What Is a Good YouTube Channel Growth Rate? Data From 103 Channels

A YouTube channel growing 2% per month can be doing extremely well.

Another growing 20% per month can still be fragile.

That is the problem with asking:

What is a good YouTube channel growth rate?

The percentage means almost nothing without context.

A channel going from:

1,000 to 1,200 subscribers

grew:

20%.

A channel going from:

1,000,000 to 1,050,000

grew:

5%.

The second channel added:

250 times more subscribers

while posting a much lower percentage growth rate.

So OverseerOS tracked public channel observations to measure how YouTube subscriber growth actually behaves across different channel sizes.

The final cohort contained:

103 channels

with comparable public observations at least seven days apart.

The median observation window was:

17.5 days.

We normalized those changes to a monthly rate.

The result was one of the clearest size effects we have seen in our channel research.

Across the cohort:

Starting channel size had a -0.735 Spearman relationship with percentage subscriber growth.

In plain English:

larger channels tended to grow much more slowly in percentage terms.

But when we looked at absolute subscribers added, the relationship reversed direction.

Larger channels generally added more subscribers even while posting smaller percentage gains.

That means there is no honest universal answer like:

5% monthly growth is good.

or:

You should grow 10% every month.

The better question is:

Is my channel growing faster than its own recent baseline while views and active audience are strengthening too?

That is the YouTube growth rate that actually matters.

Key Findings

OverseerOS analyzed 103 channels with repeated comparable public observations.

The observation windows ranged around:

• 25th percentile: 11.4 days
• median: 17.5 days
• 75th percentile: 23.9 days

After normalizing subscriber changes to a monthly equivalent:

• 25th percentile subscriber growth: 0.51%
• median: 2.92%
• 75th percentile: 9.68%
• 90th percentile: 53.87%

But those overall numbers are misleading without channel-size context.

The median monthly-equivalent subscriber growth inside each starting-size band was:

The two smaller groups have limited sample sizes and should not be treated as market benchmarks.

More importantly, this is a research-selected OverseerOS cohort, not a random sample of every YouTube channel.

It contains many channels interesting enough to have entered competitive and breakout research workflows.

So these percentages should not be interpreted as:

normal YouTube growth rates.

They reveal something different and more defensible:

Percentage growth changes dramatically with channel size, which makes one universal growth target mathematically misleading.

We also found:

• subscriber percentage growth vs starting channel size: -0.735 Spearman
• absolute subscriber growth vs starting size: +0.356 Spearman
• subscriber percentage growth vs public view growth: +0.858 Spearman

And channels whose public video count increased during the observation window had a median monthly-equivalent subscriber growth of:

4.22%

versus:

0.82%

for channels with no increase in public video count.

That does not prove uploading caused the growth.

It does show why subscriber growth should be analyzed alongside actual audience activity.

The Direct Answer: What Is a Good YouTube Channel Growth Rate?

There is no single percentage that defines good YouTube growth.

A useful growth rate should be evaluated against:

1. your starting channel size
2. your own previous growth
3. your recent views
4. your publishing activity
5. your active audience
6. whether growth is repeatable across several videos

For a small channel, high double-digit percentage growth can happen because the denominator is tiny.

For a million-subscriber channel, even:

1% monthly growth

would represent approximately:

10,000 additional subscribers

before considering compounding.

That can be substantial.

So:

Percentage growth tells you speed relative to size. Absolute growth tells you scale. You need both.

How to Calculate YouTube Subscriber Growth Rate

The simplest formula is:

Subscriber growth rate = (Ending subscribers - Starting subscribers) ÷ Starting subscribers × 100

Example:

Starting subscribers:

20,000

Ending subscribers:

22,000

Subscriber gain:

2,000

Growth rate:

10%

If that happened over one month, your monthly subscriber growth rate was:

10%.

What If the Measurement Window Is Not Exactly One Month?

Suppose the channel moves from:

50,000 subscribers

to:

52,000

over:

15 days.

Raw growth:

4%.

You can normalize that to a monthly-equivalent rate.

A simple linear normalization is:

Observed growth rate × 30.44 ÷ observation days

So:

4% × 30.44 ÷ 15 ≈ 8.12% monthly equivalent

That does not mean the channel will necessarily grow 8.12% over the next full month.

It only puts different observation windows onto a roughly comparable scale.

