Is NetShort free?
Free to download, not free to finish. NetShort costs nothing to install, and then sells access: on the US App Store its Weekly VIP is listed at $5.99 to $29.99. Which price you are offered, the store does not say.
What NetShort sells
| Listed as | What it is | Prices listed |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly VIP | a pass that renews every week | $5.99, $19.99, $24.99 and $29.99 |
| One-time Purchase | a single payment | $6.99, $9.99 and $19.99 |
From the in-app purchases on NetShort's US App Store listing, read Oct 10, 2026. The listing gives names and prices only: it does not say what a single payment buys, or why the same pass appears at several prices. Other countries have other prices.
What that adds up to
- A weekly pass is not a monthly price. $19.99 a week is $79.96 over four weeks. It renews every week until you cancel.
- Cancel with Apple or Google. A pass bought in the app is a subscription in your App Store or Google Play account. Deleting the app does not end it.
- Look at the payment screen before you tap. The price there is the one you pay; it can differ from one person to the next.
NetShort next to the apps we track
| App | Free episodes | Of how many | Weekly pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| NetShort | not known | – | $5.99 to $29.99 |
| ReelShort | 9 | 55 | $14.99 |
| GoodShort | 9 | 59 | not published |
| DramaBox | 9 | 50 | not published |
| ShortMax | 10 | 61 | not published |
For the four apps we track: the typical drama, from the 8,547 dramas whose paywall we have checked, as of Oct 17, 2026; a weekly pass price is shown only where the app publishes one on its website. How we read prices.
What we can't tell you
- Where the lock starts. NetShort's public pages show how many episodes a drama has, not which one is the first you pay for, so we cannot tell you how much of a drama is free before you open it.
- What a drama costs in total. Without a published price per episode there is nothing to add up.
NetShort also has a website, netshort.com, where dramas open in a browser. Its episode pages carry an unlock button, so the lock is there too.
Ways to watch short dramas without paying
- PineDrama, TikTok's app, is free with ads.
- Some whole dramas are posted officially on YouTube. The ones we found.
- On the apps we track, some dramas give far more free episodes than others. The list.