CAPTIONS ALTERNATIVE

shortshort vs Captions.

shortshort cuts one long video into vertical shorts that end where the sentence ends, frames the face with automatic zooms, and costs €0.05 per minute of video. Below: the numbers first, then 18 criteria with a check or a cross, then the plans of both.

Try it on a video · free See the 18 criteria

60 free credits, no cardUp to 3 hours per videoMP4 · 1080 × 1920

shortshort vs Captions: the short answer

shortshort turns one video of up to 3 hours into 9:16 shorts that end where the sentence ends, framed on the face on screen with automatic emphasis zooms, captioned word by word, for €0.05 per minute of source video. 60 minutes are free, no card.

Captions is an AI video editor built around captions, avatars and post-production automation. It may fit better for bigger files, link import, translation or dubbing; the table below says where, with the source.

Price per minute of video: €0.05 here, lite at 4.99 USD per month, Android only at Captions
Free plan: Permanent on both sides
Longest video: 3 h per video here, 3 h for Clips, 60 min import at Captions

Facts checked against the product on 20 September 2026. Prices before VAT.

Why shortshort

Four things the product does by design; the table below checks the rest, both ways.

Priced by the minute, not by the short

€0.05 per minute on Starter, whatever the number of shorts. 60 minutes are free at sign-up, no card.

Cuts that finish the sentence

The AI reads the whole transcript and keeps complete, quotable passages: a short opens and closes on a sentence, never mid-thought.

Framing that follows the face, with motion

The 9:16 crop tracks the face on screen and adds emphasis zooms between x1.0 and x1.6; slides and wide shots stay whole. Framing is automatic; cuts, title and captions stay editable.

One page, nothing to learn

Drop the file, choose how many shorts and how long, check the proposals, export the MP4s. No timeline, no template to configure.

18 criteria, side by side

One line per criterion, the same shape on both sides. The Captions column is derived from Captions's own site: the number after a cell points to the source, and the exact wording is under the table.

Reading note. Captions is a full AI video editor with avatars and generated footage; clipping a long video is one feature among many.

