Shorts Script Length Calculator – Words per Minute & Caption Splitter

Writing a script that fits the video is one of the hardest parts of making short vertical videos.

This calculator helps in both directions. Enter the length you want, choose a speaking speed of slow, normal or fast, and it shows about how many Korean characters or English words you need.

Or paste a script you already wrote and it estimates how long it takes to read aloud.

The speeds are rough averages for ordinary narration: about 260, 330 and 400 Korean characters per minute (spaces not counted), and about 120, 150 and 180 English words per minute.

Your own pace will differ with your voice, pauses, music and editing, so read your script out loud once with a timer and adjust. Treat every number as an approximation. The second tab is a caption helper.

It splits your script into subtitle lines at sentence ends and spaces, using a maximum number of characters per line (14 for Korean and 32 for English by default, and you can change both).

Next to each line you see the minimum time needed to read it, based on a characters-per-second setting you can adjust.

Short, balanced lines are easier to read on a phone, so keep important words together and avoid ending a line on a tiny particle.

The Shorts length limit shown here follows YouTube Help at the time of writing and may change, so check YouTube Help for the current rule.

A tight script with a strong first sentence usually works better than a long one that is rushed.

Everything is calculated in your browser, your script is never uploaded, and the tool gives no promise about views or income. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC.

ⓘ This is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google.