YouTube Video Length Study

Key takeaways

1. The 2,859 latest long-form videos of the 97 most-subscribed YouTube channels ran a median of 12.3 minutes. The mean was 20.6 minutes, pulled up by compilations that run for hours. See details
2. The biggest channels split into two camps: 35 whose latest videos run a median under 5 minutes, mostly music, and 38 over 20 minutes. Only 24 sit in between. See details
3. Shorts are now a big share of what they publish: 646 of their 1,484 latest uploads (44%) were Shorts, and 40 channels posted more Shorts than anything else. Counting short videos too, 53% of recent uploads ran under three minutes. See details
4. Music channels' videos are the shortest (a median 3.5 minutes on the median music channel); gaming (26.2) and education (39.9) run longest. See details
5. MrBeast's latest videos ran a median 30.1 minutes, Mark Rober's 21.0 and PewDiePie's 26.4. 5-Minute Crafts' latest videos, despite the name, ran a median 70.2. See details
6. Titles run a median 58 characters of YouTube's 100, and 38% run past 70. The biggest creators keep them short: MrBeast's median is 36.5. See details
7. Half of the biggest channels upload daily or more: a median of 7.0 uploads a week, Shorts included. MrBeast posts about 1.2 a week. See details
8. The "average YouTube video is 11.7 minutes" figure, still printed as current in 2026, is Pex's mean of every public YouTube video as of December 31, 2018, before Shorts existed. Pew's 2019 count of new videos from popular channels gave 12 minutes. See details

How long are YouTube videos in 2026?

On the biggest channels, a median of 12.3 minutes. We took the 30 latest long-form uploads of each of the 97 most-subscribed YouTube channels we could read, 2,859 videos in all, and found that half ran between 3.6 and 26.7 minutes. The mean was 20.6 minutes, well above the median, because 192 of the videos (7%) ran over an hour.

"Long-form" here is what YouTube files under a channel's Videos tab. Shorts and live streams sit on their own tabs and are counted separately below.

The spread has two peaks rather than one: 1,009 videos (35%) ran under five minutes and 1,076 (38%) over twenty, with fewer in between. An "average" between the two peaks describes few actual videos.

How many uploads on big channels are Shorts?

Close to half. Of the 1,484 latest uploads across 99 of the most-subscribed channels (the 15 most recent of each, from YouTube's own channel feeds), 646 (44%) were Shorts, 721 (49%) regular videos and 64 live streams; 53 more weren't listed on any of the channel's public Videos, Shorts or Streams tabs, so we couldn't class them.

40 of the 99 channels posted more Shorts than anything else, and 8 posted nothing but Shorts in their latest 15; 16 posted none. Shorts can run up to three minutes since YouTube raised the limit on October 15, 2024. Counting Shorts and regular videos under three minutes together, 750 of the 1,428 recent uploads we could class (53%) ran under three minutes. The uploads span 2024-11-18 to 2026-10-26; half were published on or after 2026-10-20.

Which kinds of channels make the longest videos?

Gaming and education channels run long and music channels short. On the median music channel, the latest long-form videos ran 3.5 minutes, about the length of a song. Entertainment channels ran 20.2 minutes and gaming channels 26.2.

Categories are the ones Wikipedia's list of the most-subscribed channels gives; a channel listed under two (say, Education/Entertainment) is counted under the first. Groups with one or two channels are in the table but not the chart.

How long are the biggest creators' videos?

We found the biggest channels split into two camps. 35 of the 97 (36%) had a median under five minutes, 22 of them music channels; 38 had a median over twenty minutes; only 24 (25%) sat between five and twenty.

Among the creators people know by name, MrBeast's latest videos ran a median of 30.1 minutes, Mark Rober's 21.0, PewDiePie's 26.4 and Dude Perfect's 24.0. T-Series, a music label, ran 3.2. The longest medians: Shemaroo (89.1 min), 5-Minute Crafts (70.2 min), Маша и Медведь (65.2 min), Techno Gamerz (55.4 min), आचार्य प्रशान्त - Acharya Prashant (53.1 min), whose latest uploads are compilations, full episodes, gameplay sessions and talks. The shortest: Anaya Kandhal (1.1 min), Hybe Labels (1.2 min), Sony SAB (1.5 min), Sierra & Rhia FAM (1.8 min), Billie Eilish (2.2 min).

Compilations explain why the mean runs so far above the median: on 5-Minute Crafts, Shemaroo and Billion Surprise Toys, the latest videos averaged over an hour.

Every channel's latest video length

How often do the biggest YouTube channels upload?

About once a day, at the median. Measured over the span of each channel's 15 latest uploads, the 98 most-subscribed channels we could read posted a median of 7.0 uploads a week, Shorts included. A quarter posted 30.9 or more a week, mostly TV networks and music labels, and a quarter 2.0 or fewer. 49 of the 98 (50%) posted daily or more, while 14 posted less than once a week.

The creators people know by name post far less often than the median channel. MrBeast's latest 15 uploads came at about 1.2 a week, Mark Rober's 0.8 and PewDiePie's 0.3; T-Series, a music label, posted 32.8 a week. The rate counts every upload in YouTube's channel feed, so a channel that posts several Shorts a day looks busier than one releasing a single long video a week.

How long are the biggest channels' YouTube titles?

Shorter than the limit, but often longer than what shows. YouTube allows 100 characters; across the 2,859 latest long-form videos the median title ran 58 characters. 1,365 (48%) ran past 60 characters, the span our YouTube upload checker suggests front-loading, and 1,094 (38%) past 70, where our channel audit flags a title as cut off in search and on phones. 110 used all 100.

