165-second Short from 11 clips of 15 s: Timeline $0.30

Eleven slots of 15 seconds make 165 seconds. Timeline bills whole output minutes at $0.10, so the render costs ceil(165 / 60) = 3 minutes x $0.10 = $0.30 (as of 2026-10-08). That length is 15 seconds under the 3-minute ceiling YouTube lists for Shorts uploaded after October 15, 2024, so the file can still be classified as a Short if it is square or vertical.

The slot arithmetic

Timeline takes one audio spine and an ordered video list. Each slot has a start on the spine, a duration of at least 0.2 seconds, and optionally a transition. The first slot must start at 0 and later starts must increase. With eleven slots of 15 seconds, the starts are 0, 15, 30, and so on up to 150, and the last slot ends at 165, which equals audio.duration_seconds.

Eleven is also a useful number because the default render strategy chunks past 12 segments. Eleven slots stay under that line, so the job does not need the chunked path. Sume refuses strategy single above 12 slots, which only matters if you grow the Short later.

Where the 15 seconds of headroom goes

Do not spend it on the render. Adding 15 seconds takes you to 180, which is still 3 billed minutes, so the price does not change between 121 and 180 seconds. The headroom is for you: a fade-out of up to 5 seconds on the output, or a slightly longer last clip. Past 180 seconds the price steps to 4 minutes ($0.40) and YouTube no longer treats the upload as a three-minute Short.

Transitions are optional. If you add a fade between clips, each transition has to be 1 second or less and no more than half of the shorter neighbouring clip. Adjacent fades are capped at 8 in a row, so across eleven slots you would put a hard cut somewhere between them.

Before you pay

Run the unbilled plan endpoint on the same body. It returns duration_seconds, segment_count, billable_minutes and estimated_cost_usd_micros without creating a job, so you can confirm 3 billable minutes and 11 segments before the real call. It cannot predict warnings about short sources being padded or looped, so check that every source clip is at least 15 seconds long.

One more rule from the YouTube page matters if the Short carries music: it says a claimed Short over one minute is blocked globally, and a 165-second Short is far over that line. Keep your bed original or from a source you can clear.

Cost of getting it wrong

The cost of a mis-sized build is easy to read off the same table. If the eleven slots come out at 16 seconds each, the spine is 176 seconds and the price is unchanged at $0.30. If a twelfth slot pushes the total to 181 seconds, the render bills 4 minutes ($0.40) and the file is longer than the Shorts limit. Setting audio.duration_seconds explicitly, and keeping the sum of slot durations at or just under it, is what keeps the arithmetic honest. The docs say coverage can stop at most 0.5 seconds before the end of the spine, so a last clip that ends more than half a second early is a mistake to catch with the plan call.