This distinction matters.

Short-window growth is noisy.

Do not turn a two-week spike into a 12-month forecast.

Why Percentage Growth Naturally Falls as Channels Get Bigger

Imagine a channel gains:

1,000 subscribers per month.

At 5,000 subscribers, that represents:

20% growth.

At 50,000:

2%.

At 500,000:

0.2%.

The absolute gain did not change.

Only the denominator changed.

This is why percentage growth usually becomes harder to maintain as a channel scales.

A creator comparing:

20% growth at 5K

with:

3% growth at 500K

and concluding the small channel is automatically healthier would be making a serious analytical mistake.

The correct comparison depends on the job.

Percentage Growth vs Absolute Subscriber Growth

These metrics answer different questions.

Percentage subscriber growth

Answers:

How quickly is the channel expanding relative to its current size?

Absolute subscriber growth

Answers:

How many subscribers is the channel actually adding?

Consider:

Channel A

Starting subscribers:

10,000

Monthly gain:

2,000

Growth rate:

20%

Channel B

Starting subscribers:

1,000,000

Monthly gain:

30,000

Growth rate:

3%

Channel A has the stronger percentage growth.

Channel B adds 15 times more subscribers.

Neither metric makes one channel universally "better."

They describe different dimensions of growth.

Finding 1: Starting Size Had a Strong Negative Relationship With Percentage Growth

Across the 103-channel cohort, the rank relationship between:

starting subscriber count

and:

monthly-equivalent percentage subscriber growth

was:

-0.735

That is a strong negative association.

Larger channels tended to occupy lower percentage-growth ranks.

This is exactly why a growth benchmark needs subscriber bands.

Without size normalization, the comparison becomes unfair almost immediately.

Growth by Channel Size

Here is the observed distribution.

Under 10K Subscribers

Channels:

7

Median monthly-equivalent growth:

55.22%

25th percentile:

41.66%

75th percentile:

65.84%

This group is far too small and research-selected to treat as a general YouTube benchmark.

But it illustrates how explosive percentage growth can become when the starting denominator is small.

10K to 100K Subscribers

Channels:

22

Median:

17.79%

25th percentile:

9.47%

75th percentile:

59.98%

Again, this is an unusually high-momentum research cohort.

Do not assume a typical 30K channel should grow nearly 18% monthly.

100K to 1M Subscribers

Channels:

31

Median:

4.22%

25th percentile:

1.34%

75th percentile:

6.43%

The percentage range compresses substantially.

1M+ Subscribers

Channels:

43

Median:

0.59%

25th percentile:

0.07%

75th percentile:

1.40%

The absolute subscriber gains at this scale can still be enormous.

That is why percentages alone can make large channels look deceptively slow.

Finding 2: Bigger Channels Still Added More Subscribers in Absolute Terms

The percentage relationship was negative.

The absolute relationship was not.

Starting channel size had a positive:

0.356 Spearman correlation

with normalized absolute subscribers added.

That means larger channels tended to add more subscribers in raw numbers even though their percentage growth was much lower.

This is the exact reason growth dashboards should display:

+ subscribers

and:

% growth

side by side.

Hiding either one removes important context.

A Better Growth Dashboard

Instead of showing:

Subscriber growth: +4.2%

show:

Starting subscribers: 250,000
Subscribers added: +10,500
Growth rate: +4.2%
View growth: +9.8%
Recent median views: 83,000
Videos published: 4
Breakout videos: 1

Now you can understand what is actually happening.

Finding 3: Subscriber Growth and View Growth Moved Together Strongly

The strongest relationship in this study was not channel size.

It was:

subscriber percentage growth vs public view growth.

Spearman correlation:

0.858

That is extremely strong for observational channel data.

It does not prove:

more views mechanically cause subscriber growth.

The two can share underlying drivers such as:

• better topics
• stronger packaging
• viral distribution
• increased publishing
• external attention
• improved audience fit

But it does support an important practical rule:

Subscriber growth should make sense in the context of audience growth.

If subscriber growth rises while views collapse, investigate why.

If views and subscribers rise together, the growth story is much more coherent.

Why Views Matter More Than the Subscriber Number Alone

Subscribers accumulate over time.

Views reveal current audience activity.

A 1-million-subscriber channel can have:

30,000 recent views per upload.

A 70,000-subscriber channel can have:

150,000.