The biggest creators write short titles: MrBeast's latest ran a median 36.5 characters, Mark Rober's 37 and PewDiePie's 27.5. Music labels and film channels run long, often packing song, film and cast names between separators: T-Series' median was 76.5, music channels' 72 and film channels' 88, and 40% of all titles used a "|". On the 1,020 titles from English-language channels, the median was 48 characters, 23% ran past 70, 27% had a word in capitals such as "NOT" and 10% an emoji. Only 6% of all titles asked a question.

Is the average YouTube video 11.7 minutes?

Two old figures do most of the work when people describe YouTube video length. We traced each to its source.

The figures measure different things: every public video, one week of new uploads from popular channels, and the latest long-form uploads of the biggest channels. None is "the" average YouTube video, but the 2018 figure is the one most often quoted without its date.

Every popular claim our research pages trace, 265 in all, is on one page: popular video statistics, fact-checked.

What this means if you publish video

There is no standard YouTube length to aim for; the biggest channels run from about a minute to over an hour, by format. What the data supports:

• Let the format set the length. On these channels music runs a few minutes, entertainment around twenty and gaming and education longer. Copying a median from another format doesn't help.
• Plan Shorts alongside long-form. 44% of the biggest channels' recent uploads were Shorts. Our guide to turning one long video into ten Shorts covers the cut-down workflow, and the short-form video statistics have the audience numbers.
• Time the script, not just the edit. The script length calculator turns a word count into running time before you film.
• Quote figures with their date. If you cite an average length, say whose and when; the 11.7-minute figure describes YouTube in 2018.

Mark Studios edits YouTube videos at every length, from Shorts to hour-long episodes. Our YouTube dubbing study uses the same list of channels.

How we ran the study

Channels. Every channel in Wikipedia's list of the most-subscribed YouTube channels as listed on October 25, 2026 (99 with a channel link), the same list as our caption coverage check and dubbing study. Categories are Wikipedia's.

Length. On October 26, 2026 we read the 30 latest entries of each channel's Videos tab with the open-source yt-dlp tool, which lists each video's duration. Channels with fewer than 10 videos with a duration were left out of the length figures (Real fools shorts official, BEN EAGLE), leaving 97 channels and 2,859 videos. Each video counts once; per-category figures take each channel's median, then the median across channels, so a prolific channel doesn't outweigh the rest.

Upload mix and frequency. For each channel we read its public RSS feed, which lists its 15 latest uploads of any kind with their publish dates, and matched each one to the channel's Videos, Shorts or Streams tab. Uploads a week are the 14 gaps between those 15 uploads divided by the days they span. Shorts lengths aren't listed; they count as under three minutes because YouTube caps Shorts at three minutes.

The collection and analysis scripts are in the study folder of the caption-checker repository, and the per-video results are in the CSV below. None of the channels reviewed or endorsed this study.

Limitations

• The biggest channels, not all of YouTube. Most uploads come from small channels; these 97 are weighted toward music, entertainment and kids' content.
• Latest uploads only. Thirty videos can span days for a daily uploader and years for a quiet one.
• Shorts by tab, not by length. We class Shorts by the tab YouTube files them under and don't have their exact durations.
• Categories are coarse. Wikipedia gives one category per channel, while a channel's uploads can mix formats.
• Some titles are translations. The Videos-tab listing gives a creator's English translation of a title where one exists, as it did for 9 of 43 titles we spot-checked from non-English channels, so title lengths on those channels partly measure the English versions. The 1,020 titles from English-language channels are unaffected.

How to cite this study

Link to the section you use, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/youtube-video-length-study#length-claims-checked. To cite the study as a whole:

Mark Studios. "YouTube Video Length Study." Published Oct 26, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/youtube-video-length-study

@misc{markstudios_youtube_video_length_study_2026,
  author = {{Mark Studios}},
  title = {{YouTube Video Length Study}},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/youtube-video-length-study},
  note = {Last verified 2026-10-26}
}

Our measurements and the CSVs are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page. The videos remain the property of the channels that published them.

Sources

Download the per-video lengths (CSV) · Download the per-channel results (CSV)

1. Pex, What content dominates on YouTube? (Jun 4, 2019; data as of Dec 31, 2018). Accessed 2026-10-26.
2. RAIN News, Report: Music content most average views per video on YouTube (Jun 10, 2019). Accessed 2026-10-26.
3. Statista, Average YouTube video length as of December 2018, by category. Accessed 2026-10-26.
4. Pew Research Center, Popular YouTube channels produced a vast amount of content, much of it in languages other than English (Jul 25, 2019). Accessed 2026-10-26.
5. Wyzowl, YouTube Stats: Everything You Need to Know (updated Jan 28, 2026). Accessed 2026-10-26.
6. YouTube, Tall updates coming to Shorts (YouTube Official Blog, Oct 3, 2024). Accessed 2026-10-26.
7. Google, Understand three-minute YouTube Shorts (YouTube Help). Accessed 2026-10-26.
8. Wikipedia, List of most-subscribed YouTube channels (revision used). Accessed 2026-10-26.
9. yt-dlp, yt-dlp: a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader. Accessed 2026-10-26.

Update policy and change log

We plan to rerun the check every six months on the same list. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.

• Oct 26, 2026: First published: 2,859 long-form videos and 1,484 recent uploads from the most-subscribed channels.
• Oct 26, 2026, later: Added upload frequency from the same channel feeds.
• Oct 26, 2026, later: Added title length and style for the same 2,859 videos.
• Oct 26, 2026, later: Fact-check: reran the analysis from the raw data and spot-checked 18 videos against YouTube (durations within one second); added a note that some titles are creators' English translations.