What Is the Likee App?
It looks like TikTok and it earns like a live-streaming service. That difference decides what creators there actually do.
Likee is a short-video app owned by JOYY, the company behind the live-streaming platform Bigo Live. It looks and works much like TikTok - a vertical feed, effects, music, a For You style stream - but its creator economy is built on virtual gifting rather than advertising. Viewers buy coins and send gifts during live broadcasts, and the creator converts a share of those into money. Its audience is concentrated in South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Russian-speaking markets, where it is a mainstream app rather than a curiosity.
The gifting model is inherited rather than invented, and that is what makes it coherent.
JOYY's other product, Bigo Live, is a live-streaming platform where the whole business is virtual gifts: viewers buy coins, send animated gifts during a broadcast, and the host converts a share into cash. Likee sits in the same company and runs on the same rails.
So while the surface is short video, the money is in live. A Likee creator with a large short-video following is monetising it by going live and receiving gifts, not by a creator fund paying per view and not by ad revenue share.
That changes what the metrics mean. On TikTok, views are the currency because views are what the fund and the brand deals are priced against. On Likee, views and likes are what gets you discovered so that people turn up when you go live - and the broadcast is where the money happens.
It is also why advice about Likee from a TikTok perspective reads oddly. Optimising a Likee presence for view count without ever going live is optimising the top of a funnel whose bottom you are not using.
Where it is actually used
India was historically its largest market until the 2020 ban on a long list of Chinese-linked apps removed it there. Since then the centre of gravity has been across South and Southeast Asia more broadly, the Middle East, parts of Africa and Russian-speaking markets.
In Western Europe and North America it is close to invisible, which is the main reason English-language SMM panels rarely carry it and why the search competition for anything Likee-related is almost nil.
If your audience is in those markets, the app is a real place with real daily use. If it is not, nothing about Likee's growth is going to help you, and the honest advice is to put the effort where your viewers already are.
How it compares with TikTok, feature by feature
The feed, the editor, the effects and the music library are close enough that moving between them takes no learning.
What differs: Likee leans harder on effects and face filters as a creative hook, has a stronger live-streaming layer because of the gifting economy, and has a smaller and more regionally specific content catalogue.
What also differs is scale. TikTok's audience is an order of magnitude larger, which cuts both ways - far more reach available, and far more competition for it. Creators who have tried both consistently report that an equivalent video gets noticed more easily on Likee and is worth less when it does.
The privacy and ownership questions people ask
JOYY is a company listed in the United States with its origins and much of its operation in China, and apps in that category have been the subject of regulatory action in several countries - most visibly India's 2020 ban, which removed Likee from its biggest market.
That is a factual position rather than an accusation, and it is the reason the question comes up every time somebody writes about the app.
What it means practically is that regulatory risk is a real variable for anyone building a business on it. A platform that can be removed from a market by government action is a different kind of bet from one that cannot, and it is worth knowing before the audience you build there is the only one you have.
What a creator there actually optimises for
Enough short-video reach to build a following, then live broadcasts where that following shows up and gifts.
That makes the useful metrics different from TikTok's. Views and likes matter as a discovery mechanism rather than as the thing being monetised; the number that pays is concurrent viewers on a broadcast and the gifting that happens inside it.
It also means consistency of schedule matters more than it does for a pure short-video platform, because live requires people to turn up at a time. A creator with a big follower count who goes live unpredictably earns less than a smaller one who is on at the same hour every evening.
Is it worth being on?
If your audience is in the markets where it is mainstream, yes - and the barrier to being visible is far lower than on TikTok, because fewer people are competing for the same attention.
If you are in Europe or North America and your audience is there too, no. There is no version of this where a Likee presence reaches people who do not use the app, and building one is effort spent at a lower rate of return than almost anything else available.
The middle case is a creator with a diaspora audience, which is more common than it sounds. If a meaningful part of your viewers are South Asian, Arabic-speaking or Russian-speaking, Likee may reach people that your main platform does not.
Questions people ask about Likee
Who owns Likee?
JOYY, the company that also operates the live-streaming platform Bigo Live.
That shared ownership is why Likee's creator economy runs on virtual gifting rather than on an advertising revenue share.
Is Likee the same as TikTok?
No, though the short-video format and the editing tools are very similar.
The main structural difference is how creators earn: TikTok around views, brand deals and funds; Likee around live broadcasts and virtual gifts.
Is Likee banned in India?
It was among the apps banned by the Indian government in 2020, which removed it from what had been its largest market.
Its audience since then is concentrated across other parts of South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Russian-speaking markets.
How do Likee creators make money?
Mainly through virtual gifts received during live broadcasts, which viewers buy with coins and the creator converts to cash.
Short-video reach is how the audience is built; the broadcast is where it is monetised.
Keep reading
- add likes to a Likee video — Since short-video engagement on Likee is the discovery layer rather than the thing being paid for, you can add likes to a Likee video to make the top of that funnel look worth following - the broadcast is still where the money happens.