The Best Length for Shorts (Retention Data Breakdown)
The best length for YouTube Shorts is whichever duration keeps your specific audience watching the highest percentage of the video. The data shows that sweet spot is almost always between 15 and 60 seconds.
Table of Contents
- What the Data Actually Says About Shorts Length
- How the Algorithm Uses Retention to Decide Your Reach
- The Right Length by Format and Content Type
- Platform Comparison: YouTube Shorts vs Reels vs TikTok
- Common Length Mistakes That Kill Retention
- How to Find Your Personal Retention Sweet Spot
- Pick a Length and Post Today
What the Data Actually Says About Shorts Length
Let's cut straight to the numbers, because there's a lot of noise around this topic.
| Length Range | Avg. Completion Rate | Avg. Views | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 20 seconds | 73–85% | Lower avg. views | Quick tips, facts, memes |
| 20–40 seconds | 65–75% | Moderate | Tutorials, explainers |
| 40–60 seconds | 60–76% | Highest (4.1M avg) | Storytelling, narration |
| 1–3 minutes | 25–50% | Lower unless exceptional | Deep dives, demos |
A few things stand out immediately.
According to Zebracat's 2025 Shorts statistics, Shorts between 20–25 seconds actually have the highest completion rate across the board. But according to Affiliate Booster's analysis, Shorts in the 50–60 second range average 4.1 million views per video and achieve 76% completion, the highest in terms of raw audience reach.
How can both be true? It comes down to what you're optimizing for.
Short, punchy content under 25 seconds is easy to watch to completion. But the algorithm doesn't just reward percentage watched. It also rewards absolute watch time and engagement. A longer Short that holds 76% of viewers through a compelling story delivers more total seconds watched per viewer, which drives more algorithmic reach.
The practical takeaway: match your length to your content type, not to an arbitrary number you read online.
How the Algorithm Uses Retention to Decide Your Reach
Before you pick a length, you need to understand how YouTube actually measures and rewards it, especially after a key change in 2025.
The March 2025 View-Counting Update
As of March 31, 2025, YouTube changed how Shorts views are counted. According to Shortimize's January 2026 retention guide, a "view" now counts the moment a Short starts to play, including replays and loops, with no minimum watch time required.
However, "Engaged Views" (the older metric that required meaningful watch time) is still the one that counts for YouTube Partner Program eligibility and ad revenue sharing.
Why does this matter for length decisions? Because view counts now look inflated, but the algorithm still uses genuine retention and engagement signals under the hood to decide whether to scale reach. The displayed view count can mislead you into thinking a video performed well when the real engagement signal was weak.
The Completion Percentage Rule
BossWallah's analysis of the Shorts algorithm found a clear benchmark:
- Shorts with retention above 75% have a 3x higher chance of being pushed to new audiences.
- A 30-second Short at 85% watch time outperforms a 60-second Short at 50% retention.
- For Shorts under 20 seconds, aim for 90-100% completion. There's no excuse for losing viewers in a 15-second video.
The underlying principle: percentage watched matters more than raw seconds. If you can only sustain 40% retention on a 60-second video, you'd have been better off making a 30-second version your audience watches completely.
As OpusClip's retention guide puts it well: "If your message is complete at 22 seconds, end the video at 22 seconds."
The Right Length by Format and Content Type
One of the most useful frameworks is matching your content format to its natural duration. Here's what the data suggests for each major format:
Quick Tips, Facts, and "Did You Know" Content
Ideal length: 15–30 seconds.
These formats have a simple payload structure: setup, surprise, payoff. They don't need 60 seconds. When creators stretch this content to hit a longer runtime, retention drops off sharply right after the core reveal. The algorithm sees that cliff and stops promoting the video.
- Target completion: 80–90%
- Hook window: first 2 seconds
- Pacing: one new piece of information every 3–5 seconds
Story Narrations, Horror, and True Crime
Ideal length: 45–60 seconds.
Narrative formats build tension and need time to pay off. Viewers who opt into a story expect a journey, and cutting it short leaves them unsatisfied. This is exactly where the 50–60 second range performs so well in average views. The audience self-selects for longer content, and those who stay tend to watch through.
- Target completion: 70–80%
- Hook window: first 3 seconds (start at the most dramatic moment)
- Pacing: new visual or narrative beat every 5–8 seconds
Tutorials and Explainers
Ideal length: 30–50 seconds.