The first channel is larger.

The second may have much stronger current momentum.

That is why our YouTube Channel Health Check treats subscriber count as context rather than a complete performance score.

Finding 4: Channels With More Public Videos During the Window Grew Faster

Among the 103 channels:

65

increased their public video count during the observation period.

Their median monthly-equivalent subscriber growth was:

4.22%

Median public-view growth:

9.67%

The remaining:

38 channels

showed no public video-count increase.

Their median subscriber growth:

0.82%

Median public-view growth:

2.13%

That is a large descriptive difference.

But it needs careful interpretation.

We cannot conclude:

uploading more caused 5x faster subscriber growth.

Several confounders exist.

Faster-growing channels may:

• be more active generally
• have stronger teams
• already possess momentum
• publish because demand is strong
• operate in faster-moving niches

So the correct conclusion is:

In this cohort, channels that added public videos during the observation window also showed stronger subscriber and view growth.

If you want a dedicated analysis of cadence, see our study of how often to post on YouTube.

Subscriber Growth Is an Output, Not a Strategy

Creators often set goals like:

Grow subscribers 10% this month.

That is a business objective.

It is not a content strategy.

You cannot directly publish:

subscriber growth.

You publish:

• videos
• Shorts
• live streams
• posts

And those outputs create opportunities for:

• impressions
• views
• watch time
• satisfaction
• returning viewers
• subscriptions

So when growth slows, asking:

How do I gain subscribers faster?

is usually too far downstream.

A stronger diagnostic sequence is:

1. Are views growing?
2. Are new viewers arriving?
3. Are viewers returning?
4. Which videos are producing subscriber gains?
5. Which topics are expanding reach?
6. Which formats are repeatable?
7. Has publishing slowed?
8. Did title-thumbnail performance weaken?

Subscriber growth is the scoreboard.

The content system generates the points.

A "Good" Growth Rate Should Beat Your Own Baseline

The most useful benchmark is often your previous self.

Suppose your channel grew:

• January: 1.1%
• February: 1.4%
• March: 1.8%
• April: 2.6%
• May: 3.0%

The absolute number may look small.

The trajectory is excellent.

Now consider:

• January: 20%
• February: 14%
• March: 8%
• April: 3%
• May: 0.8%

The channel is still technically growing.

But its momentum is collapsing.

A single percentage cannot capture that.

Trajectory can.

The Three Growth Rates You Should Track

Do not track only subscriber growth.

Track at least three layers.

1. Subscriber Growth Rate

Formula:

Net subscriber change ÷ starting subscribers

Use this to measure audience accumulation relative to current size.

2. View Growth Rate

Compare total views over equivalent periods.

Example:

Previous 28 days:

500,000 views

Current 28 days:

650,000

Growth:

30%

This tells you whether audience consumption is expanding.

3. Active Audience Growth

For your own channel, this is arguably more important than public subscriber count.

Track whether:

• unique viewers are increasing
• monthly audience is expanding
• returning viewers are strengthening
• new viewers continue entering

A creator with 500,000 subscribers but a shrinking active audience has a different problem from one with 50,000 subscribers and rapidly expanding viewership.

Gross Subscriber Growth vs Net Subscriber Growth

These are also different.

Suppose during one month you gain:

5,000 subscribers

and lose:

1,500.

Gross subscribers gained:

5,000

Net subscriber gain:

3,500

A public competitor researcher usually sees only the net movement in the visible subscriber count.

The channel owner can diagnose much more.

This is another reason competitor growth analysis should avoid pretending public data is private YouTube Studio analytics.

Public Growth Rate vs Private Growth Rate

For your own channel, use your actual YouTube Analytics data.

For competitors, you only have public observations.

That creates several limitations.

Public subscriber counts can be rounded.

Short observation periods can therefore appear:

flat

even when the real count moved.

A channel may jump from:

1.20M

to:

1.21M

without showing every underlying individual subscription change publicly.

So public competitor growth should be treated as:

observable growth

not:

perfect account-level subscriber accounting.

Why Short Measurement Windows Are Dangerous

The median window in our study was only:

17.5 days.

That is useful for detecting momentum.

It is not ideal for estimating long-term growth.

Suppose a video goes viral during one 14-day period.

The normalized monthly growth rate might become:

40%.

That does not mean:

This channel will grow 40% every month.

Momentum can disappear.

