Burn Rate · a free calculator

How many hours a week does your channel actually cost?

Most creators plan a schedule without ever costing it. Pick a format and a platform, check the hours, and Burn Rate tells you what the schedule costs, whether you can afford it, and what to cut. No login. Nothing leaves your browser.

2 minutesNumbers dated 14 Sept 2026Deterministic, no AI

Your channel

Estimate  
Be honest. Count the hours you have every week, not your best week.
Your burn rate
10hours a week needed · 8 available
Running hot

Hours per upload
10
Format debt per week
2
Cadence you can afford
3
Weeks until 12 uploads
15
About how many the algorithm needs before it can place a new channel.
Idea + packaging share
20%
Runway
20 wk
Burn Rate
jasonnellis.com/burn-rate

What to cut first

A plan built from your numbers: which stage is eating your week, what to change, and what it saves. Also the formats you could afford at this cadence, and the cadence you could afford with this format.

    Free to unlock. Subscribe to The Long Yes, my weekly letter on the creator economy. The button opens Substack in a new tab and unlocks the plan here.

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    Methodology

    Where the numbers come from, and the argument behind them

    No platform will tell you it sets your cadence. YouTube says each video is judged on its own and that it tries to re-surface creators after a break. Instagram lists watch time, likes and sends as its signals and never mentions frequency. TikTok is the only one that publishes a number, and it is one to four posts a day.

    What channels that break out actually do is different. In the largest studies available, breakout long-form YouTube channels post about 1.6 times a week, breakout Shorts channels about 5.4 times a week, and a silent week underperforms your own baseline on every platform. That is the cadence the platform rewards. It is observed, not decreed, and it is real whether or not anyone admits it.

    The thesis of this tool is that early channels rarely die from bad content. They die because the creator picked a format whose production load cannot be sustained at that cadence, on top of a life. The math never got done. Burn Rate does the math.

    Cadence breakout channels post at

    PlatformDefaultRange shownConfidenceBasis

    Hours per upload, by format and stage

    Defaults are creator-reported estimates built from editor rate cards (20 to 60 minutes of editing per finished minute for most YouTube formats, one to two hours for motion-heavy work) and self-reports. Editing is usually 40 to 60 percent of the total. Cooking and product review have no surveyed numbers anywhere, so those rows are inferred and marked. Every field is editable. Your numbers beat mine.

    FormatIdeaScriptShootEditPackageCommunityTotalSourced range

    How the verdict is computed

    Burn rate is hours per upload multiplied by the rewarded cadence, compared with the hours you said you have. Under 60 percent of your time is idling. 60 to 90 is sustainable. 90 to 125 is running hot. 125 to 175 is burning. Above that is a flameout. Format debt is the weekly shortfall. Runway assumes most people can borrow about 40 hours from sleep and weekends before something breaks, and counts the weeks until that debt is spent. The idea-and-packaging share is compared with the roughly 30 percent that top channels spend on ideas, titles and thumbnails, against about 5 percent for most small channels.

    Privacy

    Everything is computed in your browser. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere. The site's privacy-friendly analytics record an anonymous count of which format, platform and verdict came up, so I can publish "how long an upload really takes" once there are enough results to say something. Refreshed yearly.

    Sources

    AIR Media-Tech, 18,000 YouTube channels · OverseerOS, 168 breakout channels · Buffer posting-frequency guide · Buffer, 52M posts (silent-week effect) · Socialinsider TikTok benchmarks · TikTok Creator Academy · Buzzsprout podcast stats · beehiiv 2025 newsletter report · StreamScheme · ReelRate editing times · EditVideo.io · Nebinski, hours per podcast episode · Paddy Galloway via Colin & Samir (packaging share) · YouTube on breaks and burnout

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