I tested 5 CapCut alternatives for captions

CapCut is todays standard when it comes to adding captions to your videos. Mainly, because it was the first app that did burned-in captions properly. But CapCut recently got expensive at $19.99/month and captions only come with the paid plan. And although they put out new caption presets frequently, I personally find most of them a little playful for the kind of content I make, with limited room for customization. Since todays standards on captions have raised significantly, let's have a look at some (cheaper) alternatives.

TL;DR

If you care most about good looking captions and having enough customization options, BlitzClip will provide the best experience. If you film and edit entirely on your phone, Captions.ai is hard to beat. Submagic and VEED.io are the better choice if you want one tool that edits the whole video and not just the captions, and Descript is the pick for simple captions on podcasts and long-form videos.

What I look for in a caption tool

Before we start, here are the factors that decide how I judge these tools. Good captions come down to a few things:

• Speech recognition accuracy,
• timing accuracy (words landing exactly on the beat, not a fraction too late),
• how much you can customize the look to match a brand or theme,
• and how fast you can get through a batch of videos.

Every tool below handles the basics and none of them is 100% accurate all the time. But they do differ in how much control they give you to fine-tune what isn't yet perfect.

1. BlitzClip

This tool was primarily made for captions and offers high-end caption styles with the most customization options of any caption editor out there. It is tailored towards professionals, agencies, or ambitious content creators who want or need to take their captions to the next level, without touching complex editors like Adobe After Effects. While it adds beautiful captions to your video with one click, it still gives you the flexibility to adjust every single styling detail and fine-tune the timing of every word.

2. Captions.ai

This app is widely used by content creators and even professionals to add captions to their Reels and TikToks. It delivers great-looking captions and even has AI features like automatic zooms and eye-contact correction. The one drawback is that it's primarily a mobile app and the desktop version is very limited. The mobile app is great though, and I would definitely recommend it over any other captions app if you want to film and edit your videos completely on your phone.

3. Submagic

Submagic also started only as a captions tool, but quickly grew into a full-fledged content editor, offering AI B-roll insertion, audio cleanup, AI avatars, transitions, and basic editing functionality. Their caption presets are solid, though not as flexible and customizable as I'd like them to be. For a content creator who wants the full video editing package though, I would totally recommend checking them out.

4. VEED.io

This tool started as a web-based video editor, aiming to replace professional editors like DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro for people with simpler needs. They also offer a captions feature, which works perfectly fine for the usual social media content but doesn't allow huge customization either. Think of VEED more as a user-friendly video editor that also happens to offer good-looking caption presets.

5. Descript

Descript focuses primarily on text-based video editing, as well as editing podcasts and translating videos into different languages for localization. It also auto-generates captions, and the presets are kept clean and simple. You won't be able to create flashy caption animations, but that is not the goal of Descript anyway. They want to make video editing easy for anyone, producing fast and professional-looking results. And they excel at that.

Pricing

All figures are the effective monthly price. The "annual" column is what you pay per month when you commit to a yearly plan, which is where all those tools offer significant discounts.

Feature comparison

Here is a quick overview about what each tool offers regarding captions.

So which CapCut alternative should you pick?

Here is how I would decide.

Pick Captions.ai if you shoot and edit on your phone and want great-looking captions with additional AI features like auto zooms and eye-contact correction, all in one mobile app.

Pick Submagic or VEED.io if you want a single tool that allows editing whole video, with b-roll, audio and captions that are good enough for everyday social content.

Pick Descript if most of your work is podcasts, long-form or localization, and you are fine with clean, simple captions.

Pick BlitzClip if you want one-click captions that make your content honestly stand out, while being flexible enough to match any branding or accuracy requirements.