A Kyiv Studio Stakes Its Bet on the Vertical Drama

Holywater was not founded as a television business. Back in 2020 Bogdan Nesvit and Anatolii Kasianov founded the studio in Kyiv, Ukraine, and its lineup even now looks more like a lab for mobile entertainment than a streaming platform. Beside My Drama sit My Passion for books, My Muse for AI and FreeBits. That spread matters, since video is one of several consumer products for the company, not its entire identity. Eventually, it put its wager on the vertical drama, a format that began in China as duanju and is framed 9:16 for a phone held upright. The groups behind the sector’s biggest names were Chinese and Singaporean, making this a freedramashorts.com daring market for a small Ukrainian company to enter.

Spring 2024: The My Drama App Goes Live

The precise date of the My Drama app depends on which record you trust, but the app arrived in spring 2024. According to TechCrunch, the launch took place in April, while Google Play lists March 13, 2024, and the App Store lists May 9, 2024. Those store dates imply that Android launched first, with the iPhone version following about two months later. The first slate leaned hard on the genre’s favorite tropes. Early titles featured The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast and Love Captive to a Mafia Boss, names that tell you most of what you need to know about the mood. It was not the stories themselves that ultimately set the company apart, but the partner it would soon be making them with.

A Fox Deal, a $22M Raise and a Webby

My Drama stopped being a startup curiosity in October 2025. Fox Entertainment acquired an equity stake in Holywater, and the deal came with a commitment to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years. A $22M round led by Horizon Capital came three months later, in January 2026, when Holywater raised the money. Fox-produced titles on the service include Billionaire Blackmail, Bound by Obsession and My Heart’s Offside. The company additionally has a 2025 Webby Award for Best Streaming Service, an honor it features on its App Store listing. Taken together, those milestones give My Drama something few rivals can match, namely a major American studio acting as both shareholder and producer.

My Drama at a Glance

If you only have a spare minute, the table below is the short version of the story. It collects in one place the ownership, legal, platform and pricing details that matter most to newcomers. As of September 2026, the prices are those shown in the US App Store. Since they differ by country, platform and promotion, read them as a rough guide rather than a firm quote. The install figure comes from Google Play, where the app lists 5M+ downloads. Which legal entity you contract with depends on where you live, a point that becomes relevant if you ever need to dispute a charge.

What Watching on My Drama Feels Like

The whole category is built on this same basic experience, and My Drama sticks to it. Episodes are vertical and formatted for a phone held upright; in this genre episodes generally last a minute or two, and then a cliffhanger propels you toward the next one. A single story can quietly eat up an evening in short bites, because series often run anywhere from 20 to 100 episodes. This drama app truly sets itself apart through the range of screens it supports. As well as iPhone, iPad and Android, it is listed for Apple TV running tvOS 18 or later and for Vision Pro. This big-screen option is less common than you might think: for comparison, ReelShort’s App Store listing shows no Apple TV version at all. A 9:16 frame will never fill a widescreen television, but the option converts a solo phone habit into something a couple can watch together.

On the content side, the library combines Holywater’s own early productions with the growing Fox slate. The Fox releases stay close to the genre’s well-worn formula, as titles like Billionaire Blackmail and Bound by Obsession make clear. Here, the fair caveat is scale. ReelShort, DramaBox and ShortMax each list 100M+ installs on Google Play, while the app shows 5M+, a fraction of that. That gap reveals where My Drama stands in 2026: a well-financed challenger rather than the category leader.

Pricing: What My Drama Costs in 2026

Access is sold in three ways, and the headline figure is the weekly pass. In the US App Store as of September 2026, “My Drama: Full Access” is priced at around $19.99 a week. This places it on par with the weekly passes from ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave and GoodShort, each listed at about the same price in the same store. From roughly $4.99 to $24.99, coin packs unlock individual episodes. With a separate Premium tier listed at roughly $4.99 to $9.99, lighter viewers have lower-cost entry points than the full pass. As prices differ by country, platform and promotion, the figure on your own screen may differ. The weekly subscription renews automatically until you cancel it, just like its rivals’ plans. Four renewals of a $19.99 weekly pass come to roughly $80 a month, so do the math before you commit.

The Terms to Understand Before You Pay

My Drama’s terms of use carry fine print that deserves more attention than most viewers pay it. All coin purchases are final, which means no easy refund if a series disappoints after you unlock it. After 12 months of inactivity, coins are also forfeited, so a balance left untouched for a year can simply vanish. Viewers in the EU and UK receive a 14-day right of withdrawal, reflecting the consumer rules in those markets. Except where the law requires otherwise, web purchases are labeled non-refundable. The crucial point of all: the terms state plainly that deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. To cancel on an iPhone, open Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions; on Android, use the Subscriptions menu in Google Play. Refunds for store purchases are dealt with by Apple or Google, not by Holywater.

It is also wise to know exactly who stands on the other side of the contract. Everyone outside the US contracts with Holy Water Limited in Nicosia, Cyprus, while US users contract with XOLY LIMITED, a Delaware company. One more warning applies here as much as to any vertical drama app. Any site promising modded APKs, unlimited coins or free coin generators is unofficial, and it is not a safe way to watch anything. If the price seems too high, the right step is cancelling the pass; do not go hunting for a hack.

Verdict: A Challenger With Hollywood in Its Corner

My Drama is not the largest vertical drama app, and going by install counts it is not even close. What it offers instead is an unlikely combination: a Kyiv founding story, a Fox equity partner committed to more than 200 titles, fresh funding from January 2026 and a Webby on the shelf. Viewers get a practical advantage in Apple TV support, which ReelShort, for one, does not list. As with every rival, the drawback is a weekly pass of roughly $19.99 that keeps renewing quietly in the background. If you want Fox-produced romance and the option to watch on a TV, the My Drama app earns a place on your home screen. ShortMax, with its 50,000+ dramas, is the more obvious choice if you simply want the largest claimed library. Whichever you choose, create a reminder on the day you subscribe and cancel through your store account instead of trusting the delete button.