How Many Minutes of a Short Drama Can You Watch Free? About Twenty, on NetShort
A free run is usually quoted in episodes. On NetShort, the one app that publishes how long an episode actually is, the median free opening works out to about 21 minutes, and what decides whether you get ten minutes or forty is episode length, not episode count.
Ask how much of a short drama is free and the answer usually comes back in episodes: about ten on ReelShort and ShortMax, about eight on NetShort. We have measured that ourselves.
But an episode is not a unit of time. Eight episodes of ninety seconds and eight episodes of four minutes are very different amounts of free viewing. What you actually want to know is how long you get to watch before you are asked to pay.
On one app, we can answer that.
Why this is a NetShort-only answer
NetShort is the only platform we read that publishes how long an episode really runs: the measured duration of episode one, on every series page. ReelShort and ShortMax publish episode counts and paywall positions, but nothing that tells you how long an episode lasts. So everything below covers NetShort’s catalogue: 716 series that charge at some point, which is all of them apart from one record listed with an impossible single episode.
One assumption does all the work, so here it is up front. We treat every free episode as lasting as long as episode one, because episode one is the only one NetShort measures. If later episodes run shorter or longer, the minutes below shift with them. It is the same assumption behind our estimate of how long a whole series takes, and it is stated rather than hidden.
The answer: about twenty minutes
Multiply each series’ free episodes by the length of its first episode and the median free opening on NetShort comes to 20.6 minutes. The middle half of the catalogue falls between 14.3 and 27.7 minutes.
| Free viewing before the paywall | Series | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under 5 minutes | 18 | 2.5% |
| 5–10 minutes | 67 | 9.4% |
| 10–20 minutes | 252 | 35.2% |
| 20–30 minutes | 242 | 33.8% |
| 30–45 minutes | 114 | 15.9% |
| 45 minutes or more | 23 | 3.2% |
So roughly one series in eight gives you less than ten minutes, and about one in five gives you half an hour or more. Seven in ten land somewhere between ten and thirty minutes.
Against the length of a whole series, that is not much. The median NetShort series runs about 105 minutes on the same assumption, and the median free opening is 18.8% of it.
What decides whether you get ten minutes or forty
You might expect a platform to give you fewer free episodes when each one is long, so that the free time stays roughly the same. NetShort does not. The length of episode one and the number of free episodes are almost unrelated, with a correlation of −0.10. Longer episodes come with about as many free episodes as short ones, so they simply add up to more minutes:
| Length of episode one | Series | Median free episodes | Median free minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 2 minutes | 196 | 8 | 13.3 |
| 2–3 minutes | 285 | 9 | 21.7 |
| 3–4 minutes | 153 | 8 | 27.3 |
| 4 minutes or more | 82 | 7.5 | 34.2 |
A series whose episodes run past four minutes gives you more than two and a half times the free viewing of one whose episodes are under two, while the free episode count barely moves.
That makes the episode count a poor guide to how much you will see. If you want the longest free look at something on NetShort, check how long its first episode is, not how many free episodes it offers.
Longer series do not give you more minutes either
We found earlier that a longer series does not come with a longer free run in episodes. In minutes it is the same story:
| Series length | Series | Median free minutes | Median whole-series minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–20 episodes | 99 | 22.5 | 46 |
| 21–40 episodes | 243 | 15.6 | 79 |
| 41–60 episodes | 283 | 23.7 | 137 |
| 61–80 episodes | 79 | 21.8 | 160 |
| 81 episodes or more | 12 | 23.7 | 195 |
The whole series grows from under an hour to over three; the free opening stays around fifteen to twenty-five minutes throughout. The shortest series actually hold their own, because on NetShort they tend to have the longest episodes: a median of 184 seconds for series of twenty episodes or fewer, against 139 seconds for series of 61 to 80.
The extremes
The most generous free opening in the catalogue is The Black Diamond Bride: by NetShort’s own series page, 59 of its 60 episodes are free, at 76 seconds each, which comes to about 75 minutes, very nearly the whole series. The Moon Goddess Returns gets close by the other route, with only 15 free episodes, but each runs close to five minutes, so the free opening totals about 73 minutes.
At the other end, Reborn In 1992, I Rewrote My Failed Life gives you a single free episode of 101 seconds: under two minutes before the paywall.
What to do with this
- Budget about twenty minutes for a NetShort free opening. That is enough to meet the characters and reach the first turn, not to judge the whole thing.
- Look at episode length before episode count. A series with long episodes gives you far more free viewing at the same number of free episodes.
- Do not pick a longer series hoping for a bigger free sample. The free minutes do not grow with the series; only the part behind the paywall does.
- On ReelShort and ShortMax, fall back on episodes. Neither publishes episode length, so the best available guide there is the paywall position in episodes, which both print on their series pages.
Every figure here is calculated from NetShort’s own series pages, in the catalogue behind our database: the paywall position and the measured length of episode one, for 716 series. This site does not publish prices; everything above is counted in episodes and minutes.