How Long Should an Explainer Video Be?
An explainer video should run 60 to 90 seconds. See what retention data says about length, plus a length cheat sheet by goal and platform.
How long should an explainer video be?
Sixty to ninety seconds. That is the answer I give most weeks when a founder or a marketing lead asks me before we start a project, and it holds for the large majority of explainers. A 60-second cut is enough to set up a problem and show how your product solves it. Ninety seconds buys you room for a second feature or a proof point without testing anyone’s patience.
The number matters less than the reason behind it. An explainer has one job: land a single idea so clearly that a stranger gets it on the first watch. The moment you try to say three things at once, the runtime balloons and the message blurs. So the rule I actually work to is simpler than a stopwatch. One idea, told once, in as few seconds as it takes to be clear. Keep that in mind while you plan the video and the length mostly sorts itself out.
Here is how I size it by what you are making:
- Simple product or app with one clear benefit: 30 to 60 seconds
- Standard marketing explainer for a site or a launch: 60 to 90 seconds
- Complex or multi-step product that needs real setup: 90 seconds to 2 minutes
- Deep-dive or onboarding walkthrough for a viewer who already wants detail: 2 to 3 minutes
Past three minutes, most of what you make stops being an explainer and turns into a demo or a training video. That is fine, as long as you meant to build one.
What the retention data actually says about length
Shorter videos get finished. Longer ones get abandoned. That is the pattern in every large dataset I trust, and it is why I push for tight runtimes even when a client wants to add more.
Vidyard, which hosts and measures business video for thousands of companies, found that 65% of viewers watch a business video all the way through when it runs under a minute. Take it past twenty minutes and only 20% reach the end. The fall-off between those points is gradual rather than a cliff, which is worth knowing: nothing collapses at 61 seconds.
Wistia’s 2026 State of Video Report, built from more than 13 million videos, tells the same story from a different angle. Videos under a minute average a 52% engagement rate, and engagement holds up well from about one minute to five before it falls off in earnest past the five-minute mark. You have more room than the “nobody watches past 30 seconds” crowd claims. You also lose a slice of your audience with every extra minute you ask them to give.
Why does any of this decide the runtime? Because your call to action sits at the end. Every viewer who leaves before the finish never sees the one thing you wanted them to do. Trimming thirty seconds of preamble does something you can measure: it puts more people in front of your ask.
Share of viewers who finish a business video, by length, from Vidyard's Video in Business benchmark. It makes the core point visual: keep an explainer short and far more people reach your call to action.
Explainer video length by goal and placement
Where a video plays sets how long it should be, because the platform decides the viewer’s patience before your first frame lands. This is the cheat sheet I use when we scope a runtime:
| Where it lives | What it is for | Length I aim for |
|---|---|---|
| Website homepage or hero | Get the idea across fast | 30 to 60 sec |
| Product or feature page | Show how it works | 60 to 90 sec |
| Instagram or TikTok in-feed | Stop the scroll | 15 to 30 sec |
| LinkedIn feed | Earn a B2B click | 30 to 90 sec |
| YouTube (pre-roll or organic B2B) | Hold a warmer viewer | 60 sec to 2 min |
| Sales or outreach email | Move one deal forward | 30 to 60 sec |
| Event screen or trade-show loop | Catch someone mid-stride | 20 to 45 sec, muted |
Two notes on that table. Social feeds punish length harder than any other placement, so a cut for Instagram is almost always a trim, not a stretch. And a homepage video can be shorter than you expect, since people came to read and not to watch; respect that and get out fast.
How length changes by funnel stage
The same product wants a different runtime at different moments, and matching length to intent is where a lot of the real gains hide.
At the awareness stage the viewer does not know you, so short wins. A 30-second cut that names the problem and hints at the fix outperforms a polished two-minute film nobody finishes. That is the whole point of 30-second explainer videos: top of funnel, where the scroll is fast and one idea is all you get.
At the consideration stage the viewer is weighing options and will lend you more time, so 60 to 90 seconds lets you show the product doing actual work. For a technical or SaaS product this is where a little more length earns its keep, because the features are the argument.
At the decision stage you are talking to someone close to buying. A two to two-and-a-half minute walkthrough that clears the last objections can be worth every second here, because the viewer is motivated and hunting for a reason to say yes.