The video can plateau.

The next uploads can underperform.

So short-window monthly-equivalent rates should be treated as:

comparison tools

not:

forecasts.

Never Annualize a Viral Month Blindly

If a channel grows 10% in one month, multiplying by 12 gives:

120%.

That is not a reliable annual forecast.

Compounding would produce a different number anyway.

More importantly, YouTube growth is rarely smooth.

Real channels experience:

• breakout videos
• plateaus
• seasonal demand
• topic cycles
• publishing gaps
• format changes
• algorithmic distribution changes

A better annual view uses actual rolling historical data.

What Is a Fast YouTube Growth Rate?

"Fast" should mean:

fast relative to comparable channels and the channel's own prior baseline.

For a 2,000-subscriber channel:

15%

may be plausible during a breakout period.

For a 2-million-subscriber channel:

15% in one month

would represent:

300,000 net new subscribers.

Those are completely different events.

This is why channel-size normalization is non-negotiable.

How to Benchmark Your YouTube Growth Rate

Use this five-layer method.

Layer 1: Starting Size

Record your subscriber count at the start of the window.

Example:

80,000

Layer 2: Percentage Growth

Suppose you finish at:

84,000

Growth:

5%.

Layer 3: Absolute Gain

Subscribers added:

4,000

Layer 4: View Growth

Did views rise too?

If views went:

+18%

the subscriber increase has stronger supporting context.

If views fell:

-25%

investigate the discrepancy.

Layer 5: Video Drivers

Which videos created the growth?

Look for:

• topic
• format
• traffic source
• subscriber conversion
• outlier performance

Growth becomes strategically useful only when you know what produced it.

The Growth Quality Test

Not all subscriber growth is equally useful.

Imagine two channels.

Channel A

Subscribers:

+10,000

One viral Short caused nearly all growth.

Long-form views remain flat.

The next five Shorts fail.

Channel B

Subscribers:

+5,000

Growth comes from:

• four long-form videos
• several topics
• increasing returning viewers
• expanding recent median views

Channel A grew faster.

Channel B may have the more repeatable system.

This is why growth quality matters.

Five Signs of High-Quality YouTube Growth

1. Views rise with subscribers

Growth is connected to actual audience activity.

2. Multiple videos contribute

The channel is not dependent on one anomaly.

3. Recent median views rise

Typical performance is improving.

4. Returning audience strengthens

Discovery is turning into loyalty.

5. The format remains sustainable

Growth does not require an impossible production burden.

That is healthier than chasing the largest percentage possible.

What If Subscribers Are Growing but Views Are Flat?

Possible explanations include:

• a recent viral video is still converting subscribers
• Shorts generated subscribers who do not watch long-form
• your visible subscriber count is catching up after earlier audience growth
• current uploads are weaker than the videos that caused the growth

Do not panic from one month.

Compare multiple periods.

What If Views Are Growing but Subscribers Are Flat?

This can happen too.

Possible reasons:

• videos serve one-off search intent
• viewers enjoy individual topics but do not understand the channel promise
• new viewers are arriving but not converting
• public subscriber rounding hides small movements
• subscriber CTAs or channel positioning are weak

The key question is:

Are these viewers becoming part of the channel's future audience?

What If Neither Is Growing?

Then diagnose further upstream.

Check:

• idea quality
• topic demand
• packaging
• retention
• publishing frequency
• competitive position
• format fit

Growth rarely starts with the Subscribe button.

It starts with content people want.

How Fast-Growing Channels Differ From Big Channels

A big channel is not automatically a fast-growing channel.

Imagine:

Channel A

Subscribers:

3 million

Monthly gain:

15,000

Growth rate:

0.5%

Channel B

Subscribers:

80,000

Monthly gain:

12,000

Growth:

15%

Channel A is much larger.

Channel B has dramatically stronger percentage momentum.

Both facts matter.

That is why how to tell if a YouTube channel is actually growing requires more than checking subscriber count.

Why Competitor Growth Research Can Mislead You

You see a competitor go from:

100K to 150K

and think:

They gained 50%.

But unless you know the measurement window, that statement is incomplete.

50% over:

30 days

is extraordinary.

50% over:

four years

is a completely different growth profile.

Every growth statistic needs:

starting value + ending value + time period

Without all three, it is not a useful rate.

