YouTube Shorts vs Long-Form Views: 251 Channels Measured
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Short answer: on established channels, a long-form video still earns more views than a Short. Across 251 large YouTube channels we measured on October 28, 2026, the median channel’s Shorts got 0.45 times the views of its long-form videos. Shorts out-viewed long-form on only 52 of 251 channels (21%). Shorts did win on likes: the like rate on Shorts was higher on 72% of channels.
That gap exists even though YouTube’s counting favours Shorts. Since March 31, 2025, a Shorts view counts every time a Short starts to play or replay, with no minimum watch time. Long-form views have no such replay counting. Shorts lose anyway.
This is one cut of our study of 312 big YouTube channels, which has the full method and a free dataset.
The numbers
| Long-form videos | Shorts | |
|---|---|---|
| Median views per upload (median channel) | 267,161 | 107,182 |
| Median views per subscriber | 7.8% | 3.0% |
| Median like rate (likes ÷ views) | 2.11% | 2.74% |
| Median uploads in the last 30 days | 3 | 2 |
The first row covers the 251 channels with at least five week-old uploads of each format. The other rows use every channel with enough data for that format (309 for long-form, 254 for Shorts).
How we measured it: YouTube splits every channel’s uploads into two automatic playlists, one for long-form videos and one for Shorts, and publishes an RSS feed of each with the 15 latest uploads and YouTube’s own view and like counts. For each channel we took the median views of uploads at least seven days old in each feed, so brand-new uploads still collecting views do not drag the figures down.
By niche: Shorts lose everywhere, finance most of all
| Niche | Channels | Shorts ÷ long-form views (median) | Channels where Shorts won |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fitness | 45 | 0.65 | 13 (29%) |
| Entertainment | 45 | 0.53 | 12 (27%) |
| Gaming | 21 | 0.46 | 6 (29%) |
| Food | 54 | 0.44 | 9 (17%) |
| Tech | 49 | 0.34 | 8 (16%) |
| Finance | 37 | 0.22 | 4 (11%) |
Finance has the widest gap. Its long-form videos reach 9.5% of subscribers and its Shorts 1.4%, and Shorts beat long-form on just 4 of 37 finance channels. A plausible reason is that finance viewers come for depth, such as a 20-minute explainer on a market move, which a 60-second clip cannot carry. Fitness is the closest: a short exercise demo works in both formats.
By size: the biggest channels get the most from Shorts
| Subscribers | Channels | Shorts ÷ long-form views (median) | Channels where Shorts won |
|---|---|---|---|
| 281K–1M | 30 | 0.43 | 5 |
| 1M–5M | 99 | 0.41 | 14 |
| 5M–10M | 36 | 0.35 | 7 |
| 10M–25M | 53 | 0.51 | 13 |
| 25M+ | 33 | 0.72 | 13 (39%) |
Shorts get closer to long-form as channels get bigger, and at 25M+ subscribers they win on 13 of 33 channels. Seven of those 13 are entertainment channels (among them Zach King, Vlad and Niki and IShowSpeed) and four are gaming channels (Markiplier, jacksepticeye, DanTDM and Aphmau), the two niches where a clip can stand on its own.
Shorts get more likes per view
Likes go the other way. The median Shorts like rate was 2.74%, against 2.11% for long-form, and Shorts had the higher like rate on 179 of 249 channels (72%). Gaming Shorts had the highest median like rate of any group in the study, 3.51%.
One caution when you compare the two: a Short that loops three times counts three views but can only be liked once, which pushes the Shorts like rate down. Shorts win on likes despite that.
What this means
For creators: Shorts are cheap to make and they reach people who have never seen your channel, but on these numbers they are not a replacement for long-form when you are measured on views per subscriber. A channel that has moved entirely to Shorts should expect its views-per-subscriber ratio to fall, and should explain that to a sponsor before the sponsor notices. Our media kit guide covers how to present format-specific numbers.
For brands: never compare a creator’s Shorts views with another creator’s long-form views, and never average the two. Ask for each format separately, and price them separately: our YouTube CPM calculator works the arithmetic for either. Before a deal, run the channel through the free authenticity checker, which reads the channel’s public data and shows each signal with its confidence.
For anyone quoting “Shorts get more views”: that can be true of total views across a whole channel if it posts many more Shorts than long videos. Per upload, on the 251 channels we measured, it is not.
Limits
These are 251 established channels from our creator directory, not a random sample of YouTube; new channels may see Shorts behave differently. Views are lifetime-to-date, and each feed covers the 15 latest uploads in each format. Both feeds, every channel and every video ID are in the study dataset, so any figure here can be checked.
Sources: YouTube’s public upload feeds for each channel’s long-form and Shorts playlists, read October 28, 2026; TechCrunch, “YouTube is changing how YouTube Shorts views are counted” (March 26, 2025).
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