Criterion	shortshort	Captions
Getting the video in
Longest video	3 h per videoOne file of up to 3 hours, on every plan.	3 h for Clips, 60 min for other imports^[1]The manual editor caps at 10 minutes on iOS, AI Edit at 2 on iOS and 1 on web, same language captions at 10 on iOS and Desktop but 5 on Android, dubbing at 5.
Largest file	2 GB per fileMP4, MOV or WebM.	10 GB for Clips^[1]Prompt to Video caps uploads at 100 MB and is desktop only, while the general import doc states no byte limit at all, only the 60 minute duration cap.
How the video gets in	File upload onlyNo YouTube or Drive link import; the file leaves your disk.	Upload, video URL, in-app camera, text prompt^[2]Video MP4, MOV, M4V and audio MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV; Clips also takes a YouTube or public link; no Drive, Dropbox, Zoom or podcast host import is described.
What comes out
Crop follows the speaker	Face and scene trackingThe 9:16 crop moves with the speaker; slides and wide shots stay full frame; framing set automatically.	Yes, reframes to follow whoever is talking^[1]Clips turns horizontal into vertical keeping speakers centred and cuts around speaker switching; the Scale setting also has an Auto fit that centres content.
Automatic captions	Word by word, 4 stylesSpotlight, Impact, Karaoke, Minimal; timed on the audio; SRT import.	Yes, 101 languages and 100+ styles^[3]Automatic transcription with styling, emojis, keyframes and manual timing; customizable captions and transcript download are ticked only on Max and Frontier.
Aspect ratios	9:16 only	9:16, 16:9, 1:1 and 4:5^[4]AI Edit offers only 9:16 and 16:9, the manual editor is marked not available on Captions on Web, and the API returns 9:16 or 16:9 only.
Export	MP4 1080 × 1920, 30 fpsH.264, rendered in the browser or on the server on Creator and Studio.	4K and below on iOS and web^[5]Legacy desktop caps at 2K, their help home says 1080p instead, and the export screen names no ceiling, only resolution, frame rate and bitrate choices.
Editing and export
Manual editor	Yes, free, no account neededBounds, caption words, caption style and title.	Yes on iOS, not available on Captions on Web^[5]The timeline does trim, split, merge, reorder, transitions, keyframes and overlays, capped at 10 minutes on iOS; there is also a chat based editor.
Brand presets	One preset, Studio planCaption colour and font, preselected on every new video.	Centralized brand templates on Enterprise only^[6]Other plans get saved caption styles, custom fonts and a library of AI Edit styles; the Enterprise bullet list on the pricing page names no brand template.
Edit export	JSON edit plan, Studio planFor rendering on your own server; no Premiere or DaVinci export.	Not stated on their site
Extras
Translation or dubbing	Not offeredCaptions are in the language spoken in the video.	Yes, dubbing in 31 languages, subtitles 100+^[7]Lipdub syncs lip movements and the help home claims voice cloning; dubbing is capped at 5 minutes and the translate rows sit on Max and Frontier.
Virality score	None, by designThe AI keeps complete, quotable sentences; you choose what goes out.	Yes, clips ranked for virality^[8]Clips returns up to 30 or more clips, each scored so the strongest performing rise to the top of the batch; no numeric scale is published.
B-roll, music, titles	None addedThe short is your video, reframed and captioned.	Yes, generated b-roll, music and titles^[9]AI Edit overlays b-roll automatically and you can prompt for custom media; music, sound effects, images and intro titles are generated, not a stock library.
Publishes to social	Download and post yourselfOne MP4 per short, or one ZIP with every short with and without captions; nothing is published from the studio.	Publishing claimed, absent from their own docs^[10]The help home says publish to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but the export doc it links to only downloads to your device; no scheduling is described.
Team and price
Team seats	One account, one login	Shared workspace, seats on Enterprise terms^[11]No seat count or per seat price is published for self serve plans, and their own docs say projects are stored locally and not synced between devices.
API	None	Yes, public API billed per minute^[12]Documented on their site as the Mirage API with an x-api-key header, at 0.15 USD per minute for captions and 0.15 USD per second for avatar generation.
Free plan	60 credits, no cardPermanent: up to 3 shorts per video, watermarked, exports join the public community.	Yes, no AI generation, credit grant disputed^[9]Not a plan card, only a column in their pricing table, which says credits None while their help centre says 60 to 200 lifetime; trim, transitions, captions.
How you pay	1 credit = 1 minute of videoWhatever the number of shorts. Plans from 12 EUR a month for 240 minutes.	Subscription with a monthly credit allowance^[9]Billed monthly or yearly, the yearly figure unpublished; credit grants run 200 on Basic to 5,600 on Frontier 4x, roll over up to 3x, and the API bills per minute.

Offered
On some plans, or with a limit
Not offered
A fact, not a yes or no
Not stated on their site