Tutorials need enough time to actually explain something useful. Under 20 seconds feels superficial; over 60 seconds risks losing viewers once the core point has been delivered. The sweet spot is explaining one concept clearly with a satisfying resolution.
Listicles and Top-X Content
Ideal length: 30–55 seconds.
Each list item is a small hook in itself. Viewers who are engaged by item one tend to stick around for items two and three. The format naturally supports a slightly longer runtime because curiosity is replenished at each new entry.
For a deeper look at the structures that retain viewers across different formats, our guide on viral Shorts structures for faceless channels covers pacing and storytelling frameworks in detail.
Platform Comparison: YouTube Shorts vs Reels vs TikTok
If you're cross-posting your content, the length sweet spots differ meaningfully by platform.
| Platform | Optimal Length | Max Limit | Completion Rate Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Shorts | 30–60 seconds | 3 minutes | 73–76% at 50–60s |
| Instagram Reels | 7–30 seconds | 20 minutes* | 60–80% at 7–15s |
| TikTok | 30–60 seconds | 10 minutes | Most viral content under 60s |
*Reels over 3 minutes are not shown to new audiences per Instagram's December 2025 policy.
According to OpusClip's Reels retention analysis, Instagram Reels between 7 and 15 seconds achieve the highest completion rates on that platform (60–80%), while anything over 45 seconds rarely holds above 30% retention. Instagram's audience scrolls faster and has a lower tolerance for slower payoffs than YouTube's Shorts feed.
TikTok, despite supporting videos up to 10 minutes, still sees the vast majority of viral content under 60 seconds, according to ShortNinja's platform comparison guide.
Practical implication: if you're producing one video and posting to all three platforms, a 30–45 second Short is the closest to a universal sweet spot. It's long enough to land on YouTube Shorts, and compact enough for Instagram and TikTok.
Platforms like Virvid generate Shorts pre-optimized for each platform's length requirements, so you're not manually re-editing the same video three times for three different ideal lengths.
Common Length Mistakes That Kill Retention
After watching a lot of creators struggle with this, a few patterns come up repeatedly:
- Stretching a 20-second idea to 60 seconds with slow pacing, repeated points, or filler. The retention graph drops off sharply the moment the core idea ends.
- Starting with context-setting or intros ("Hey guys, today we're going to talk about..."). You've lost half your audience before the actual content begins.
- Cutting a story short before the payoff just to hit a 20-second target. Viewers feel cheated and don't subscribe.
- Treating the 3-minute limit as a target rather than a ceiling. Shortimize's algorithm guide is clear: the longer the Short, the harder it becomes to maintain high completion percentage. A 2-minute Short with 30% retention will be buried.
- Not reviewing retention data. Most creators guess. The data is right there in YouTube Studio, showing you exactly the second viewers leave.
"Your retention curve is a direct diagnostic of your video's pacing. A gradual decline is healthy. A cliff at any specific second tells you exactly what to fix." - Louis Vick, Virvid
How to Find Your Personal Retention Sweet Spot
The data above gives you ranges, but your channel will have its own optimal length based on your niche and format.
Here's a practical process:
- Post 10 Shorts across three length buckets: under 25 seconds, 30–45 seconds, and 45–60 seconds.
- Review each retention graph in YouTube Studio after 48 hours.
- Identify which length bucket has the flattest retention curve (least drop-off).
- Also note which length bucket drives the most subscriber conversions, not just views.
- In the next 30 videos, weight your content toward the best-performing bucket while keeping a minority of tests at other lengths.
This connects to the broader growth system covered in the Faceless Shorts Strategy 2026 pillar. Testing formats and lengths systematically is how you build a channel that compounds instead of stalling.
For the scripting side of this, a free YouTube Shorts script generator can help you draft tight scripts in the right format, where each line carries weight and there's no padding to inflate runtime artificially.
Also worth reviewing: our guide on posting frequency and growth for Shorts channels shows how cadence interacts with length. Posting more short, high-retention Shorts is often more effective than posting fewer long ones.
Pick a Length and Post Today
The real mistake isn't choosing the wrong length. It's overthinking it for so long that you don't post anything.
Start with your format. Write a tight script. If it ends naturally at 22 seconds, make it 22 seconds. If your story needs 55 seconds to pay off, use 55 seconds. Then look at your retention graph after 24 hours, find where people left, and fix that specific moment in your next video.
The perfect Shorts length is the one your audience watches to the end. Find that length by posting, not by guessing.