TikTok vs Instagram Reels vs YouTube Shorts: where to post your clips

The rates are what creators and agencies report: none of the apps publishes one. Run your own numbers in the TikTok money calculator and the YouTube Shorts money calculator, and see what Instagram pays for why Reels has no rate.

• TikTok builds each person's For You feed from how they interact with videos, what a video is about and their settings. Watching a longer video all the way to the end is one of the strongest signals, and follower count isn't a direct factor, so a new account's clip can be shown widely. More in how to get more views on TikTok.
• Instagram Reels are mostly shown to people who don't follow you. Instagram says it predicts most heavily how likely someone is to reshare a reel, watch it to the end, like it and open its audio page, and that it shows low-resolution, watermarked, bordered, muted and reposted reels less. Trial reels let a professional account show a reel to non-followers first, before its own followers see it.
• YouTube Shorts asks three questions of each Short: do people choose to watch it rather than swipe, how long do they stay, and did they enjoy it. Earnings and the Partner Program count engaged views, people who watched past the first seconds. More in how to get more views on YouTube Shorts.

The pattern is the same on all three: the first seconds decide whether people stay, and staying decides who sees it next. A clip that holds people on one app usually holds them on the others.

So a clip that works everywhere is under 3 minutes, and most clips are far shorter than that: as long as the moment needs and not a second more. See how long a short video should be, and the sizes each app wants in video sizes for TikTok, Reels and Shorts: 1080 × 1920 works on all three.

• TikTok pays through its Creator Rewards Program, per 1,000 qualified views. Creators report about $0.40 to $1.00. See how much TikTok pays. To earn:
  • Be 18 or older with a personal account, 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in the last 30 days.
  • Live in the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Mexico or Brazil.
  • Post original videos at least 1 minute long: reposts and lightly edited clips of others' videos don't earn.
• YouTube shares Shorts ad revenue with channels in its Partner Program, by their share of engaged views; creators keep 45%. Creators report about $0.03 to $0.20 per 1,000 engaged views. See how much YouTube Shorts pay. To earn:
  • Be in the YouTube Partner Program: 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views in 90 days, or 4,000 watch hours in a year.
  • From February 1, 2027: at least 10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days to share in Shorts ad revenue.
  • Original Shorts: reuploads and unedited clips of other people's videos don't earn.
• Instagram has no program that pays every creator per view. Its bonuses reward reels and posts that perform, but Instagram says they're limited-time and invite-only. Otherwise creators earn from gifts and subscriptions from their audience, and from brand collaborations.

Per view, TikTok's reported rates are several times Shorts', but the two count different views on different videos: TikTok only qualified views on videos of a minute or more, YouTube engaged views on any Short.

All three favour original posts, and none of them pays for a clip of someone else's video, even with their permission:

• TikTok keeps reused content without creative edits, and clips showing someone else's watermark or logo, out of the For You feed. Creator Rewards pays only for original content.
• Instagram replaces copies with the original in its recommendations, and stops recommending accounts that mostly post unoriginal content until most of their recent posts are original. Adding a border, a watermark, subtitles or a credit doesn't make a post original.
• YouTube doesn't pay for reused content, and said in October 2026 that channels that mostly re-upload other creators' videos will likely get less reach in the Shorts feed.

That's why clippers are paid by clipping campaigns instead: the creator or brand pays per 1,000 views on the clips you post, on the apps the campaign names. When a campaign pays on more than one app, the same clip can earn on each. Read the rules of each campaign before you post.

• TikTok Studio shows each video's retention (where people stop watching), average watch time, how many watched the full video, and where its views came from: the For You feed, search or your profile.
• YouTube Studio shows each Short's Stayed to watch (the share who kept watching past the first seconds), engaged views, average view duration and percentage viewed, and traffic sources such as the Shorts feed and search.
• Instagram Insights show a reel's views, its viewers (the unique accounts that saw it) and its interactions: likes, comments, saves and shares.

Posting the same clip on all three is also a free comparison: if it holds people on one app and not another, the moment is fine and the difference is the audience.

For most clippers and creators, choosing one app is the wrong question. The clip is the same work wherever it goes, each app reaches people the others don't, and campaigns pay on all of them. A few tweaks make one clip right for each:

• Upload the clean file to each app. Never post a video downloaded from another app: it usually carries that app's watermark, which TikTok and Instagram show less.
• Fill the screen at 1080 × 1920, with no borders, which Instagram shows less often.
• Keep captions in the middle. The 820 × 1260 area clear of every app's buttons and text leaves the bottom 420 pixels free, so one caption position works everywhere.
• Keep it under 3 minutes so it's a Short and a recommended reel. On your own videos, a TikTok of a minute or more can earn from Creator Rewards.
• Say what it's about in the caption or title, in the words people search for: all three have search.