The exact wording of each Captions cell, as read on their site

Longest video: For Clips, their long-to-short tool: "Up to 3 hours, and up to 10GB as a file upload. You can also paste a YouTube or other public video link instead of uploading." The marketing page agrees: "Clips supports videos up to 3 hours or 10 GB." Every other path on their own site is far shorter: general import is "iOS / Android: Up to 60 minutes per file" and "Web: Up to 60 minutes per file"; the manual editor is "Up to 10 minutes" on iOS and "Not available" on Captions on Web; AI Edit is "Max. 2 minute" on iOS and "Max. 1 minute" on web and legacy desktop; and the captions doc adds a further table , same-language captions 10 min on iOS and Desktop but 5 min on Android, captions in another language 5 min, dub to another language 5 min (https://captions.ai/help/docs/captions/add-captions).^[1]
Largest file: "up to 10GB as a file upload" for Clips. Their Prompt to Video doc states a different and far smaller limit for that flow: "What is the size limit for uploading video or audio files? Your video and audio files can be up to 100MB. (Desktop only)" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/project/mirage-edit). The general import doc states no byte limit at all, only the 60-minute duration cap.^[1]
How the video gets in: Upload a file from device or drag and drop; import from a URL ("On iOS and Web, you can paste a YouTube or other video URL directly to create a project from an existing video , no download required. Tap + → Import URL and paste the link."); record in-app with the Captions camera and teleprompter; audio-only import ("a voiceover, podcast clip, or audio recording"); images; or generate from scratch from a text prompt or script. Clips accepts "A video file up to 3 hours / 10GB, or a YouTube or public video link". Supported formats: video MP4, MOV, M4V (web: MP4 and MOV only); audio MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV. There is also "Reddit to video: Turn Reddit posts into videos" (the pricing table calls the same thing "Reddit to Reel"). No import integration with Zoom, Google Drive, Dropbox or any podcast host is described anywhere on the site , the only dropbox.com link on captions.ai is the press-kit folder in the footer.^[2]
Crop follows the speaker: Yes. Clips doc: "Reframes for your format: Converts horizontal footage to vertical (or keeps it horizontal), keeping speakers centered and avoiding awkward crops through on-screen text", and on multi-speaker video "Clips handles multi-speaker setups and cuts cleanly around speaker switching, so back-and-forth exchanges stay coherent rather than chopping mid-sentence". The stronger claim , "Our AI can detect overlapped speech and fast speaker switching, and reframes to follow whoever is talking" , is on https://captions.ai/features/create-clips, not the help doc. Gaming gets "Facecam-friendly layouts" and "Action-first reframing , the frame follows what matters on screen instead of sitting on a static crop"; sports reframing "tracks the action with a smooth pan"; webinar reframing keeps "slides and screen shares legible", "usually keeping your content up top with the presenter below". Outside Clips, the Scale setting has an "Auto" fit that uses "AI to attempt to center the frame on the important content of the video".^[1]
Automatic captions: Automatic AI transcription with styled captions. Help home: "Generate accurate captions with one tap. Choose a style, adjust timing, and translate into 100+ languages" (https://captions.ai/help , not the add-captions doc, as previously recorded). The add-captions doc lists 101 named languages for adding or translating captions (Afrikaans through Zulu , I counted the list; the earlier figure of 99 was wrong), plus a "multiple languages" option for mixed-language video. Styling covers font and custom fonts, autofit, capitalization, text/emphasis/active-word colours, caption background, shadow, emojis with size and position, automatic word effects, keyframed caption movement, manual spelling edits and manual timing (https://captions.ai/help/docs/captions/styles). The marketing page promises "100+ languages and 100+ caption styles". The pricing table gives caption templates as "1" on Free and "100+" on Max and Frontier; CORRECTION: "Customizable captions" and "Download transcript" are ticked only on Max and Frontier, not on all tiers. Captions can also be exported as a separate SRT file, and changing caption style costs credits ("typically 3 credits", AI Edit styles "about 15 credits").^[3]
Aspect ratios: "To change the scale of your project: Tap Scale. Choose from 9:16, 16:9, 1:1, 4:5", with content fit options Fill, Fit and "Auto: Your video will fill the entire frame and we'll use AI to attempt to center the frame on the important content of the video." Their feature table limits this by surface: manual editor 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 on iOS and legacy desktop and "Not available" on Captions on Web; AI Edit only "Vertical 9:16" and "Landscape 16:9" on iOS and web, and "Vertical 9:16" alone on legacy desktop. In Clips you "adjust the aspect ratio of your clips" on the video plan. The API returns an aspect_ratio of 9:16 or 16:9 only (https://captions.ai/help/api-reference).^[4]
