Short drama apps
What each app costs, how its free tier works, and where people run into billing trouble.
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ReelShort, DramaBox, GoodShort and ShortMax all work the same way at the start. The app is free to download, every series opens with a run of free episodes, and the rest unlock one at a time with coins or all at once with a VIP pass that renews automatically. Where they differ is in how far the free run goes, how much a locked episode costs, how generous the daily check-in and ad rewards are, and how easy it is to stop a subscription once it starts.
Our reviews are built on what we can measure. We track the apps' own public pages every day, so the free-episode figures below come from the paywall marker each app publishes on its series pages, averaged across every title we follow. GoodShort is the only one of the four that publishes per-episode coin prices on its website, which is why its review can say what finishing a series really costs. For the others we report the store prices and say where a figure is the app's claim rather than ours.
| App | Series we track | Average episodes | Free episodes | Share free |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DramaBox | 1,856 | 49.5 | 8.5 | 18.1% |
| ReelShort | 578 | 63.9 | 9.8 | 16.1% |
| GoodShort | 66 | 70.6 | 8.2 | 12.2% |
More figures, and how they are measured, are in the Short Drama Index.
Short drama app reviews at a glance
| App | Store rating, out of 5 | Cost per episode | Weekly plan | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ReelShort | 4.7 on App Store 3.8 on Google Play | about 60¢ (60 coins) published by ReelShort | $19.99 a week | Read review Visit app |
DramaBox | 4.8 on App Store 4.6 on Google Play | about 50¢ (50 coins) reader reports (23) | memberships $5.99 to $19.99 | Read review Visit app |
ShortMax | 4.6 on App Store 4.4 on Google Play | about 80¢ (60 to 80 coins) reader reports (11) | $9.99 or $19.99 a week | Read review Visit app |
GoodShort | 4.9 on App Store 4.7 on Google Play | about 48¢ (median 48 coins) published by GoodShort | $5.99 to $19.99 a week | Read review Visit app |
KalosTV | 4.5 on App Store 4.3 on Google Play | 70¢ to $2 (50 to 150 coins, rising) reader reports (10) | $14.99 for 7 days | Read review Visit app |
StardustTV | 4.7 on App Store 4.5 on Google Play | about 59¢ (59 coins) reader reports (10) | $19.99 or $29.99 a week | Read review Visit app |
US prices and store ratings. "Reader reports" is the typical price named in App Store reviews, with the number of reviews in brackets.
ReelShort vs DramaBox → · Best short drama apps, ranked →
ReelShort ReelShort
577 titles tracked · avg 64 episodes
Open ReelShortDramaBox DramaBox
745 titles tracked · avg 52 episodes
Open DramaBoxGoodShort GoodShort
49 titles tracked · avg 71 episodes
Open GoodShort