it costs your readers. Pop-unders and push notifications earn money. They also drive people away and can get your site flagged. That is a real cost, not a footnote.
- Is the company stable? Half the networks in the original version of this post are gone. Ownership, funding, and how long they have been paying publishers all matter.
1. Journey by Mediavine (best overall path, and the easiest to join)
Best for: content sites that plan to keep growing, at almost any current size.
- Entry: 1,000 monthly sessions for Journey, $5,000 annual ad revenue for full Mediavine
- Revenue share: 70 percent on Journey
- Payout: $25, net 65 days
- Requirement: the Grow plugin must be installed
Mediavine changed its rules on 15 January 2026, and the change matters more than anything else in this post.
The old rule was 50,000 monthly sessions. That number defined the ceiling for a generation of site owners, and most never reached it. It is gone. Full Mediavine now asks for $5,000 in annual ad revenue instead, which is a revenue test rather than a traffic test. The logic is that revenue tells you whether an audience is worth premium advertiser demand, and raw session counts stopped telling you that once AI started inflating pageviews on low quality sites.
Underneath that sits Journey, which is where most readers of this post will start. Journey now accepts sites with 1,000 monthly sessions. Not 50,000. Not 10,000, which was the Journey requirement until January. One thousand. Once your site earns $5,000 in ad revenue over twelve months, it moves up to full Mediavine automatically.
The catch is that sessions have to be tracked through Mediavine’s Grow plugin, because that is how they verify your traffic and engagement. Some people find Grow heavy, and it is a fair complaint. You are trading a bit of page weight for access.
What it does well
- The lowest genuine entry point of any quality network, by a wide margin
- Automatic upgrade path, so you do not reapply as you grow
- Consistently among the highest RPMs available to independent site owners
- Strong support reputation and a large community you can ask questions in
Where it falls short
RPMs are lowest in your first month because the system is still learning your audience. A lot of people quit at week three and conclude Journey does not work. Compare it to AdSense at the three month mark, not week one.
It is also niche-sensitive. Food, parenting, and lifestyle sites do noticeably better than tech and gaming sites, partly because tech audiences use ad blockers more heavily. If you run a tech blog, expect a smaller gap over AdSense than the case studies suggest.
2. Raptive (best RPMs once you qualify)
Best for: sites with at least a quarter of a million pageviews a year and a mostly English-speaking, tier-one audience.
- Entry: 25,000 monthly pageviews
- Extra rule: sites between 25,000 and 99,999 pageviews need at least 50 percent of traffic from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand
- Payout: $25
- Notice period: 90 days to cancel
Raptive, which most people still know as AdThrive, dropped its requirement from 100,000 monthly pageviews to 25,000 in October 2025. It also retired the Rise program and folded everyone into a single tier called Insider. That is a 75 percent cut to the bar, and the company said plainly why: pageviews stopped being a reliable measure of quality when AI content started generating inflated traffic and algorithm updates started moving numbers overnight.
What you get in exchange for qualifying is the closest thing to a done-for-you setup. Raptive designs your ad layout, runs the auctions, handles the consent management platform, manages ads.txt, and deals with ad block recovery. You paste some JavaScript and stop thinking about it.
What it does well
- Generally the highest RPMs available to independent publishers
- Full service, so there is nothing for you to optimize
- Direct sold campaigns from brands that will not buy through AdSense
- Referral bonuses if you bring other site owners in
Where it falls short
Raptive is selective about who it accepts and openly says so. Meeting the pageview number is necessary but not sufficient. They want original, human-written content, and the majority of your pages should be long form.
Ad density is high by design, and you give up control over placement. If you care deeply about how your site looks, this will bother you. There is also a 90 day cancellation notice, which is worth knowing before you sign.
3. Monumetric (best managed option in the gap)
Best for: sites between roughly 10,000 and 80,000 monthly pageviews that want a managed service now.
- Entry: 10,000 monthly pageviews (Propel tier)
- Revenue share: 70 percent at Propel, up to 80 percent at higher tiers
- Setup fee: $99 one time under 80,000 pageviews, waived above that
- Payout: $10, net 60
Monumetric occupies the position it has always occupied: too big for AdSense, not yet ready for the premium networks. That gap got narrower after the Mediavine and Raptive changes, but Monumetric still has two things going for it.
The first is that it publishes its revenue share, which almost nobody in this industry does. You know exactly what you are giving up. The second is that it measures pageviews rather than sessions, which is a slightly easier bar to clear than Mediavine’s old session count, and it is more relaxed about where your traffic comes from geographically.
The tiers are Propel (10,000 to 80,000 pageviews), Ascend (80,000 to 500,000), Stratos (500,000 to 10 million), and Apollo above that.