Export: Their format table gives "Resolution: 4K and below" on iOS and on Captions on Web, and "2K and below" on legacy desktop, with "Format Support: MP4 and MOV (non-HDR and HDR)" on iOS and "MP4 and MOV (non-HDR)" on web. The export screen lets you "Choose the resolution of the export", "Choose the frame rate of the export", "Choose the bitrate of the export" and "Enable/disable Smart HDR", but names no specific resolution or fps ceiling. Two other pages of theirs disagree with the table: the help home says "Export at 1080p", and https://captions.ai/help/llms-full.txt says "Export your video in up to 4K resolution".^[5]
Manual editor: Yes, with platform gaps. After Clips runs, "Open any clip in the editor and change captions, styling, timing, or anything else, exactly like a normal project" (help doc); the separate claim "you can manually trim the clip length before exporting" is on https://captions.ai/features/create-clips, not in the help doc. The manual editing feature list covers manual trim, add/delete/split/merge clips in the timeline, reorder shots, shot transitions, extract audio, keyframes, custom text, content fit, media overlays, imported voiceover/music/sound effects and undo/redo. Their own table marks the manual editor "Not available" on Captions on Web (both the aspect-ratio row and the duration row), caps it at 10 minutes on iOS, and marks keyframes, custom text, content fit, titles and undo/redo as iOS-only. There is also a chat-based editor: "Chat-based editing lets you make edits to your project by simply describing what you want", which accepts attached images and videos and chained prompts (https://captions.ai/help/docs/timeline/chat-to-edit).^[5]
Brand presets: Yes, presented as an enterprise capability. "Enterprise teams use Captions to create centralized brand templates, streamline approval workflows, and give distributed teams the ability to create on-brand content independently,without constant oversight from a central team." And: "Captions allows organizations to define and lock brand standards,visual styles, language guidelines, approved messaging,that apply across all content created within the platform." Outside enterprise the site offers saved caption styles, custom fonts and a named library of AI Edit styles (Evo, Prism Pro, Paper II, Prime, Elevate, Impact II, Sketch, Lens, Vista, Pop, Orbit, Y2K, Form, Bloom, Chalk, Linen, Focus, Lift, Stack, Align) plus "Brand customization: Adjust fonts, colors or layouts" on the captions page , not a brand kit. The Enterprise plan bullet list on /pricing includes no brand-template line.^[6]
Edit export: Not stated on their site.
Translation or dubbing: Both. Dubbed audio: "Automatically dub videos into 30+ languages with Captions AI. Translate speech, edit dubbed captions, and adjust volume while keeping natural voice and timing." The doc lists 31 languages you can "dub from or to" (Arabic through Ukrainian), and caps dubbing at 5 minutes per the captions duration table. Voice cloning and lip sync are claimed, but NOT where the earlier record said: the quote about "a cloned version of the speaker's voice and lip movements synced to the new audio" appears only in https://captions.ai/llms.txt, their machine-readable index. On live pages it is the help home that says "Dub your videos into 30+ languages with a cloned version of your voice", and https://captions.ai/features/translate-videos-with-ai that says "Lipdub is dubbing with one extra step: AI also adjusts your lip movements to match" and "Captions uses AI to sync the speaker's movements with the new audio track". The pricing table carries "AI Translate", "AI Lipdub" and "AI Voice Clone" rows on Max and Frontier. Translated subtitles separately cover "100+ languages" , the translate page says "more than 100", not 30+.^[7]
Virality score: Yes. The Clips doc says Clips returns "Up to 30+ clips, ranked for virality scoring" and "Ranks the results: Scores each clip so the ones most likely to perform rise to the top of the batch", and "Your clips come back ranked, from strongest performing first" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/project/clips). The marketing page phrases it as "Ranked for virality. Know which clips are most likely to perform with AI-powered scoring, so you can prioritize what to post" , that second quote is on /features/create-clips, not in the help doc. No numeric scale is published on either page.^[8]
B-roll, music, titles: Yes, generated rather than stock-library. Pricing bullet: "Generate custom B-roll, music, sound effects, images, and more". The homepage says AI Edit "automatically cuts scenes, overlays B-roll and more", and the feature table lists AI Music, AI Sound Effects, AI Voiceover, AI Cutout, media overlays, custom text and "Title: Automatically add a title at the beginning of your video" (iOS only). Their b-roll tool page says "With features like AI edit, you'll get automatically generated B-roll that matches your video's content and vibe. Or, use prompts to describe what you're going for and adjust as needed", and argues against stock explicitly: "stock libraries usually require a separate subscription" (https://captions.ai/tools/ai-b-roll-generator). In Clips you "confirm if you want introduction titles for each clip". Models named on their own domain for these generations include Flux 1.1 Pro, Luma Photon, Stable Diffusion 3.5, Ideogram, Imagen 3, Veo 3, Ray 2, Pika 2.2, Kling, MiniMax Video-01, ElevenLabs and Soundraw 2.^[9]
