CandyShorts review

First, the scope: what is reviewed here is Shorts, not Candy AI as a whole. Chat, voice calls and the character creator have their place on the features page and are left out of the scores on purpose — they are another product that happens to share the subscription.

What it is, in short

AI-generated vertical video, arranged in numbered series instead of scattered clips. Open a series and you find a poster, a three- or four-line premise and a list of episodes, which you watch in sequence. That structure is the entire offer; everything else in this review is detail hanging from it.

This matters because the rest of AI video is still largely one-off generations that remember nothing of each other. Among mainstream options, Shorts is the only attempt I’ve come across at produced serialised content: a premise was written, cast, edited into episodes and released as a season. Like the results or not, that is a truly different thing.

About the catalogue

On 6 October 2026, my count found 129 live series. Existing series get new episodes regularly, and the pink New Episodes flag on a card is there for a reason, not for show.

That figure only means something with a date next to it, and it is where the first version of this review went wrong. My first count, on 10 September, gave twenty-four, and I wrote that the honest headline was a small library. Twelve days on there were 108, and 129 by 6 October 2026. The catalogue isn’t small; it is fast, a different quality that cuts both ways.

The flip side of that speed is less pleasant. By the second count, five of the original twenty-four series had gone from the grid. Departures come without warning and nothing can be downloaded, so a series you are halfway through may become hard to track down. Judge the catalogue by what is on it today, not by a list you read somewhere a month ago, this one included.

On the other hand, every entry is a series rather than a clip. A catalogue of 129 series adds up to far more viewing than one of 129 videos would, so the instinctive comparison with the sheer volume of a tube site is the wrong one.

Using it day to day

The catalogue page is a grid topped by a row of category filters, thirteen of them when I checked. Most of the information comes from two badges: a pink one for new episodes and an orange Spicy marker for the more explicit series. With those you can make sense of a card without opening it, which is more than most catalogues achieve.

What is absent says more. You get no search, no sorting and no episode count on the cards, so there is no telling whether a series has three episodes or fifteen until you open it. With a catalogue of this size you can browse around the problem. It won’t scale, though.

The series page itself is tidy: poster and play button on the left, premise and episode list on the right, and padlocks on what you haven’t unlocked. It is an honest layout, showing the shape of what you are paying for before you pay.

Testing the free tier

I tested this on a free account instead of trusting the plan page, and this is where my results differ most from what other sources say.

Browsing is entirely open. Each card, title, badge, premise and episode list can be seen for free, much of it without even an account. That beats what the sector usually offers, and it is the best single reason to look before you decide.

Episode one is always free, and episode two costs at most a free sign-up. This is what gets reported wrongly, and I got it wrong here as well. In September I tried three series, found one locked, and wrote that access to episode one was patchy. On 22 September 2026 I checked again across 23 series (the thirteen this site covered at the time plus ten chosen at random from the catalogue): only episodes one and two carried a video, and both played without an account. No series was fully locked. On 26 September 2026, going back to 20 series without an account, I found the platform showing two versions of the page: in one, episodes one and two still play; in the other, episode one plays and episode two asks for a free sign-up first.

That is why the free tier now gets 8 instead of 6. What stops it reaching 9 is the ceiling more than the gate: two episodes, even with a free sign-up before the second, make a proper sample, but in no series do they complete a story. And no card shows where the paywall starts, something a single badge could still easily fix.

The price

Shorts can’t be bought alone: a single Candy AI Premium subscription pays for the episodes and the rest of the platform together.

On the annual plan this is good value; on the monthly plan it isn’t. For €3.99 a month, unlimited access to every episode of 129 produced series is cheap. At the €13.99 list price that the monthly plan goes back to, for a catalogue of this size, it is not.

My honest advice remains to start with the monthly plan, even at a higher price. See whether you really watch it before paying for twelve months in advance: the annual discount only saves you money if you use the whole year. Every detail is on the access and pricing page.

Who should skip it

• If you expect to see everything you pay for. On candyshorts.com a whole category is hidden: ten series tagged Spicy exist only inside candy.ai, and nothing on the browsable grid hints that a shelf is missing.
• If you want to keep what you watch. Streaming only, no downloads, and access ends when the subscription does. It is a rental.
• If what you really want is to generate. Shorts is for viewers. Creating your own videos uses tokens, a separate budget covered on a separate page: see video generation.
• If you only want it for a weekend. The subscription renews. Set a reminder the day you sign up, not the day you lose interest.

Review by Nathan Cole, September 2026, using a free Candy AI account. The scores apply to the Shorts format alone. Some links earn this site a commission, which has no effect on the score: publishing the two lowest marks on this page costs us money. Our methods.