What it does well
- Transparent about revenue share, which is rare
- Real human onboarding and account support at a size where most networks give you a help centre
- More flexible about international traffic than Raptive
- Pageview-based, which is friendlier than a session count
Where it falls short
The $99 setup fee at the entry tier stings when you are earning very little. There are structural requirements too: WordPress or Blogger, a sidebar at least 300 pixels wide, and at least six ad slots on both mobile and desktop. Six ad slots is a lot of ads, and on a slim block theme you may have to redesign to fit them.
Waiting lists have historically been long. Apply before you need it.
4. Media.net (the closest thing to a straight swap)
Best for: English-language sites with a US, UK, or Canadian audience that want a second contextual network.
- Entry: no published minimum, but approval requires quality content and tier-one traffic
- Payout: $100
- Ad types: contextual display, native, the display-to-search unit
Media.net is powered by the Yahoo and Bing advertiser pool and works the way AdSense works: it reads your page and shows ads related to what is on it. If you liked AdSense conceptually and just want different demand behind it, this is the closest match on the list.
Its distinctive format is the display-to-search unit, which looks like a small block of search results inside your content. Click-through tends to be higher than a standard banner because it does not read like a banner.
Contextual targeting also aged well. As tracking cookies disappeared, networks that match ads to the page rather than to the person became more valuable rather than less.
What it does well
- No hard traffic minimum, so a smaller site can realistically get in
- Works alongside AdSense rather than replacing it, if you want both
- Strong in finance, technology, and travel, where the Bing advertiser pool is deep
- Contextual approach that does not depend on tracking
Where it falls short
Performance falls off sharply outside tier-one, English-speaking traffic. If most of your visitors are in South Asia, Africa, or Latin America, fill rates and CPMs will disappoint you, and Media.net is better treated as a supplement than a main earner.
The $100 payout threshold is high for a small site, and approval is manual and not fast.
5. Sovrn Ad Management (easiest second demand source)
Best for: small sites that want more advertisers competing for the same ad slot without changing anything else.
- Entry: no hard minimum, approval by manual site review
- Payout: $25, one of the lowest in the industry
- Also offers: Sovrn Commerce, the affiliate link tool that used to be VigLink
Sovrn is an ad exchange rather than a managed service, which means it plugs extra demand into your existing setup instead of taking over your site. For a smaller publisher that is an easier decision than switching networks entirely.
It is also the home of what used to be VigLink. Sovrn Commerce still turns ordinary product mentions into affiliate links automatically. Worth knowing: Amazon cut third party affiliate networks like Sovrn and Skimlinks out of its program back in 2020, so this covers everything except Amazon.
What it does well
- Genuinely accessible, with judgment based on site quality rather than a number
- $25 threshold means you actually get paid
- Ad management and affiliate commerce from one account
- Sits alongside your existing ads rather than replacing them
Where it falls short
RPMs are modest. Sovrn is a supplement, not a step change, and if you are expecting Mediavine numbers you will be let down. Payment terms are slower than most.
6. Newor Media (managed service without the queue)
Best for: sites around 30,000 monthly visits that want hands-on management sooner than the big networks will give it.
- Entry: around 30,000 monthly visits, though this is not published firmly
- Payout: $50, net 30
- Model: header bidding across multiple demand partners
Newor Media is a managed header bidding service, which means it runs an auction among several ad networks for each ad slot and serves whichever bid is highest. AdSense, Criteo, GumGum, Outbrain, Revcontent, and others end up competing for the same space.
It is a reasonable pick if you are stuck: past AdSense, not yet at Raptive, and not keen on Monumetric’s setup fee or six-slot requirement.
What it does well
- Header bidding without you having to understand header bidding
- Net 30 payment, faster than most managed networks
- Responsive support relative to company size
- No setup fee
Where it falls short
It is a smaller company with a smaller demand pool than Mediavine or Raptive, and the ceiling is correspondingly lower. Some of its highest-earning formats, particularly interstitials, are the ones readers dislike most. You can turn them off, but your RPM drops when you do.
The traffic requirement is not officially published, which makes planning around it awkward. Ask them directly.
7. Setupad (best for European publishers)
Best for: sites with around 100,000 monthly visitors, particularly in Europe.
- Entry: around 100,000 monthly visitors, tier one preferred
- Payout: €100
- Options: fully managed, or a self-serve header bidding wrapper
Setupad connects your inventory to a large set of supply-side platforms and runs a real-time auction across all of them. You can hand it over completely or run the self-serve version and keep control.
Its strength is European demand and European compliance. GDPR handling and consent management come built in rather than bolted on, and there is a WordPress plugin for the integration. Revenue share is on the generous side and there is no lock-in contract.
What it does well
- Deep European advertiser demand, where US-focused networks are weak
- Choice between managed and self-serve
- Consent management included at no extra cost
- No contract lock-in
Where it falls short
The 100,000 visitor requirement rules out most sites reading this post. The €100 payout threshold is high, and if your audience is mainly American you will probably do better with Raptive.