Publishes to social: Publishing claimed in marketing copy, scheduling not stated anywhere. The help home says "Export at 1080p and publish directly to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and more", llms.txt says "Videos can be published directly to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and more", and the translate page says "Export to save for later or post directly to top platforms". But the Publish & Export doc those links point to describes only "Select Export → Choose your export settings → Select Export and your video will be downloaded to your device", with advanced options for resolution, frame rate, bitrate, Smart HDR and an SRT file , no connected social accounts, no publish step (https://captions.ai/help/docs/settings/export). No calendar, queue or scheduled posting is described on any page. So: direct publishing is asserted in marketing copy but unsupported by their own documentation; scheduling is Not stated.^[10]
Team seats: Yes, mainly on enterprise terms. "Captions supports team workflows, allowing multiple users to create, review, and publish content within a shared workspace." The Enterprise plan lists "Custom seat options" and "Bulk credit discounts", and the help centre says Enterprise plans offer "discounted seats" and that legacy Teams or Business customers "can now add additional seats without the previous $40/seat cost". No seat count or per-seat price is published for any self-serve plan. The tension with their own storage docs stands: "Project syncing is not yet available", projects "are stored locally on the device where they were created. They are not synced to the cloud or between devices", and logging out "permanently deletes all of your locally stored projects". Partial nuance the earlier record missed: Captions Cloud does back up and sync *clips* (imported or Captions Camera recordings) on iPhone and Web for all paid plans , "While projects are not backed up or synced across devices, clips can be recovered and reused" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/settings/captions-cloud). A real-time "Co-Editor" appears only in their stale /help/llms-full.txt; its doc URL 404s.^[11]
API: Yes, public and self-serve, documented on captions.ai but branded and hosted as the Mirage API: "The Mirage API provides a simple interface to state-of-the-art video captioning, generation, and more" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/api/overview). Requires a Mirage platform account; auth is an x-api-key header, with keys created in the dashboard at platform.mirage.app, and the base URL is https://api.mirage.app/v1 , both off-domain, though documented on captions.ai. Pricing is usage-based, not credit-based: "Add Captions, Apply styled captions to a video, $0.15 per minute", billed on the input video rounded up to the nearest minute, and "Mirage Avatar X, Expressive human video generation model (video/image + audio → video), $0.15 per second (6-second increments)". Rate limits are 100 requests per minute for video captions and 2 per minute for video generation, per organization, returning HTTP 429 when exceeded. Documented endpoints: GET /v1/videos (cursor pagination, returning status, progress 0-100 and aspect_ratio of 9:16 or 16:9), POST /v1/videos, retrieve video, retrieve video content, plus video captions and an avatar catalog. Note their help home calls the same thing "the Captions API" with "credit-based pricing".^[12]
Free plan: Yes. "Yes, there is a free version of Captions. It includes a more limited feature set than you'll get with our paid plans. We recommend subscribing so you can use generative AI features and more advanced editing tools. The free plan includes basic tools like trimming, transitions and some media library assets." CORRECTED tick list from the table markup on the same page , Free gets AI usage credits "None", Caption templates "1" (paid tiers get "100+"), and ticks on Trim, Zoom, Sound effects, Transitions, Resize videos, Captions in 100+ languages and Keyframes only. Teleprompter, Customizable captions and Download transcript are NOT ticked for Free, and every AI generation, AI Edit, Clips, chat-editor, translation and audio-enhancement row is unticked. The help centre states the plan differently again: "60-200 lifetime credits, use of one template (\"Eclipse\")" and "No watermarks", and its credits table prices it at "$0" with credits that "do not refresh".^[9]
How you pay: Subscription with a monthly credit allowance. /pricing publishes only monthly figures, shown as "/mo", and its FAQ says "A yearly plan bills for 12 months upfront, at a discounted rate" , no yearly figure is published anywhere on captions.ai. The help centre adds "Paid plans are available as monthly or yearly subscriptions, and you can cancel at any time" and "Yearly subscriptions come with an automatic discount when compared with 12 months of the monthly pricing option" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/subscriptions); those two quotes are NOT on /pricing, contrary to the earlier record. Each plan carries credits: "Access 500 credits per month" (Max), "1,400 credits per month" (Frontier), and "Unused credits roll over to the next month. You can save up to two extra months of unused credits which means your balance can hold up to 3× your monthly allowance." A second on-domain table (https://captions.ai/help/docs/ai-usage) pairs each plan with its price and credit grant and lists per-feature credit costs (e.g. Prompt to Video 16 credits, AI Edit 10-40, chat-based editing 2 credits per prompt). Pricing-page footnote: "*All prices displayed in USD. Features and prices reflect iOS plans only." The API is billed separately and usage-based.^[9]

