How long should a TikTok, Reel or Short be?

Check a video against all three, with its shape and size, in the free video size checker, and see each app's sizes in video sizes for TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

• YouTube says there's no universal ideal length: make a video as long as it takes to deliver its value, and cut the filler.
• TikTok says length matters less than the hook: whatever the length, catch the viewer in the first few seconds. For videos longer than 10 minutes, it suggests splitting them into shorter videos of a minute or more.
• Instagram recommends reels of up to 3 minutes to people who don't follow you; longer ones aren't recommended to new audiences.

What they share: the apps reward videos people keep watching. YouTube, for one, looks at how many people choose to watch a Short, how long they watch and how much of it they see.

As long as its moment, and not a second more. A clip starts on the line that hooks and ends on the payoff; everything else is a reason to swipe. By the kind of moment, as a rule of thumb:

Cut the air out: the “so, yeah” before the point, the pauses, the laugh that goes on after the joke. A tight 35 seconds holds people better than a loose 50. More in how to make clips that go viral.

• When the story needs it. A story that lands at 70 seconds beats one cut to 45 that doesn't make sense.
• For TikTok's Creator Rewards. It only counts videos of 1 minute or more, so if you're in the program, post clips of a minute or more there. See how much TikTok pays.
• When a campaign asks. Some clipping campaigns set a minimum length: read the brief.

The best guide to how long your clips should be is how long people already watch them. Each app shows it for every post:

• YouTube Studio shows, for each Short, Stayed to watch: how often viewers stayed past its first seconds. For those who stayed, it shows the average view duration and the average percentage of the Short they watched.
• TikTok's analytics show each video's average watch time.
• Instagram's insights show each reel's average watch time: the time spent playing it divided by its initial views.

Set the average watch time against the clip's length. If people leave at about the same second whatever the length, that's where your clips should end. If your short clips are watched to the end and your long ones aren't, cut tighter; if your long ones hold people as well, you have room for more story. Compare a few clips of each kind before you decide: one clip proves little.

Most clips come from videos far longer than any app takes: podcasts, streams, interviews. The job is finding the moments that stand alone and cutting each one to its natural length. Clyper does that from a YouTube link: it picks the moments, cuts each to whole sentences from its hook to its payoff, frames it vertically and captions every word, and you can trim or extend any clip in the editor.