Best Fake Relationship Short Dramas
Pretend for the family, the contract or the revenge, then stop pretending.
We track 359 fake relationship series across the apps we cover. Every one below starts with free episodes.
Where these live: most of this list sits on ReelShort, ShortMax and StardustTV. All are free to download.
Where to start
6 from the list in full — cover art, both ratings, what each one is about and where to watch it. Tap any poster further down for the same detail on the rest.
Dream OnCharting
Based on the novel by Jennifer Hartmann. When Lexington Hall, the biggest movie star, asks Stevie to be his fake girlfriend, it should have been her Hollywood dream come true. The problem? He's the ex who left her broken-hearted. Is this a dream, or her worst nightmare?
English-languageFake relationshipOn ReelShort · added 2026-10-14 · free episodes to start
The Forbidden Professor's Secret Surrender
Graduate student Aurora discovers that her strict substitute professor, Felix, is actually her submissive online boyfriend who calls her "Owner." To graduate safely, she hides her identity, navigating the hilarious contrast between his cold professional persona and his clingy online puppy attitude. After graduation, when Aurora goes on a blind date, a jealous Felix crashes it, reveals he knew her identity all along, and begs her to marry him.
English-languageFake relationshipOn ShortMax · added 2026-10-14 · free episodes to start
CEO Daddy, Win Mommy Back!
Carter heiress Molly is drugged and framed by her stepsister, spending a night with tycoon Kane. Pregnant and disowned, she raises quintuplets alone. Five years later, Kane searches for the woman with a butterfly tattoo, pretending to be disabled. The five kids track down their father—together they expose the villains and reunite the family.
On StardustTV · added 2026-10-14 · free episodes to start
The Mafia Don's Substitute Lover
Desperate for money to save his mother, Amber becomes a mafia don’s substitute lover. What he doesn’t know is that he’s the don’s long-lost true love—the man he’s been searching for all these years.
On GoodShort · added 2026-10-14 · free episodes to start
The Heartless Alpha's Beloved Luna
Avery is betrayed and drugged on her full‑moon mating night. Rescued by the fierce, powerful Alpha Gideon, she gets unexpectedly marked. Framed by her stepsister Zara, she is cast as a slave by her former lover Ryan. Forced into a fake marriage with Gideon, she struggles amid lies, deadly plots and a supposed fated mate's return, tangled in dangerous shifter‑world power struggles and confusing feelings.
On DramaBox · added 2026-10-14 · free episodes to start
My Crush’s Ridiculous Bet
Seth lures Maya, who has adored him for eight years, to City Hall for his absurd birthday bet, publicly ridiculing her devotion. Humiliated, Maya contract marries wealthy Hayden. Skeptical Seth’s challenge backfires when a grand banquet exposes his shameful plot. Ruined and obsessed, he harasses Maya and faces punishment. Maya discovers Hayden is her childhood savior. Locked silver moon pendants reveal his hidden love. Their fake marriage turns real. Maya finds happiness, while Seth wallows in r
On ShortMax · added 2026-10-14 · free episodes to start
The full list
Tap any poster for the synopsis, ratings and where to watch it.
His Brother's Secret Substitute: Married to the Dying Heir
One Night with My Best Friend, I Wed His Rival
I Paid a Beggar to Fake Date Me. He Owns the Whole City![[Dubbed] Your Wife Is Your Rival, Deal With It! poster, on ShortMax](/_vercel/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.reelhunter.xyz%2Fcovers%2F8bf8b29e-39bf-4a3d-8f91-c065d0573d06.webp&w=192&q=70)
[Dubbed] Your Wife Is Your Rival, Deal With It!What fake relationship short dramas actually are
They agree to pretend, for the family, the contract or the revenge. Then the pretending stops being work. It overlaps with contract marriage but keeps a distinct pleasure: nobody is bound, so every scene is a choice.
What makes it suit the format is that the arrangement supplies a legitimate reason for the leads to be in the same frame constantly, and a built-in clock, because the deal has an end date and the audience is counting down to it. That is a lot of tension for very little setup.
The good ones make the performance itself the courtship: the leads learning each other's histories in order to lie convincingly, and finding out they like what they learn. The weak ones drop the pretence in the first ten episodes and become an ordinary romance with an awkward premise attached.
Where to find them
Of the 359 fake relationship series we track, the largest share sits on ReelShort — 101 titles, 28% of the list. After that it is ShortMax (70) and MoboReels (51). The remainder is spread across 6 other apps, which is worth knowing before you commit: no single app has this theme cornered.
For context on the leader, ReelShort carries 36,136 series in total across 21 languages, and added 782 new titles in the last thirty days. Whether that shelf keeps growing matters more than its size today — our full write-up goes into what it costs and where it falls short.
How this list rates
48% of these carry our R story rating (17+) — sustained violence, threat or dark themes such as abuse and grief; stronger language. That is a rating for violence, threat and dark themes, not for romance; the two run independently, so a series can be R with barely a kiss in it.
Most of these ratings are provisional: derived from the official synopsis rather than from us watching the series, and marked as such wherever they appear. They deliberately round up, because under-rating a dark plot costs a viewer more than over-rating a gentle one costs us. How our ratings work.
237 of these landed since the start of September 2026, so this is not a static shelf. New titles arrive weekly across the apps, and the monthly round-ups track what is new.
How to pick one
Two things decide whether you finish a short drama, and neither is the synopsis. The first is how many episodes you get free — every series here opens with some, but the number varies by app and by how heavily a title is being promoted that week. The second is where the paywall lands relative to the first real turn: a series that hooks you at episode three and charges at episode four is a different proposition from one that gives you ten.
Because the apps are free to install and each gives free episodes, the cheapest way to judge is to start the same theme on two of them. Our ranked app comparison covers which ones respect your money and which have the pushiest billing prompts.
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