Sources for the Captions column, read on 20 September 2026

Their pages can change after that date; the table does not update itself.

What a month costs

shortshort prices before VAT, from the product. Captions plans as listed on their pricing page^[9].

shortshort

Free€0, no card60 welcome credits, one hour of videoUp to 3 shorts per videoWatermarked exportExported shorts join the community
Starter€12 a month240 min of video a month, 4 hoursUp to 5 shorts per videoNo watermarkPrivate exports: nothing posted to the public community gallery
Creator€29 a month800 min of video a month, 13 h 20Everything in StarterUp to 10 shorts per videoRenders on our servers: close the tab and come back to finished shorts
Studio€79 a month3,000 min of video a month, 50 hoursEverything in CreatorUp to 20 shorts per videoOne brand preset: your caption colors and font, preselected on every new video

Annual billing: Starter €115 a year, Creator €278 a year, Studio €758 a year. Full detail on the pricing page.

Captions

Free0 USD, no price card on pricing pageCredits None on pricing, 60-200 in help centreTrim, zoom, transitions, resize and keyframesCaptions in 100+ languages, 1 caption templateNo AI generation, no Clips, no translationHelp centre says no watermarks, llms.txt disagrees
Lite4.99 USD per monthNo credit grant statedAndroid only, iPhone and desktop need another planManual editing, captions, dubbing and clipsAbsent from the pricing page and the credits table
Basic (formerly Pro)9.99 USD per month200 credits per monthProject creation, exports and no watermarksReddit to video, script generator, teleprompterUsing Max only features adds a watermark to exportsMax or Frontier projects need an upgrade to export
Max24.99 USD per month500 credits per monthClips turns a long video into a batch of shortsAI Edit styles, chat based editor, AI twinsGenerated b-roll, music, sound effects and imagesPricing table ticks AI Translate, Lipdub, Voice Clone
Frontier (1x, formerly Scale)69.99 USD per month1,400 credits per monthEverything in Max plus customized usage tiersTheir most sophisticated generative AI modelsHelp centre adds faster generations and 3x AI usage
Frontier 2x139.99 USD per month2,800 credits per monthEverything in Max at twice the Frontier usageDouble the Frontier credit grantFormerly called Scale 2x
Frontier 4x279.99 USD per month5,600 credits per monthEverything in Max at four times the Frontier usageFour times the Frontier credit grantFormerly called Scale 4x
EnterpriseCustom pricing, contact salesBulk credit discounts, custom seat optionsCentralized brand templates and locked brand standardsDedicated account management and onboardingTraining data exclusion, they state SOC 2 complianceEarly access to beta and new features