The Minimum Competitor Growth Record

For every competitor you track, store:

Now you have a meaningful growth record.

Use Several Observations, Not Two Forever

Two snapshots establish direction.

More snapshots establish trajectory.

For example:

• January: 100K
• February: 105K
• March: 111K
• April: 124K
• May: 152K

Now you can see acceleration.

Versus:

• January: 100K
• February: 120K
• March: 126K
• April: 128K
• May: 129K

Both channels grew.

Their trajectories are completely different.

How OverseerOS Helps Analyze Public Channel Growth

The free YouTube Channel Analyzer helps creators inspect public channel and video performance without pretending to expose another creator's private analytics.

For deeper competitive research, OverseerOS connects channel analysis with:

• breakout-video discovery
• public channel statistics
• recent performance
• competitor research
• channel blueprints
• topic analysis

The useful workflow is:

size → recent performance → trajectory → outliers → strategy

Not:

subscriber count → conclusion

How We Built This Study

This analysis used repeated public channel observations stored in the OverseerOS research corpus.

We wanted to answer:

How does observed subscriber growth behave across channels of different sizes?

A channel qualified when:

• public subscriber count was available at both observations
• public total-view count was available
• public video count was available
• first and last observations used the same collection source
• observations were at least seven days apart
• the starting subscriber count was positive

That produced:

103 channels.

The median observation window was:

17.5 days.

We calculated:

Subscriber percentage change = (last subscribers - first subscribers) ÷ first subscribers

Then normalized the observed percentage to a:

30.4375-day monthly equivalent

for easier comparison.

We did the same with public total-view growth.

Why We Required the Same Collection Source

Different collection paths can introduce methodological differences.

If the first observation was captured one way and the second another, the comparison can accidentally measure:

data-pipeline differences

instead of:

channel movement.

So we excluded mixed-source first-to-last comparisons.

That reduced the sample.

It improved comparability.

Why This Sample Is Not a General YouTube Benchmark

This limitation is extremely important.

The OverseerOS corpus is influenced by:

• user channel analyses
• competitor research
• viral-channel discovery
• internal research workflows

Channels do not enter randomly.

Many are interesting precisely because they are:

• growing
• competitive
• unusual
• breakout candidates

That is why the smaller-channel growth rates in this cohort are exceptionally high.

You should not read:

10K to 100K median = 17.79%

and conclude:

Every healthy 50K channel should grow 17.79% per month.

That would be statistically wrong.

The useful result is the shape of the relationship:

percentage growth falls strongly as starting channel size rises.

Additional Limitations

Public subscriber rounding

Competitor subscriber counts can move in visible steps rather than exposing every individual change.

That can create apparent flat periods.

Short measurement windows

Monthly-equivalent normalization magnifies short-term spikes.

Selection bias

This is not a random sample of YouTube.

Causality

The study cannot prove uploading caused growth.

Format mixing

The channel-level statistics can include:

• long-form
• Shorts
• live content

depending on what the creator publishes.

No private analytics

We cannot see competitor:

• impressions
• CTR
• retention
• unique viewers
• returning viewers
• subscriber sources

So the public growth record reveals:

what happened

better than:

why it happened.

The Better YouTube Growth Benchmark

Instead of asking:

Am I above 5% growth?

build a benchmark from four comparisons.

1. Compare With Your Own Last 90 Days

Are you accelerating?

2. Compare With Your Own Previous Year

Account for seasonality.

3. Compare With Similar-Sized Channels

Do not compare a 20K channel directly with a 5M channel.

4. Compare the Content Drivers

If growth increased, identify which videos, topics, and formats changed.

This turns growth from:

a vanity metric

into:

strategy intelligence.

A Simple YouTube Growth Scorecard

Do not turn this into one fake-precise score.

Use separate signals.

The goal is not:

maximize every number this month.

The goal is:

build a system capable of producing durable audience growth.

What Is a Good Monthly Subscriber Growth Rate for a Small YouTube Channel?

There is no universal percentage.

Small channels can produce extremely high rates because even modest absolute gains create large percentage changes.

Going from:

500 to 750

is:

50% growth.

That does not mean a 100K channel should also grow 50%.

For small channels, focus heavily on:

• absolute viewers
• repeatable views
• whether multiple videos attract new people
• whether the subscriber base continues watching

Percentage growth can be visually impressive while the underlying audience is still tiny.

