AI Video Tools

Tools / Long Video to Shorts & Clipping

OpusClip

AI clipping that finds the best moments in long videos and makes shorts

✓ Free export allowed✓ API available
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Facts checked · Nov 2026 — the pricing, free-plan and watermark facts on this page were checked against OpusClip's official pages. See how we verify and the listing changelog.

Price alerts for OpusClip

AI video tools change prices and credit rules without warning — Kling has raised prices roughly 3× before. Get emailed when OpusClip's price, credits or free plan changes.

Our verdict

Best for podcasters and streamers who record long and publish short — it finds the moments worth clipping so you do not have to scrub hours of footage.

Paid plans from $15/month (Starter, 150 processing credits/month)Free plan: 60 credits/month, clips carry a watermarkFree use is personal only — no commercial use on the free planAPI available on the Pro plan

OpusClip at a glance

Starting pricePaid plans from $15/month
Pricing typeFreemium
Free planYes
Free export allowed✓
No watermark on free export✕
Commercial use on free plan✕
API available✓
CategoryLong Video to Shorts & Clipping
Entry price estimate (our calculator)$15/month, subscription-based
How the billing worksStarter plan; priced around monthly processing minutes of source video

What OpusClip really costs

OpusClip's billing is refreshingly legible: one credit processes one minute of the video you upload, regardless of how many clips it produces or how many you keep. That means your cost driver is source length, not output count. A 60-minute podcast episode costs 60 credits whether it yields three clips you love or ten you delete. On Starter ($15/month for 150 credits) a source minute costs exactly $0.10; on Pro billed annually the same minute costs about five cents.

The cards below compare that per-minute rate across the main ways of paying. The practical lesson: if you process the same show every week, annual Pro roughly halves your per-minute cost versus Starter — and reprocessing an episode because you picked the wrong timeframe costs the full minutes again.

$0.10

Per minute of source video processed — Starter ($15 for 150 credits)

$0.10

Per minute of source video processed — Pro monthly, rounded ($29 for 300 credits)

$0.05

Per minute of source video processed — Pro billed annually, rounded ($14.50 for 300 credits)

Derivation: OpusClip charges 1 credit per minute of imported video (its pricing page and help material state the credit equals one processing minute). Starter $15 / 150 credits = $0.10 per minute; Pro $29 / 300 = about $0.097; Pro billed annually $14.50 / 300 = about $0.048. Prices from OpusClip's official pricing page, checked Nov 2026.

What is OpusClip?

OpusClip does one job and does it at scale: it takes a long video — a podcast, interview, webinar or livestream — and returns a set of short, captioned, vertical clips cut from its strongest moments. Each clip gets a virality score, an attempt to rank which excerpts are most likely to hold attention on TikTok, Reels and Shorts. The reframing is automatic too: faces are tracked and the frame is recomposed for 9:16, with animated captions laid over the speech.

The important thing to understand is what OpusClip is not. It does not create video from scratch; it needs source footage, and the quality of what comes out is capped by what went in. Clear, well-recorded talking content gives it strong material; muffled audio and rambling structure give it little to work with. Used on the right sources, it turns one recording session into a week of short-form posts, which is why it became a default tool for podcast and streaming workflows.

How OpusClip works

  1. 1Create an account — the free plan gives you 60 credits a month, and one credit processes one minute of source video, so a single one-hour episode is a fair free test.
  2. 2Import your long video by upload or link, and pick the timeframe to process if you only want part of it analysed — you are charged for the minutes you process, not the clips you keep.
  3. 3Set the clip length range and template: captions style, aspect ratio and branding, then let the analysis run.
  4. 4Review the ranked clips by their virality scores, but watch the top and middle of the list yourself — the score is a sorting aid, not a guarantee.
  5. 5Tidy the keepers in the editor: fix caption words, trim the first and last second, and adjust the framing if the tracker lost the speaker.
  6. 6Export or schedule the finished clips. Paid plans export without a watermark; free-plan clips carry one and free exports expire after a few days.

Core features

AI moment selection with virality scoring

OpusClip analyses the transcript and structure of a long video, picks the excerpts most likely to perform as standalone shorts, and scores each one so you can review the strongest candidates first.

Auto captions and reframing

Animated captions are generated from the speech, and the frame is recomposed to vertical with speaker tracking — including layouts for screenshares and gameplay on paid tiers.

AI B-roll, voice-over and cleanup (Pro)

The Pro plan adds generated B-roll, AI voice-over, speech cleanup that removes pauses and filler words, eye-contact correction and upscaling, turning a raw clip into something closer to publishable without a separate editor.

Brand templates and custom fonts

Save caption styles, colours and logos as brand templates so every clip from every episode looks like it came from the same channel; Pro allows more templates and custom fonts.

Direct scheduling to social platforms

Finished clips can be posted or scheduled to Shorts, TikTok and Reels from inside OpusClip on paid plans, with generated titles, descriptions and hashtags.

Editor exports and API (Pro)

Pro clips can be exported to Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve timelines for finishing, and the plan includes the Video Editing and Scheduler APIs plus a Zapier allowance for pipeline builders.

The free plan — the full truth

The free plan is a genuine working sample with sharp edges. According to OpusClip's pricing page, free clips are exported with a watermark — the comparison table lists animated caption templates as 'with watermark' and watermark-free export as a paid feature — and free exports are time-boxed: rendered clips are limited to a few days before they expire, and projects are not kept. You get 60 credits a month, and since one credit equals one minute of source video, that is one hour of podcast processed per month.