What actually sets your ideal length
Five things move the number more than any rule of thumb.
Complexity of the idea. One clear benefit fits in 30 to 60 seconds. A product with several moving parts, or a category people do not grasp yet, needs 90 seconds or more to land without feeling rushed.
Audience. A returning customer sits through detail a cold prospect never would. Feed-native younger viewers bail faster; a technical buyer mid-research will happily watch longer if the content respects their time.
Placement. Covered above, and the single biggest lever. The same script often ships as a 30-second social cut and a 90-second version for your site.
Format and pacing. A brisk motion-graphics piece carries more information per second than a talking head, so it says the same thing in less time. Live action with dialogue usually needs a little more room to breathe.
The call to action. Work backward from the one thing you want the viewer to do, then cut whatever does not move them toward it.
Size the video from the script, about 150 words a minute
Here is how I know a runtime before a single frame exists. Read the script aloud at a natural pace and count on roughly 150 spoken words per finished minute. A 150-word script is about a 60-second video. Three hundred words is about two minutes.
Say your draft runs 400 words and you wanted 90 seconds. You now know the problem before anyone opens an edit bay: you are 150 words long. Cut on the page, where it costs nothing, rather than rescuing the runtime later with pacing so fast the whole thing feels breathless. Voiceover-led explainers track this ratio tightly. Dialogue and on-screen demos vary more, so treat 150 as a starting estimate and confirm it with a read-through.
What to do when the video has to run longer
Some products cannot be explained in 90 seconds, and forcing them into that box does more harm than a slightly longer piece that is paced well. When length is unavoidable, I reach for one of two moves before I ever pad.
Split it into a short series. Explaining software with five distinct features? Five 40-second videos will usually beat one four-minute film. Each is finishable and shareable on its own, and viewers self-select into the parts they care about.
Chapter the long version. If the content truly belongs in one video, add chapters or timestamps so people can jump to the part they need. This works for onboarding and support content that lives on a help page, where the viewer arrived with a specific question.
The failure mode to avoid is a two-minute idea stretched to five because someone decided the topic “deserved” more time. Let the length follow the content, never the reverse.
Length mistakes I see most often
Padding to look thorough. Extra seconds do not read as substance. They read as slow. If a line does not earn its place, cut it.
Ignoring the first few seconds. Most viewers decide whether to keep watching almost immediately. HubSpot’s video marketers put the window around eight to ten seconds to make the subject clear. Front-load the hook and the point; save the logo-heavy intro for never.
One length for every platform. A single master cut posted everywhere loses to a set of platform-right versions. Cut the runtime down to the room it is playing in.
Cramming in every detail. Try to say everything and the viewer remembers nothing. Pick one or two takeaways, then point people to a page or a longer resource for the rest.
Getting the length right
If you only want the number: 60 to 90 seconds for most explainers, shorter for social and awareness, a little longer only when the product needs it and the pacing stays tight. Set the number from your goal and your retention data instead of a gut feeling, then write the script to hit it.
That last step is where an outside team earns its place. At Moonb we decide an explainer’s length from the goal and the numbers, then build it end to end as one group, so the runtime and pacing come from the same people who wrote the script. However you make yours, keep the idea single and the seconds few, and more of your audience will still be watching when you ask them to act.
Frequently asked questions
On a landing page, use the shortest version that still makes the case, usually 45 to 90 seconds. The video supports the page copy rather than replacing it, so lead with the outcome in the first ten seconds. Add captions too, since a large share of people watch on mute and will judge the video before they ever turn the sound on.
Length itself is not a ranking signal, but the metrics it drives are. A video people finish sends stronger engagement signals than a longer one they abandon at 40 percent. On YouTube, average view duration and audience retention matter more than raw runtime, so a tight 90-second video that holds 70 percent of viewers often beats a five-minute one that keeps 25 percent.
Plan on about 150 words per finished minute of voiceover, so roughly 150 words for a 60-second video and 225 for 90 seconds. Write the script first, read it aloud at a natural pace, and time it before you brief an animator or editor. Trimming words on the page is far cheaper than re-cutting a finished video to claw back seconds.
