How to Calculate YouTube Engagement Rate

The metric YouTube doesn't report, built from a denominator that means two different things on the same channel.

Updated September 2026

What is the YouTube engagement rate formula?

The common version, per video: (likes + comments) ÷ views × 100.

If it's your own video, you can add shares, which Studio reports but viewers can't see. Some people divide by subscribers instead of views, borrowing the follower-based formula from Instagram. On YouTube that tells you very little, because most views on most channels come from recommendations and search rather than from subscribers opening the video.

Dislikes are a special case. YouTube hid the public dislike count, so outside tools can't include them. You still see dislikes in Studio, shown as a share of likes versus dislikes. Whether a dislike counts as engagement is a choice; if you include it, say so, because nobody else's figure will.

The cross-platform engagement rate formula explains why each network's denominator is a different kind of number and why rates don't travel between apps.

What does YouTube Studio report instead?

The metrics YouTube puts front and center are about watching, not tapping.

**Average view duration** — how long the average view lasted.

**Average percentage viewed** — the same figure as a share of the video's length. Useful for comparing videos of different lengths.

**Audience retention** — the curve showing where people dropped off, second by second.

**Impressions and click-through rate** — how often your thumbnail was shown and how often it was clicked.

**For Shorts, viewed versus swiped away** — the share of people who watched rather than swiping past when the Short appeared in their feed.

These are closer to what YouTube's recommendation system reads than any likes-based rate. The guide to YouTube watch hours that count goes further into how watch time is measured and which of it matters for monetization.

Why can't you mix Shorts and long videos in one rate?

Because the denominator isn't the same thing in the two formats.

A long video's view is counted by YouTube's standard rules for a real, intentional watch. A Short's view is now counted as soon as it plays, including every replay. Short, looping content piles up views quickly, and many of them come from people who were only passing through. The same number of likes divided by a Shorts view count gives a much lower rate than it would on a long video — not because the audience cared less, but because the count below it is looser.

Practical rules:

**Calculate Shorts and long videos separately.** Keep two baselines.

**For Shorts, consider engaged views as the denominator.** Studio shows it in advanced analytics. It is closer to the older definition and to what long-form views measure.

**Don't compare your Shorts rate with your long-form rate.** They answer different questions.

If your Shorts are gathering almost no views at all, the rate is irrelevant; why YouTube Shorts aren't getting views covers that problem.

What is a good engagement rate on YouTube?

YouTube publishes no benchmark, and any external one had to choose a formula, a format, a set of channels and a time period. A rate on Shorts views and a rate on long-form views aren't comparable, and plenty of published benchmarks don't say which they used.

Build your own instead. Take your last fifteen or twenty long videos, calculate the rate the same way for each, and note the usual range. Do the same, separately, for Shorts. Then a video far above or below your normal is worth a look.

Also expect the rate to fall as a video reaches further. Subscribers and people who searched for the topic interact more than viewers who arrived from a recommendation on an unrelated video. A video that goes wide usually shows a lower rate, and that's a sign of reach rather than a failure.

A better way to read engagement on YouTube

Start with retention, then look at interactions.

A video with average likes and strong average percentage viewed held people's attention; YouTube has every reason to keep recommending it. A video with lots of likes and weak retention pleased a small, committed group — often subscribers — and lost everyone else early. The likes-based rate ranks those two the wrong way round.

Comments are the interaction most worth reading individually, because they tell you why people stayed or left. Shares tell you who found the video worth passing on, and they're only visible to you.

So if you report one engagement figure, pair it with average percentage viewed. The two together describe a video. Either one alone describes half of it.

Why outside calculators give you different numbers

They can only see what's public: views, likes and comments. They can't see shares, dislikes, watch time, retention or engaged views.

So a tool reporting your channel's engagement rate is dividing public likes and comments by public views — mixing Shorts and long videos unless it separates them. On a channel that posts both, that single number is dominated by whichever format has more views, and on most channels that's Shorts.

Your own Studio is the authority on your channel. Outside figures are only useful for comparing channels on the same terms, which is what brands do when they look at you from the outside.

Where the public counts fit

The rate is private arithmetic. The view count and like count are public, and a visitor reads them before pressing play. A video showing very few views reads as untested, and on YouTube that judgement is made next to a column of suggested videos with bigger numbers.

That's what supplied counts change. YouTube views change the number on the video; YouTube likes change the like count and your numerator. Neither changes retention, and retention is what YouTube's recommendations weigh. On Shorts, remember that the public count is the loose one, and the Shorts views metric is its own thing.

If you add either, keep it in mind when you read your own rate: a purchased view with no watch time and a purchased like with no view both shift the ratio without describing any audience. Measure retention on the videos you care about, because that's the number neither side of this can fake.

Questions people ask about YouTube engagement rate