The second catch is the licence: our verified data records that OpusClip's terms limit free use to personal, non-commercial use. So free clips are for testing whether the moment detection works on your kind of content — not for a monetised channel's daily posts. The moment clipping becomes part of a business, Starter at $15/month is the honest entry point: it removes the watermark and triples the monthly minutes to 150.

  • • 60 credits a month = 60 minutes of source video processed
  • • Free clips carry a watermark
  • • Free exports expire after a few days and storage is not retained
  • • Free use is personal only — no commercial use on the free plan
  • • Free output is 9:16 only; square and landscape ratios need a paid plan

OpusClip pricing plans

PlanPriceCredits includedBest for
Free$060 credits/month (60 source minutes), watermarked clips, 9:16 onlyTesting moment detection on one or two real episodes
Starter$15/month (monthly billing only)150 credits/month, watermark-free exports, virality score, 1 brand templateSolo podcasters processing a few hours of source video a month
Pro$14.50/month billed annually ($29 monthly)300 credits/month per pack, scheduler, API access, 100GB storageChannels publishing clips daily — the plan most regular creators end up on
BusinessCustom pricingCustom volume with dedicated processing and enterprise termsAgencies and networks clipping many shows under one roof

Plans and prices are from OpusClip's official pricing page, checked Nov 2026. Pro is sold in credit packs — each pack adds another 300 credits/month at the same price.

Pros

  • + Moment detection with virality scoring saves hours of manual scrubbing
  • + Captions and vertical reframing are fast and usually accurate
  • + Billing is predictable: one credit per source minute, no per-clip surprises
  • + Pro adds scheduling, B-roll, cleanup and editor exports in one place
  • + Free plan processes a full hour a month — a fair real-world test

Cons

  • − It needs good source footage; weak audio or rambling content yields weak clips
  • − Free clips are watermarked, personal-use only and expire quickly
  • − The virality score is a ranking aid — top-scored clips still need a human watch
  • − Starter is monthly-billing only and lacks the scheduler
  • − You pay for every minute processed, including re-runs and unused sections

Best for

  • ✓ Podcasters turning episodes into Shorts, Reels and TikToks
  • ✓ Streamers and YouTubers repurposing long recordings
  • ✓ Agencies clipping client shows on a weekly schedule
  • ✓ Interview and webinar channels with clear spoken content

Not ideal for

  • ✕ Creating videos from scratch — it needs source footage
  • ✕ Music, action or visual content with little speech to analyse
  • ✕ Commercial publishing on the free plan

OpusClip alternatives

See all alternatives →

If your source material is written rather than recorded, Pictory is the sibling tool: it builds narrated videos from scripts and articles instead of cutting existing footage. For clipping itself, Vizard is the closest rival — it also finds moments and captions them, and is often picked for team and agency workflows with larger minute allowances. Klap is the simpler, lighter option if you want one-click YouTube-to-shorts conversion without OpusClip's deeper editing stack. All three are listed below with the same verified free-plan facts we publish for OpusClip.

Pictory

Featured

Pictory converts a script, blog post or long video into a short narrated video by matching stock visuals to each line of text. It is popular with marketers and faceless channels that repurpose written content into video with minimal editing skill.

✓ Free export allowed✓ API available
Script-to-Video ToolsFreePaid plans from $25/month billed annually

Vizard converts long recordings into multiple short, captioned clips, detecting speakers and highlights automatically. It is popular with marketing teams, coaches and agencies that produce shorts from webinars, podcasts and meetings in bulk.

✓ Free export allowed
Long Video to Shorts & ClippingFreePaid plans; pricing on its website

Klap takes a YouTube link or upload and produces short vertical clips with auto-reframing, captions and titles. It aims at solo creators who want a simple, fast clipping workflow without team features getting in the way.

Long Video to Shorts & ClippingFreePaid plans; pricing on its website

Frequently Asked Questions

Is OpusClip free?

There is a free plan with 60 credits a month — 60 minutes of source video, since one credit processes one minute. Free clips carry a watermark, are 9:16 only, expire after a few days, and are for personal use. Paid plans start at $15/month.

Does OpusClip watermark free videos?

Yes. Watermark-free export is a paid feature; the pricing page lists free caption templates as watermarked. Starter and above remove it.

How much does one OpusClip video cost?

You do not pay per clip — you pay per minute of source video processed. Processing a 60-minute episode costs 60 credits: about $6.00 worth of Starter credits ($0.10/minute), or about $2.90 on Pro billed annually (about $0.05/minute). Every clip the episode yields is included in that price.

Can I use OpusClip commercially?

On a paid plan, yes — that is the product's main use case. On the free plan, no: OpusClip's terms limit free use to personal, non-commercial purposes, and the clips are watermarked anyway.

OpusClip or Vizard — which should I pick?

Both clip long videos well. OpusClip's distinguishing feature is its virality scoring and its Pro editing extras (B-roll, cleanup, dubbing). Vizard is often chosen by teams for its workflow and minute allowances. If you publish solo and want help choosing moments, OpusClip is the stronger default.

Does OpusClip have an API?

Yes, on the Pro plan — the pricing page lists a Video Editing API and a Scheduler API as Pro features, so clipping can be built into an automated pipeline.