TikTok LIVE diamonds vs coins: what is the difference?

Coins and diamonds are the two sides of the same gift. A viewer buys coins inside TikTok and spends them on virtual gifts during a LIVE. Each gift has a price in coins. The creator who receives the gift is credited in diamonds, and TikTok's leaderboards are scored in diamonds.

On the boards Toktik reads, one coin of gift value is counted as one diamond, so a 1,000-coin gift adds 1,000 diamonds to the creator's score. That is why a diamond ranking is really a ranking of gift value received in a period, a measure of audience generosity, and not a bank balance.

Converting to dollars needs assumptions. Toktik uses about $0.01 of gift value per diamond as a rule of thumb, and roughly half of that reaching the creator before any agency split and taxes. The price a viewer pays for a coin also varies with where and how they buy it, so every dollar figure is an estimate, never a payout. Our calculator lets you work it out with a dated exchange-rate table.

Diamonds are also not the same as the creator's earnings in a payout sense. TikTok's own terms, agency agreements and local taxes decide what is paid, which is why we label money figures as estimates of gift value.

Two common mix-ups: a gifter's spending is counted in coins, while a creator's score is in diamonds; and a gift's price in the catalog is coins, not dollars. Our gift price pages list each gift's coin price and an estimate in local currencies.