As written on their pricing page

Free: Free. No price is shown on /pricing — Free is not a plan card there, it exists only as a column in the "Compare more features" table. The help centre's credits table does state a price: Free, "$0", credits "60 - 200 (do not refresh)" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/ai-usage). Pricing-page footnote: "*All prices displayed in USD. Features and prices reflect iOS plans only.": Pricing FAQ: "The free plan includes basic tools like trimming, transitions and some media library assets." CORRECTED against the raw table markup on /pricing: the rows actually ticked for Free are Trim, Zoom, Sound effects, Transitions, Resize videos, Captions in 100+ languages and Keyframes, with AI usage credits "None" and Caption templates "1". Teleprompter, Customizable captions and Download transcript are NOT ticked for Free (they are ticked only for Max and Frontier), and every AI generation, AI Edit, Clips, chat-editor, translation and audio-enhancement row is unticked.. The previous record wrongly credited Free with teleprompter, customizable captions and download transcript; I parsed the table's <div class="icon true|false"> cells rather than reading the rendered page, and those three are "false" in the Free column. The help centre describes the plan differently again: "The Free plan includes 60-200 lifetime credits, use of one template (\"Eclipse\")" plus Captions, Camera, Trim, Zoom, Sounds, Media, Voiceover, Transitions, Resize Video and "No watermarks" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/subscriptions) — note Camera/teleprompter and Voiceover appear there but not in the pricing table.
Lite: $4.99 USD per month (monthly billing). Help centre only: it is absent from /pricing and also absent from the help centre's own plan-price table at https://captions.ai/help/docs/ai-usage.: "The Lite plan is available on Captions Android and costs $4.99 USD per month. It offers essential tools for manual editing on Android": import/add/translate captions, import and dub videos, caption styles, camera, teleprompter, AI Script, AI Eye Contact, Denoise, Zoom, scale and format, auto-trim, image overlays, insert music, insert and generate sounds, voiceover, clips, custom text, extract audio, copy transcript.. Android only: "The Lite subscription plan can only be restored and used on Android. You can still log in with the same account on desktop and iPhone, but a separate subscription (Basic, Max, or Frontier) is required to access features on those platforms." Source: https://captions.ai/help/docs/subscriptions. Verified verbatim today.
Basic (formerly Pro): $9.99 USD per month (monthly billing). Help centre only, on two pages: https://captions.ai/help/docs/subscriptions and the credits table at https://captions.ai/help/docs/ai-usage, which lists "Basic (formerly Pro / Starter) | $9.99 | 200". Absent from /pricing.: "comes with 200 credits that renew monthly. It includes project creation, exports, and no watermarks": Reddit to Video, Script Generator, Camera & Teleprompter, Caption & Dub, and AI editing tools (Eye Contact, Denoise, Censor, Zoom, Voiceover, Title Card, Text, Trim).. Caveat their own watermark doc adds: on Basic, using Max-only features (Co-Editor/chat editing, AI Edit, AI-generated media, AI Creator) puts a watermark on the export — "If you used any of the following on a Basic plan, your export will include a watermark" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/troubleshooting/watermark). Also "if you are subscribed to Basic you must upgrade in order to export Max or Frontier projects" (https://captions.ai/help/docs/settings/export).
Max: $24.99/mo (USD, monthly billing). The page shows only the /mo figure; its FAQ says a yearly plan "bills for 12 months upfront, at a discounted rate" without publishing the yearly figure anywhere on captions.ai.: "Access our library of curated AI Edit styles", "Create a fully-produced video with AI", "Create digital twins or custom AI actors", "Use a chat-based editor to handle changes for you", "Turn a long video into a batch of post-ready clips", "Access 500 credits per month", "Generate custom B-roll, music, sound effects, images, and more".. Marked "MOST POPULAR" on /pricing. Help centre adds "Up to 30 AI Twins" and "Concurrent video generation (up to 2)", and its credits table corroborates $24.99 / 500 credits.
Frontier (1x, formerly Scale): $69.99/mo (USD, monthly billing): "Everything in Max, plus:" "1,400 credits per month", "Make more videos per month with customized usage tiers", "Access our most sophisticated tier of generative AI models".. Labelled "1x usage" on /pricing. Help centre adds "Faster speed generations" and "3X AI Usage", and confirms "The Frontier plan (and its 2x and 4x tiers) was formerly called Scale". Corroborated by the credits table ($69.99 / 1400).
Frontier 2x: $139.99/mo (USD, monthly billing): "2,800 credits per month" plus everything in Max.. "2x usage" tier. Help centre: "Frontier 2x (formerly Scale 2x) offers 2800 credits for $139.99".
Frontier 4x: $279.99/mo (USD, monthly billing): "5,600 credits per month" plus everything in Max.. "4x usage" tier. Help centre: "Frontier 4x (formerly Scale 4x) offers 5600 credits for $279.99".
Enterprise: "Custom pricing" (contact sales): "Bulk credit discounts", "Custom seat options", "Dedicated account management team", "Training data exclusion", "Customer onboarding, priority training, and hands-on support", "Early access to beta and new features".. The enterprise page adds "Captions is Soc-II compliant" and centralized brand templates; the help centre adds "commercial terms, priority onboarding and training sessions, discounted seats, white glove support". Note their llms.txt claims "SOC 2 certification ... role-based permissions" — role-based permissions appear on no live page I could find.

The verdict

shortshort for the price per minute, the cuts and the framing; Captions when you need bigger files or link import. Both lists come from the table.

Where shortshort comes out ahead

Cuts on complete sentencesEach short opens and closes on a sentence boundary, with a 25% margin around the target length; nothing ends mid-thought.
Framing that follows the face, with emphasis zoomsFace and scene tracking move the 9:16 crop; zooms between x1.0 and x1.6 add motion; slides and wide shots stay whole.
One page, nothing to learnDrop, choose the count and the length, check, export. No timeline or template to set up.
A free manual editor, no account neededBounds, caption words, caption style and title; the MP4 export works without signing in.
A public before-and-after galleryEach short next to the video it came from, with the transcript, so the result can be judged before trying.

