How long should a short be? The ideal length in seconds

Search for “ideal length of a short” and you will find ten answers, all of them precise and all of them different. They have one thing in common: none comes from the platforms themselves.

We read what LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok publish on the subject, on 1 October 2026. Here is what is there, and what is not.

What the platforms allow

YouTube classes as a Short any square or vertical video of three minutes at most, uploaded since 15 October 2024.

Instagram accepts reels of up to 20 minutes, but specifies that those longer than 3 minutes are not recommended to new audiences.

TikTok distinguishes between what you film in the app, 10 minutes at most, and what you upload to it, up to 60 minutes.

LinkedIn accepts videos from 3 seconds to 15 minutes.

These ceilings say what is allowed, not what is watched.

What they recommend, when they do

For ordinary posts, almost nothing. None of the four publishes a recommended length for a member’s video.

The only figures they give are about particular cases:

• Instagram sets at 3 minutes the threshold beyond which a reel is no longer recommended to people who do not follow you;
• LinkedIn recommends, for its video ads, videos of 15 to 30 seconds;
• in its tips for advertisers, LinkedIn states that videos of 7 to 15 seconds are watched to the end far more often, with a gain of up to 300% according to its 2025 data, and urges them to show what matters in the first ten seconds.

These benchmarks come from advertising, that is, from videos nobody asked to see. They are a reminder of something that is true everywhere: the shorter a video is, the more often it is watched to the end. They do not say that an expert’s advice has to fit in 15 seconds.

Why there is no ideal length

Because length is not what the viewer judges. They judge, second after second, whether to carry on. An 80-second video in which every sentence brings something is watched to the end. A 20-second video that begins with “Hi everyone, today I wanted to talk to you about” is abandoned at the fourth second.

The precise figures going round are, at best, averages drawn from videos of every kind: dance, recipes, comedy, advice. Your answer to a client’s question is not an average.

The rule: as long as one idea

A short carries one idea. Its length is what it takes to say it, and no more.

To estimate it, count the words. Out loud, we say around 150 a minute. That gives:

If your idea needs more than 225 words, it is probably not one idea but two.

Three benchmarks, by kind of passage

The passages that make good shorts are not all the same length. We describe six kinds of them in How to choose video clips; here are the lengths that suit them.

The rule or the contrarian take: 12 to 25 seconds. “Never a quote before the second call.” One sentence, its reason, and it is over. Adding to it weakens it.

The question and its answer: 30 to 60 seconds. This is the most common case. The question takes five seconds, the answer the rest. If it runs past the minute, it is often because the nuance has taken over from the answer.

The story of a case: 60 to 90 seconds. A situation, a decision, a result. It takes time to set out all three, and it takes no more than that.

What adds length and nothing else

Before you decide a video is too long, take out what is not the idea.

• The lead-in. “Well, that’s a very good question.” Start at the next sentence.
• The silences. Two seconds of thought are natural on a call and endless in a short.
• The hesitations and the false starts. “I think that, well, what I mean is that” comes down to what follows.
• The caveats. “Of course, it depends on the case.” It is true, and nobody shares a video for that.
• The repeated conclusion. The video ends on the first closing line, not on the third.

A 70-second passage often comes down to 50 once it is cleaned up. It has lost nothing: it has gained the viewers who would have left at the fortieth second.

Should you split a long answer into episodes?

Rarely. A “part 1” assumes the viewer will go and look for the rest, which almost nobody does in a feed that offers another video a second later.

If an answer holds two ideas, make two shorts of it that each stand on their own, with no number and no cross-reference. Whoever sees the second does not need to have seen the first.

And a three-minute video?

It is allowed everywhere, and it has its place: a demonstration, an explanation that takes several steps. But it is no longer the same exercise. It needs a structure, fresh hooks along the way, a reason to stay at each stage. For someone starting out, a minute and a half is a healthy limit.

How Dailies chooses the length

Dailies cuts its shorts from the calls it records in Chrome, in French or in English. Its extension’s interface is in French. It aims at no fixed length: it looks for passages that stand on their own and keeps those that last 12 to 90 seconds. Below that, the idea has not had time to exist; above it, there are often two.

It then takes out the silences, the hesitations and the false starts, which shortens each passage without touching what is said.

These lengths fit within the limits of every platform. For the frame, see The 9:16 vertical video format.

Key takeaways

• The platforms publish maximums: 3 minutes for a Short, 15 for LinkedIn, 20 for a reel, 60 for a video uploaded to TikTok.
• None publishes an ideal length for ordinary posts.
• A short lasts as long as one idea: count 150 words a minute.
• 12 to 25 seconds for a rule, 30 to 60 for an answer, 60 to 90 for a case.
• Cut the lead-in, the silences and the caveats before you cut the idea.

Sources

Pages read on 1 October 2026.

• YouTube, three-minute Shorts.
• Instagram, recording a reel.
• TikTok, video length.
• LinkedIn: sharing videos, video ad specifications and tips for video ads.