All platform facts were checked on October 17, 2026, unless another date is shown.
The short answer
Practitioners and vendors usually advise 30 to 45 seconds for social media, 45 to 90 seconds for an MLS or website video and 90 to 180 seconds for a full filmed tour. Their ranges disagree, and none of them comes from real estate watch-through data, because we found none. Treat them as opinion.
Make the video as short as the content allows. Cut photos, not speed.
Platform limits
These are facts, with the source and the date we checked.
Instagram Reels. Instagram's Reels page says: "Create multi-clip videos up to 3 minutes." It also says: "You can record and edit videos up to 20 minutes with Instagram Reels." And: "Reels over 3 minutes won't be recommended to new audiences." Read in part. The 3-minute limit was announced for creators in the United States on January 21, 2025, and before that only Reels up to 90 seconds were eligible for recommendation. We saw that on a translated page, and it was a US rollout first, so do not assume the same date elsewhere.
YouTube Shorts. YouTube's help page says the Shorts tools make it easy to create short-form videos that are "up to 3 minutes long". Read in part. YouTube's article on three-minute Shorts is reported to say that a Short over one minute with an active Content ID claim is blocked. We saw that only in a search extract. That matters if you add a claimed music track. For uploads, YouTube is reported to count square or vertical videos up to 3 minutes as Shorts.
Zillow Showcase. Zillow's Showcase guide says: "Videos will have a maximum length of 120 seconds." Only one video may be shown per listing. It cannot include "persistent agent or brokerage logos, watermarks or advertising". And it "must be uploaded by your content provider using Zillow's Aryeo platform", created by the same photographer who provided all the other media for the listing. Read in part. The page carries "As of late September 2025" and no page date.
In plain terms, an agent cannot simply upload a video to Zillow Showcase. A photographer who uses Scenella on their own shoot may be the one path. We say "may", because Zillow has not addressed AI-made video, and we do not know whether a corner badge counts as a watermark under its rule. Ask Zillow or your photographer's platform.
Your MLS. MLS rules for virtual tour links differ by MLS. We did not research their length limits. Check yours.
TikTok and Facebook. We did not reach official limits for either, and conflicting figures circulate. We state none.
What the data says
There is no real estate study on listing video length that we could find. We searched for a Zillow, Realtor.com or NAR study of length against engagement, and found none. That is absence in our searches, not proof that none exists.
The one large dataset we found is general business video. Wistia's video length report, published July 1, 2025, analyzed more than 13 million videos on its hosting platform and says "Videos under a minute average a 52% engagement rate." Wistia defines engagement as how much of a video people watch on average. Read in part. This is B2B and marketing video hosted on Wistia. It is not listing video, and it is not social feeds. Use it as general evidence that shorter videos hold more of a viewer, not as a number for your listing.
We also leave out the "8-second attention span" statistic. It is widely disputed.
What people recommend
Practitioners and vendors give ranges, and they disagree. This is opinion.
- 30 to 45 seconds for social media, and 45 to 90 seconds for MLS and website presentations, on Fotober, a video editing company's page.
- 90 to 180 seconds for a full tour, on a real estate photography guide.
- "A clean 45-second tour outperforms a padded 90-second one", on a vendor page. No data comes with it.
The ranges overlap in one place: nothing longer than needed. The video should end when the home has been shown.
How long a Scenella tour runs
A Scenella tour has 5, 10 or 15 photos. Each photo gets a scene of about 3.5 seconds, and neighboring scenes overlap by half a second as one fades into the next. That gives these approximate lengths before the opening title and the outro:
| Photos | Scene length | Approximate length of the scenes |
|---|---|---|
| 3 (short tour) | About 4.5 seconds | About 12.5 seconds |
| 4 (short tour) | About 4.2 seconds | About 15.5 seconds |
| 5 | About 3.5 seconds | About 15.5 seconds |
| 10 | About 3.5 seconds | About 30.5 seconds |
| 15 | About 3.5 seconds | About 45.5 seconds |
These are nominal figures from the scene length. The title and outro add time, so a finished file runs longer, and a 15-photo tour may come close to a minute. We have not published measured runtimes yet and do not promise one.
Scenella recommends at least 5 photos. With 3 or 4, you can continue and get longer scenes. Every tour is well inside Instagram's 3 minutes, YouTube Shorts' 3 minutes and Zillow's 120 seconds, so no platform limit forces a cut.
Which cut goes where
Make two files from the same photos:
- 16:9, landscape. For listing pages, email to the seller, YouTube and anywhere a video plays in a wide window.
- 9:16, vertical. For Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, where the video fills a phone screen.
Scenella exports both from one render. For a step-by-step on the whole process, see the guide to making a video from photos.