Where Captions may fit better

Bigger files^[1]10 GB for Clips against 2 GB here. Prompt to Video caps uploads at 100 MB and is desktop only, while the general import doc states no byte limit at all, only the 60 minute duration cap.
Link import^[2]Upload, video URL, in-app camera, text prompt. Video MP4, MOV, M4V and audio MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV; Clips also takes a YouTube or public link; no Drive, Dropbox, Zoom or podcast host import is described.
Translation or dubbing^[7]Yes, dubbing in 31 languages, subtitles 100+. Lipdub syncs lip movements and the help home claims voice cloning; dubbing is capped at 5 minutes and the translate rows sit on Max and Frontier.
Virality score^[8]Yes, clips ranked for virality. Clips returns up to 30 or more clips, each scored so the strongest performing rise to the top of the batch; no numeric scale is published.
B-roll, music, titles^[9]Yes, generated b-roll, music and titles. AI Edit overlays b-roll automatically and you can prompt for custom media; music, sound effects, images and intro titles are generated, not a stock library.
Publishes to social^[10]Publishing claimed, absent from their own docs. The help home says publish to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but the export doc it links to only downloads to your device; no scheduling is described.
Team seats^[11]Shared workspace, seats on Enterprise terms. No seat count or per seat price is published for self serve plans, and their own docs say projects are stored locally and not synced between devices.
API^[12]Yes, public API billed per minute. Documented on their site as the Mirage API with an x-api-key header, at 0.15 USD per minute for captions and 0.15 USD per second for avatar generation.

What shortshort produces, on a real video

A published transformation from the community: the original on top, the shorts it became below. Click one to see it with its transcript.

Frame of the original video: The Sun Doesn't Stop for Anyone

23 sStarting Before the Sun Rises

25 sYour Life Is a Book

26 sThe Sun Doesn't Stop for Anyone

3 of 10 shorts shown · The Sun Doesn't Stop for Anyone · watch it in the community, with the transcript

How shortshort cuts, frames and captions

Three things the table can only name. The passage, the frame and the captions below are illustrations; the community shows the real thing.

1 · The cut ends on the sentence

Cut at the target

The reason most clips fail is that they stop before the idea lands, and a viewer who never hears the end of the sentence has no reason to share it.

Cut at the sentence

The reason most clips fail is that they stop before the idea lands, and a viewer who never hears the end of the sentence has no reason to share it.

Same passage, same 30-second target. shortshort keeps going to the end of the sentence, 37 seconds here, which is inside the 25% margin it allows.

2 · The 9:16 crop follows the speaker

The face is tracked; the 9:16 window moves with it, zoomed between x1.0 and x1.6.

A slide, a shared screen or a wide shot is detected and kept whole in the 9:16 short, with bands above and below.

3 · Captions timed word by word

Spotlight, one of the four caption styles. Impact, Karaoke and Minimal use the same word timing.

Questions people ask

Is shortshort a good Captions alternative?

It depends on what you need. shortshort turns one video of up to 3 hours into vertical shorts, 3 per video on the free plan and up to 20 on Studio, cut on complete sentences, framed on the speaker and captioned word by word in one of four styles. If that is the job, try it with the 60 free credits and compare the result with what you get from Captions.

How does shortshort pricing compare with Captions?

shortshort charges 1 credit per minute of source video, whatever the number of shorts. Starter is 12 EUR for 240 credits, Creator 29 EUR for 800 and Studio 79 EUR for 3,000, and every account starts with 60 free credits. Captions's own plans, as written on their pricing page, are listed on this page under "What a month costs".

Can I try shortshort before leaving Captions?

Yes. The 60 free credits cover a one-hour video with up to 3 shorts, no card needed. Your source video stays private; only the shorts you export join the community, and every paid plan lets you keep them out of it.

Cuts that finish the sentence, at a price by the minute.

The fastest comparison is your own video: 60 minutes are free, no card. Your source video stays yours; the shorts you export join the community, and any paid plan keeps them out of it.

Open the studio See the plans