I'm making a list of Youtube channels that make little to no use of sponsors, to share with the public for their own benefit, with a description of their channel content for those interested. See also Larkmarn for a similar list of channels with a description of their political stances.
Consider making a direct pledge to these channels if you enjoy them and keep the sponsor devil at bay!
Little to no Sponsors (feel free to add your own):
- 8BitRyan: A multi-million subscriber English-based Let's Player best known for their horror game coverage, including the likes of Five Nights at Freddy's. Generally sponsor-free for all of their primary game videos, which each part ranges from 20 minutes to an hour.
- Accursed Farms: Ross Scott, creator of Freeman's Mind and Ross's Game Dungeon, among other things. Sponsor-free.
- A Jolly Wangcore: Plays mods of games, the wacky kinds of mods usually. Sponsor-free.
- Alasdair Beckett-King: Makes one-actor satirical short skits. Seems to only have one sponsored video that's at least relevant to the video subject.
- Asaratha HS: A media analysis channel focused on anime and manga content. He covers Re:Zero and Chainsaw Man, but My Hero Academia tends to be his well of commentary. Generally sponsor-free, especially in his more recent videos where there's less reliance on editing, focusing on short off-the-cuff commentary videos.
- Beau of the Fifth Column: Commentator on various political subjects. Liberal in spite of his appearance (it's deliberate). Sponsor-free.
- Betty Bowers: Satirical skits lampooning conservative extremism in the USA. Sponsor-free.
- BumblesMcFumbles: Makes comedic videos on various video games and Yu-Gi-Oh!. Sponsor-free.
- Civvie 11: Reviewer of various Boomer Shooters. Sponsor-free.
- Cygnus Destroyer: Better known as the LJN Defender and known for Innocent Until Proven Guilty, covers notoriously bad games and attempts to spin them in a more optimistic light. Sponsor-free, but is on a Series Hiatus since 2020.
- Dark Simpsons: Takes clips of The Simpsons and edits them to make stories darker than the source material. Sponsor-free.
- Fiction Addiction: A pop culture film and series review series hosted by Esh, with a special interest in covering the Usage Yojimbo franchise. While he admits to borrowing some formats from other internet reviewers, he doesn't play the Caustic Critic trope straight, often trying to level his critiques and praises of a central work. Sponsor-free content.
- Giant Grant Games: Covers Self Imposed Challenges for Real Time Strategy games, mostly Starcraft II. Sponsor-free, and even made a video
calling out the toxic nature of Youtube's ads and sponsorships. - History Matters: Short videos that cover various subjects of world history. Notable for its blocky character design, simple animation, and dry humour. Seems to be sponsor-free.
- Jethild: Covers various bits of lore in the Command & Conquer video games. Sponsor-free.
- Man Carrying Thing: An American YouTuber who tends to do topical one-man quick skits parodying pop and internet culture. Though he's also known for discussing books, along with their adaptations (such as Wheel of Time), which occasionally becomes a video essay. Leans on the "little" side. His more consistent skit videos contain no sponsorships at all, since they're generally 30 seconds to a minute long. His longer video editorials contain brief sponsorships from Babbel and Skillshare.
- Marcel Vos: Covers aspects of RollerCoaster Tycoon, mostly OpenRCT2. Only has one sponsored video.
- Marphitimus Blackimus: Covers obscure facts behind the Half-Life games, as well as making humorous videos based on Doom and other shooters of the era. Sponsor-free.
- Rerez: Reviews video game hardware and hosts the subseries "Positives & Negatives" and "The Worst Ever". Sponsor-free.
- Scott The Woz: Youtube personality that makes skits and commentary on various video game-related topics. Notable for his dense and wacky pacing in his skits. Sponsor-free.
- The Mentok: Covers behind the scenes and in-story origins of Sonic and Mario characters, as well as other characters and subjects. Also made a Sonic Riders music video with "Gangsta's Paradise" long before the Sonic Movie trailer did it. Sponsor-free.
- Negative Legend: An American non-binarynote pop culture reviewer, covering different Western cartoons, comics, anime, video games and card games. They're best known for their retrospective "What Happened to..." and "Deep Dive" series, giving equal focus to any typically "gendered" franchises, compared to some nerd channels that tend to be predominantly cover "male-centric" franchises. In spite of their username, they're not centered on a Caustic Critic persona, as Negative tries to view media through a balanced, yet subjective lens. Leans towards the "little" side of 'little to no sponsorship". They will go on a streak of full length videos with no sponsors at all, then drop one to two videos with some kind of shirt or gaming sponsor, then repeat the cycle.
- TheRealJims: Reviews episodes of The Simpsons. Sponsor-free.
- The Unlucky Tug: Does story coverage of Thomas & Friends, TUGS, and recently branched out into covering Pixar movies and Star Wars. Sponsor-free.
- Two Cents: A spin-off PBS Digital Studios channel about personal finance and customer rights, delivered through an edutainment fashion. Sponsor-free, relying mostly on Patreon support.
- Vinesauce: The channels of the streamers of Vinesauce, usually the raw footage from their twitch streams or compilation edits from their official community. Sponsor-free.
- The Wolfe Pit: A casual food-centric channel that reviews prepacked commerical meals, alongside low-cost cooking recipes. Sponsor-free content, as he tends to pride himself in his scrappy production values, and reviews products he personally purchased.
