Top 50 Most-Viewed Indie Animated Shorts On Youtube

This chart of the 50 most-viewed independent animated shorts on Youtube was last updated on September 7, 2021.

The chart includes only independently produced animated shorts on Youtube. The chart does not catalog animated music videos, studio shorts, or episodic shorts that are part of a larger series. On the latter point, it is often difficult to distinguish what is a series and what isn’t, though we have tried our best to separate standalone shorts from episodic shorts. For example, Alan Becker’s Animation vs. Minecraft Shorts series aren’t included because they are labelled as episodes and clearly part of a series, but Becker’s short Animator vs. Animation IV is included because we considered it to be a sequel to earlier shorts and not explicitly an episode of a larger series.

With the goal being to document the most-viewed original animated shorts, we’ve refined the list to exclude films that use character IP not owned by the filmmaker (e.g. shorts that feature characters like Sonic or Spider-Man).

Only views from a short’s filmmaker-approved copy are included in the stats. For one film — World of Lice — the filmmaker has two official copies on his page, one in English and one in Spanish, so the combined total of those two copies are included.

If there are any films missing from the chart, please drop us a line at the email here.