How long should a YouTube video be? Data from 63,000 videos

"Make it 8 minutes for the mid-roll ad." "Keep it under 10, nobody watches long videos." Most advice about YouTube video length is a guess. So we measured it.

We looked at 63,480 long-form videos published in the last 180 days by 3,232 English-language channels with 1,000 to 1,000,000 subscribers in Returbe's index, and grouped them by length.

Short answer: 15 to 45 minutes. That's where median views peak, where most million-view videos come from, and, more importantly, where channels beat their own average.

YouTube video length vs views

"Vs channel's usual" is the median outlier score: a video's views divided by its channel's median views. 1.00x means the video did exactly as well as that channel usually does. It's the fairest column, because it compares each channel to itself. An outlier is a video with 3x (or 10x) the usual views of its channel: see what an outlier video is.

What the data says

• Views climb steadily up to 30–45 minutes. Median views triple between 8–10 minutes (9.5k) and 20–30 minutes (31.6k).
• 20 to 30 minutes produced the most million-view videos (202 of 794), and 15 to 45 minutes made 455 of them, 57% of the total, with 41% of the videos.
• Under 8 minutes, videos underperform their own channel. A 1–3 minute long-form video gets 0.63x its channel's usual views. Those are often clips, updates and announcements that the channel's audience skips.
• Past 2 hours, everything drops. 9.4% outliers and 0.91x the usual views. Long streams cut into a video, podcasts and compilations rarely break out.

The fair test: the same channel, short vs long

Big channels tend to make longer videos, so raw medians flatter long videos. To remove that effect, we compared each channel with itself, keeping only channels that posted at least 3 videos in each length range.

On the same channel, with the same audience and the same thumbnails style, the 20+ minute videos beat the under-15-minute videos on 7 channels out of 10. The gain shrinks as videos get longer (1.22x, then 1.14x), so there's no point stretching a 25-minute idea to an hour, but the direction is clear.

Why? YouTube recommends videos that keep people on the platform. A 25-minute video watched at 40% gives the algorithm 10 minutes of watch time per click; an 8-minute video at 60% gives it under 5. Long videos also run more ads, so YouTube has every reason to push them.

Best video length by channel size

Each cell: share of outliers (3x+) · median vs the channel's usual views.

• Small channels (1K–10K) should go 15 to 30 minutes. Their outlier rate more than doubles compared with videos under 8 minutes (13.9% vs 6.1%). Short long-form is where small channels struggle most: 0.25x their usual views.
• 10K–100K: 15 to 60 minutes. 15–30 has the best outlier rate, 30–60 the best typical result.
• 100K–1M: length matters less. Bigger channels have an audience that clicks anyway; their best outlier rate is under 15 minutes, their best typical result over an hour. Once you have the audience, pick the length the idea needs.

Best video length by niche

The median length of outliers (3x+) against the median length of the other videos, in the biggest niches of the sample:

• Story niches reward length. In true crime, history, documentaries, film breakdowns, science, business and tech, outliers are 2 to 6 minutes longer than the rest. Viewers came for depth.
• Gaming, travel, autos and food are the exception: outliers are slightly shorter. Cut the filler, not the content.
• News and sports live around 10 minutes. Viewers want the update, not the essay.

So the right question isn't "how long should a YouTube video be?" but "how long are the outliers in my niche?". You can check it in two minutes on Returbe's outlier finder.

Real outliers from small channels, by length

16 to 20 minutes

• s0ngbird (18.5k subscribers), "The Best Scrabble Player is GENUINELY insane": 18 min, 18M views, 70x its usual.
• BeyondTheGreen (69.1k subscribers), "The Only Four Animals That Hunt Humans": 18 min, 3.6M views, 29x.
• Reconstructed (21.5k subscribers), "What Really Happened Inside the flydubai Cockpit": 16 min, 3.3M views, 38x.
• Trivia Square (3.8k subscribers), "Can You Pass the U.S. Citizenship Test? | 50 Questions": 16 min, 2.5M views, 58x.

20 to 30 minutes

• ZenyTTK (5.6k subscribers), "IShowSpeed Was Right All Along...": 21 min, 6.5M views, 259x.
• Crime Effect (39.1k subscribers), a fatal Texas crash case: 26 min, 4.3M views, 79x.
• KazzaGamesTV (89.5k subscribers), "12 Years Later… Decoding P.T. Genuinely Broke Me": 28 min, 1.8M views, 36x.

40 minutes and more

• Red File (115k subscribers), a cold case solved by DNA after 23 years: 42 min, 15.6M views, 34x.
• Clueless Criminal Interrogations (91.1k subscribers), an interrogation case: 44 min, 6.7M views, 77x.

None of them is long because of an intro, a recap or a sponsor read. They are long because the subject has enough in it: a mystery to solve, a game to decode, 50 questions to answer.

How to choose the length of your next video

1. Look at the outliers in your niche first. Find 10 videos at 3x+ from channels your size and note their length. That's your target range.
2. Write the outline, then let it decide. If you have 3 strong points, it's a 10-minute video. If you have 8, it's 25 minutes. Don't pad a short idea, YouTube measures how much of the video people watch.
3. On a small channel, aim for 15 to 30 minutes. It's the range where 1K–10K channels break out most often.
4. Test against yourself, not against MrBeast. Post your next two ideas at different lengths and compare each one with your channel's median views, not with your best video.
5. The 8-minute rule is about ads, not views. Mid-roll ads start at 8 minutes, but 8 to 10 minutes is still well below the length that gets the most views. If you're monetized, the per-view revenue is better on longer videos too.

Making Shorts? Different rules: see how long a YouTube Short should be. And once the length is right, the title does the rest: see the YouTube titles that get the most views.

Methodology

Returbe's index on November 2, 2026: long-form videos (Shorts excluded) of 1 minute or more, published between 180 and 3 days ago by English-language channels with 1,000 to 1,000,000 subscribers. Excluded: livestreams, made-for-kids videos, full movies and full episodes, music, sleep and ambient videos, audiobooks, trailers, AI-generated story channels and videos that looked like paid ads (very few likes for their views). Length is the duration reported by YouTube. Outlier = views divided by the channel's median views. Examples were checked by hand.

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