What Is a Good Growth Rate for a 100K YouTube Channel?

Again, there is no universal rule.

At 100K, percentage growth becomes harder.

A gain of:

5,000 subscribers

already equals:

5%.

The better benchmark is your recent trajectory and similar channels in the same market.

Our research-selected 100K to 1M cohort had a median monthly-equivalent growth of:

4.22%.

Do not treat that as the normal YouTube rate.

Treat it as evidence of what a high-momentum selected cohort can look like.

What Is a Good Growth Rate for a 1M+ Channel?

At 1 million subscribers:

1% = 10,000 subscribers.

At 5 million:

1% = 50,000.

That is why low single-digit monthly percentage growth can represent huge absolute expansion.

In the 43-channel 1M+ portion of our selected cohort, median monthly-equivalent growth was:

0.59%.

Again, this is descriptive of this sample only.

Should You Care More About Views or Subscribers?

Neither should be analyzed alone.

Subscribers measure accumulated audience commitment.

Views measure consumption.

For current channel health, views usually provide essential context.

For long-term audience building, subscriber and returning-viewer growth matter too.

The strongest growth story is when several metrics improve together.

Final Verdict

There is no universal "good YouTube channel growth rate."

That answer is less satisfying than:

Aim for 10%.

It is also much more accurate.

Our 103-channel analysis found a strong:

-0.735

relationship between starting channel size and percentage subscriber growth.

Small channels could grow dramatically in percentage terms.

Large channels posted much smaller percentages while often adding more subscribers in absolute numbers.

Subscriber growth also moved closely with public view growth:

0.858 Spearman correlation.

And channels that added public videos during the observation window showed stronger median growth than those that did not, although the study cannot establish causality.

So judge YouTube growth with:

percentage gain

plus:

absolute gain

plus:

view growth

plus:

active audience

plus:

repeatability

plus:

trajectory.

The best benchmark is not:

Did I grow 5% this month?

It is:

Is my audience expanding faster and more sustainably than it was before?

That is the growth rate worth optimizing.

FAQ

What is a good YouTube channel growth rate?

There is no universal good percentage. A useful growth rate depends on channel size, absolute subscribers gained, view growth, active audience, and your own historical trajectory.

How do I calculate YouTube subscriber growth rate?

Subtract starting subscribers from ending subscribers, divide the result by starting subscribers, then multiply by 100.

Is 5% monthly YouTube growth good?

It can be excellent or ordinary depending on channel size and context. Five percent on a 1-million-subscriber channel represents 50,000 net subscribers, while 5% on a 1,000-subscriber channel represents 50.

Is 10% monthly YouTube growth good?

Ten percent is strong percentage growth for many established channels, but there is no universal benchmark. Small channels can experience much larger percentages because their starting denominator is small.

Why do small YouTube channels grow faster in percentage terms?

A small absolute subscriber gain represents a much larger share of a small starting audience. This denominator effect naturally makes high percentage growth easier at smaller channel sizes.

Should I track subscriber growth or view growth?

Track both. Subscriber growth shows audience accumulation, while view growth shows current consumption. In OverseerOS's 103-channel cohort, the two moved together strongly.

How often should I measure YouTube channel growth?

Use consistent windows such as 28, 30, or 90 days for your own channel. For competitors, repeated observations are more useful than one snapshot, and longer windows reduce noise from individual viral videos.

Can subscriber count show whether a YouTube channel is growing?

One subscriber count cannot show growth. You need at least two observations separated by time, and ideally several observations to understand trajectory.

Is subscriber growth more important than views?

Not necessarily. A channel can gain subscribers from one breakout while current views weaken. Sustainable growth usually looks stronger when views, active audience, and subscriber gains improve together.

What is the difference between absolute and percentage YouTube growth?

Absolute growth measures how many subscribers were added. Percentage growth measures that gain relative to the channel's starting size. Both are necessary for a fair comparison.

Can I calculate a competitor's YouTube growth rate?

You can estimate observable public growth by recording the competitor's public subscriber count at multiple dates. Because public counts can be rounded and private analytics are unavailable, treat the result as an estimate rather than exact account-level growth.

Why is my YouTube channel growing slower as it gets bigger?

Percentage growth naturally becomes harder to maintain as the subscriber denominator grows. A channel can add more subscribers than ever before while its percentage growth rate falls.