A catalogue that quadrupled in twelve days

The most common complaint about the Shorts catalogue used to be that it was small. We made that complaint ourselves, in this article, in its first version. Twelve days later the catalogue had more than quadrupled, and the complaint was simply wrong.

So this is a piece about a number that moves, and about the unit people use to compare it — which was the wrong unit even when the number was small.

The number, with a date on it

120 series were live in the grid on 30 September 2026. Every tab, infinite scroll run to the end.

On 10 September, the same count returned 24. That is not a correction of a miscount — we loaded the whole grid both times. The catalogue genuinely went from 24 to 108 in twelve days, and it has kept going since.

Which is why every number about this platform needs a date stapled to it, ours included. If you are reading a catalogue count anywhere without one, it is decoration.

The comparison people make

The instinct is to hold the count up against a tube site, where the number runs to tens of thousands, and conclude there is nothing here. The instinct is understandable and the comparison is broken, because the two numbers count different objects.

On a clip site, one entry is one video. Here, one entry is a series: a premise, a cast, numbered episodes watched in order, extended over time as new ones are produced. Most series run to five episodes; the strongest run to fifteen. The pink New Episodes flag on a card marks a series that has grown since you last looked.

So 120 series is a far larger body of watching than 120 videos, by a multiple that depends on which series you pick — and the product still does not print episode counts on the cards, which is the one number that would settle it. That omission was a fair criticism when the catalogue had 24 entries. With 120, it is a worse problem, not a smaller one.

What actually limits you

Not the total. What limits you is how many of the 120 you personally want to watch.

There are thirteen category filters above the grid. Apply the one or two that match what you came for and the catalogue stops being 120 and becomes a shortlist. That shortlist is the real size of the thing, and it is what people are reacting to when they say it feels thin.

At 24 series, that shortlist was often a handful and you could reach the end of it. At 120, for most tastes, you will not. If catalogue size was the reason you passed on this in early September, the reason has expired.

The grid is not the whole catalogue

Here is the part that took us two attempts to get right, and the reason the count above needs an asterisk. Of the 24 series we first counted, five are missing from the candyshorts.com grid today. We assumed they had been removed. They had not.

They carry the platform’s Spicy tag, and the candyshorts.com grid does not show Spicy series at all — that site does not even have the filter. They exist, inside candy.ai, under a tag you have to know about. Eight series sit there, invisible to anyone counting on the other site.

So 120 is the honest number for the grid you can browse, and it is not the honest number for the catalogue. That is a more awkward drawback than a small library: a small library you can evaluate before paying, whereas a catalogue with a hidden shelf means the thing you are judging is not the thing you are buying.

Practical consequence: judge what is on the grid today, and do not pick a twelve-month plan on the strength of one specific series you want to watch.

Judging it before you pay

This part the platform gets right. Browsing is completely open: every card, title, badge and premise is visible without a subscription, and much of it without an account at all. You can apply your filters and count your own shortlist before paying anything.

Every series we checked also plays its first two episodes free, and nothing on the card says where the paywall falls — where exactly the line falls is its own page. Between the two, you can answer the only question that matters — are there enough series here that I want to watch — for nothing.

On price, the same logic applies to the plan you pick. At €3.99 a month on the annual plan, 120 series is a lot of watching for the money. But the churn argues for starting monthly anyway: find out whether the things you want to watch stay put.

Counted on 30 September 2026, when there were 120. There were 24 on 10 September. If the figure here is stale — and it will be — say so and we will re-count and re-date it.