Across 600+ trending YouTube videos we analyzed, the median engagement rate was 1.43% — and the most surprising finding wasn’t in the average. Long-form videos earned roughly double the engagement rate of Shorts (3.01% vs 1.49%), even though Shorts pulled far more raw views. If you’ve ever wondered whether your video’s like-and-comment rate is “good,” this is the benchmark data to check it against.
We scouted 617 trending YouTube videos across 10 niches and pulled the public metrics — views, likes, comments, duration and upload date — to answer three questions creators actually ask: What’s a normal engagement rate? Are short or long videos more engaging? And how long is a “trending” video, really?
What’s a good engagement rate on YouTube?
Engagement rate here is the standard view-based definition: (likes + comments) ÷ views. Across the 556 videos with complete like-and-comment data, the distribution looked like this:
| Percentile | Engagement rate | Read as |
|---|---|---|
| 25th | 0.74% | Below average for trending content |
| Median (50th) | 1.43% | Typical |
| 75th | 2.87% | Strong |
| 90th (top 10%) | 4.52% | Exceptional |
So a quick rule of thumb for trending video: under 1% is soft, 1.5–3% is healthy, and above ~4.5% puts you in the top 10%. For context, likes alone accounted for a median 1.37% of views, while comments were far rarer at a median 0.019% — comments ran about 5% of the like count, which is why a video that sparks comments stands out so sharply.
The surprise: long-form videos out-engage Shorts 2-to-1
The headline finding is counterintuitive. Splitting the sample by length:
| Format | Videos | Avg engagement rate |
|---|---|---|
| Long-form (>60s) | 225 | 3.01% |
| Shorts (≤60s) | 330 | 1.49% |
Long-form videos earned roughly twice the engagement rate of Shorts per view. This lines up with how the formats are consumed: Shorts are a swipe-through feed that racks up enormous passive view counts, while someone who chooses to watch a multi-minute video is a more invested viewer — more likely to like and comment. Shorts win reach; long-form wins engagement density. Neither is “better” — they’re different tools, and the right choice depends on whether your goal is impressions or a committed audience.
How long is a “trending” video, really?
The trending videos in our sample skewed short: 63% were Shorts (60 seconds or under), with a median duration of just 41 seconds. Median views landed at 484,000, with the top 10% of videos exceeding 7.8 million.
We’d caution against reading too much into raw views by format here (see the limitations below) — but the length distribution itself is clear: short-form is where the volume of trending content lives, even if each Short engages less per view.
Methodology
- Sample: 617 trending YouTube videos (556 with complete like + comment data), scouted with ViralMint across 10 niches — including Tesla, productivity, AI video editing, Claude Code and several “viral shorts” categories. Snapshot taken June 2026.
- Metrics: Public YouTube counts — views, likes, comments, duration, upload date. Engagement rate = (likes + comments) ÷ views.
- Stats: Percentiles are computed across individual videos; the format comparison uses the per-video average engagement rate within each bucket.
Limitations (read these before you cite us)
This is a snapshot of trending and viral content on YouTube, not a representative sample of all videos — so treat these as benchmarks for content that’s already getting traction, not for an average upload. Two honest caveats:
- It’s YouTube-only and niche-biased. Several scouted niches explicitly target “viral shorts,” so the sample over-represents short, high-view content by design.
- We deliberately do not claim “Shorts get more views than long-form.” Because the niche selection skews toward short-form, the raw view gap by format is confounded — it reflects what we searched for, not a causal property of length. The engagement-rate comparison, by contrast, normalizes by views and is robust to that bias, which is why we lead with it.
What this means for your videos
- Benchmark honestly: if your trending video is under ~1.5% engagement, the issue is engagement density, not just reach. Above 4.5% and you’re in rare company.
- Pick the format for the goal: Shorts for top-of-funnel reach, long-form when you want viewers who actually like, comment and subscribe.
- Comments are the scarce signal: at ~5% of likes, a video that earns comments is doing something most don’t. Ending on a question or a hot take is the cheapest lever.
Want to check any video against this data instantly? Our free Viral Score Calculator scores a video 0–100 on exactly these signals — engagement, velocity, recency and reach — in your browser, no sign-up. And ViralMint scouts and scores trending videos across YouTube, TikTok and more automatically, so you can spot the 3×–20× outliers in your niche before you create.