YouTube Shorts Draw 5,300 Average Views — a Bronze Behind TikTok and Reels

A Short averages about 5,300 views — against nearly 33,000 for a TikTok video and around 23,000 for an Instagram Reel — according to Metricool's 2026 Short Form Video Report, which analyzed over 6 million videos from more than 375,000 accounts. YouTube Shorts placed third on every metric measured.

The engagement gap is similar. Shorts average 1.85% engagement, compared with 3.67% on TikTok and 4.30% on Instagram. As Metricool puts it, in the short-video Olympics, YouTube Shorts take the podium — but only with a bronze.

Where do YouTube views actually come from?

Metricool's companion 2026 YouTube Study found that more than 61% of views come from the Shorts feed. That feed is algorithmic, so those viewers arrive through recommendations rather than search or subscriptions. Subscribers account for another 11% of views, and only about 3% of viewers go directly to a channel.

The implication: reach depends less on existing followers and more on how YouTube's recommendation system responds to a video. YouTube now behaves less like a library people browse and more like a feed that brings content to them — the same mechanic driving TikTok and Instagram.

Does account size change the picture?

The averages hide a sharp split by follower count:

• Tiny accounts (up to 2,000 followers): about 1,290 views per Short, close to Instagram's 1,480.
• Small accounts (2,000–10,000 followers): roughly 5,500 views per Short versus 6,600 on Reels.
• Huge accounts (over 1 million followers): under 12,000 views per Short, while Reels and TikTok videos pass 400,000.

For channels starting out, Shorts hold their own. The bigger the audience grows, the further TikTok and Instagram pull ahead.

What does the exception look like?

Artisaire (@artisaire), a maker of wedding invitations and wax seals, posts only Shorts and beats the averages. With 25.1K subscribers, the brand averages 86K views per video — 6.5 times more than typical Medium-sized accounts (10,000–100,000 subscribers) — and 1.1K interactions, 4.3 times the peer average. Its average views run more than three times its subscriber count, a sign the Shorts feed is reaching non-followers.

Metricool draws three lessons from the account:

• Keep it consistent — the same typography, colors and editing rhythm in every video.
• Make the product the star, the way Artisaire turns every wax seal into the main event.
• Design for the scroll, because the first few seconds decide whether viewers stay or swipe away.

So are Shorts worth it in 2026?

For most brands, yes — as a discovery tool rather than an engagement engine. Metricool recommends:

• Judging Shorts by new viewers and subscribers gained, not by likes and comments, which undersell the format.
• Using Shorts to lead viewers to long-form videos.
• Repurposing existing TikToks or Reels as Shorts for extra reach at little added cost.
• Benchmarking against accounts of your own size, since all-account averages mislead — a tiny channel pulling 1,500 views per Short is already above its size group.

Shorts are a lower priority for teams focused on engagement or with budget for only one platform. Metricool's tooling lets users schedule one vertical video to all three platforms simultaneously and compare performance on views, interactions and engagement. The practical next step is testing existing vertical videos as Shorts and reading the results against your own account, before committing production budget to the format.