In a time of short attention spans, endless doom-scrolling and TikTok rewarding creators for 60-second videos, how long should your Instagram Reels be?
What does the platform allow?
Technically, your Reels can be anywhere between 0.1 seconds and 90 seconds.
If you’re thinking “But I’m sure I’ve watched videos that were longer than a minute and a half!” – you’d be right. If you want to post longer videos, you can upload them as a ‘Post’ rather than a ‘Reel’. The only notable difference is that a ‘Post’ won’t appear on the Reels tab so you might see a lower reach than your usual Reels.
If you’re now thinking “No, I’ve definitely seen longer videos on the Reels tab” – again, you’d be right. Back in January (2025), they increased the maximum Reel length to 3 minutes, unfortunately, that update only rolled out to the US.
What does the algorithm look for?
To decide whether or not your Reel should be recommended to more people, the algorithm looks for 3 strong indicators; watch time, like count and sends. Your ‘like count’ is simply how many people like the Reel, your ‘sends’ refers to how many people send that Reel to their friends via DM and the ‘watch time’ is a bit more complicated.
“We don’t want to penalize longer videos, which is why we look at not only the percentage of a video that was watched but also the number of seconds. If you watched 10 seconds of a minute-long video, that is just as many seconds as if it was 10 seconds of a 10-second video, so you won’t be penalized.”
– Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram.
I’ll be honest with you, that statement confuses me too! If you’re not penalised for having people watch only 16% of your video, how can he claim that they still look at the percentage of a video watched?
My take on it is that stopping for 10 seconds means pausing the doom scroll to watch the video and that’s rewarded even if they don’t stick around to the end. That means that your hook needs to be good!
What’s right for you?
Ultimately, I can’t clear answer to the question. The perfect length for your Instagram Reels really depends on you and your audience. If you’re trying to reach busy people who only popped onto Instagram for 30 seconds, they don’t want a 90-second Reel. If you can say everything you want to say in 10 seconds, you don’t need to drag it out just to make a longer video. If you feel rushed when creating a short video, use the 90 seconds you have available.
The best advice I can give you is to run some experiments to find out what works best for you and your audience. Not everything you put out on social media is going to be a big success, but you can always learn something very valuable from it.
Disclaimer: you might find that no matter the length of your Reels, they just aren’t working for you. That’s OK too!
Do you want more support like this?
One of the things I love about social media is that the rules of the game are constantly changing – but I get that for many, that’s just frustrating! In my membership group, the Ace Group, I can make sure to not only inform you about the changes the platforms make but also to help you understand exactly what it means for you, your business and your strategy.
Find out more about the Ace Group.
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Tesni xx
