The first YouTube channel to hit 10 million subscribers was Smosh.

Quick Scoop: Who Hit 10M First?

Back in May 2013, Smosh became the first channel ever to cross the 10,000,000-subscriber milestone, officially entering what fans started calling the “eight‑digit club.” The comedy duo, made up of Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, had already been the most‑subscribed channel for a while and kept breaking records on the way up: first to 1,000 subscribers, then 100,000, and later 10 million according to historical milestone lists.

A typical way people on forums talk about it is something like:

Smosh were literally there from the start and somehow also the first to 10M. Wild that the same channel topped charts in both the tiny‑YouTube era and the early mainstream boom.

That early lead is why Smosh often gets mentioned in today’s discussions about how massive creators like MrBeast or T‑Series are; they mark one of the first big “ceiling breaks” in YouTube history.

Fast Facts (for skimming)

  • First channel to hit 10 million subscribers : Smosh.
  • Approximate date of the 10M milestone: late May 2013.
  • Creators: Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla.
  • Earlier milestones: first to 1,000 and 100,000 subscribers also credited to Smosh on record lists.

Tiny Timeline of Milestones

Here’s a quick look at where the 10M moment sits among other early subscriber records:

MilestoneChannelDate
1,000 subscribersSmoshNov 5, 2005
100,000 subscribersSmoshMay 15, 2007
1,000,000 subscribersFREDApr 7, 2009
5,000,000 subscribersRay William JohnsonNov 15, 2011
10,000,000 subscribersSmoshMay 25, 2013

Why People Still Talk About It

  • It shows how early sketch/comedy dominated YouTube.
  • Smosh managed to be “first big” in multiple eras of the platform, which is rare; many other record‑holders only owned one specific milestone window.
  • In current “who’s the biggest creator?” debates, Smosh’s 10M record is often used as a reference point when comparing how fast modern channels now grow to tens or hundreds of millions.

TL;DR: If you’re answering “what was the first YouTube channel to hit 10 million subscribers,” the clean, historically supported answer is: Smosh, in May 2013.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.