Tools / Long Video to Shorts & Clipping
Submagic
Animated captions and AI finishing for short-form video, plus long-to-short clipping
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Facts checked · Nov 2026 — the pricing, free-plan and watermark facts on this page were checked against Submagic's official pages. See how we verify and the listing changelog.
Price alerts for Submagic
AI video tools change prices and credit rules without warning — Kling has raised prices roughly 3× before. Get emailed when Submagic's price, credits or free plan changes.
Our verdict
Best for talking-head shorts that live on captions: upload, let the AI style and clean the clip, publish. The catch is written on the pricing page — short per-video caps and no free plan.
Submagic at a glance
| Starting price | Paid plans from $12/month billed annually (Starter; $19 monthly) |
| Pricing type | Paid |
| Free plan | No — paid or trial only |
| API available | ✓ |
| Category | Long Video to Shorts & Clipping |
| Entry price estimate (our calculator) | $12/month, credits-based |
| How the billing works | Starter $12/mo billed annually ($19 monthly), 45 credits = 15 videos at 3 credits/video — verified on official pricing page + help centre Nov 2026 |
What Submagic really costs
Submagic's help centre publishes the rate that makes its pricing unusually calculable: uploading a video costs 3 credits, and AI captions are free. Starter includes 45 credits a month, Pro 120 and Business 300 — the pricing page itself equates those to 15, 40 and 100 videos.
Divide the annual-billing price by the video count and the per-video cost falls out: $12 ÷ 15 = $0.80 per video on Starter, $23 ÷ 40 ≈ $0.58 on Pro, and $41 ÷ 100 = $0.41 on Business. On monthly billing the same videos cost $1.27, $0.98 and $0.69. Add AI extras at 1–3 credits each, or Magic Clips at 8 credits a job, and your real per-video figure rises — but the base rate is fixed and published, which is rarer than it should be in this category.
$0.80
Per standard video on Starter, billed annually ($12 ÷ 15 videos)
$0.58
Per standard video on Pro, billed annually ($23 ÷ 40 videos)
$0.41
Per standard video on Business, billed annually ($41 ÷ 100 videos)
3 credits
Fixed cost of one uploaded video on every plan (help centre)
Derivation uses Submagic's official pricing page (credits and video counts per plan, checked Nov 2026) and its help centre's credit rules (3 credits per upload; extra AI features 1–3 credits; Magic Clips 8 credits). Per-video figures assume standard videos without paid AI extras.
What is Submagic?
Submagic is a short-form finishing tool. You upload a talking video — or a long recording, via Magic Clips — and it applies the things that make shorts hold attention: animated word-by-word captions, B-roll inserts, auto-zooms, hook titles, sound effects, and removal of silences and bad takes. Editing happens from the transcript rather than a timeline, so cutting a sentence means deleting its words.
It is deliberately not a general editor and not a generator, although newer plans add AI video and image generation and AI avatars. The core promise is speed for a specific job: a creator records once, and Submagic returns a captioned, cleaned, platform-ready short in minutes, with direct publishing and scheduling to TikTok, Reels and Shorts. If your bottleneck is finishing rather than filming, that narrowness is the appeal.
How Submagic works
- 1Start the trial (no card required) and upload a short video or paste a YouTube link — trial output is watermarked, so judge the edit, not the export.
- 2Let the AI run: captions are generated (captions themselves are free of credit charge, per the help centre), B-roll and zooms are proposed, silences flagged.
- 3Edit from the transcript: delete words to cut, fix caption wording, pick a caption style and template.
- 4Add the retention layer — hook title, B-roll swaps, sound effects — knowing extra AI features cost 1–3 credits each on top of the 3-credit upload.
- 5Export or schedule the post directly. On paid plans exports are watermark-free (1080p/30fps; 4K/60fps on Business).
- 6For long sources, use Magic Clips (8 credits per job) to pull multiple shorts from one recording.
Core features
Animated AI captions
Word-timed captions in the bold styles short-form audiences expect, in 120+ languages (the homepage also cites 123), with templates per plan tier. Captions are the product's headline feature and its quality benchmark.
Magic Clips
Turn a long video into multiple short clips automatically — finding moments, cutting and captioning them. Each Magic Clips job costs 8 credits, per the help centre.
Magic B-roll and auto-zooms
Automatic B-roll insertion (free stock on Starter, Storyblocks on Pro and up) plus AI zooms that punch in on the speaker to keep frames moving.
Transcript-based cleanup
Remove silences, filler words and bad takes by editing text (Pro and up for the full cleanup set), plus AI clean audio.
Hook titles and descriptions
AI-generated hook titles and descriptions aimed at the first two seconds — small features that reflect the tool's retention-first design.
Publishing and API
Schedule and publish to social platforms from the editor (more profiles on Business), with an API allowance included per plan — 10 minutes/month on Starter and Pro, 100 on Business in the pricing comparison.
The free plan — the full truth
There is no free plan, and Submagic does not pretend otherwise: its pricing page lists Starter, Pro, Business and Custom, with a 'no credit card required' trial as the entry point. Independent checks of the trial describe a small number of short, watermarked videos. That means the trial can show you caption quality and editing speed, but it cannot show you the one thing you are buying — a clean, publishable export — because trial exports carry the watermark every paid plan removes.
Our advice is to treat the trial as an editing demo and budget from the paid maths, which is at least predictable: Submagic's help centre states that uploading a video costs 3 credits and captions are free, so Starter's 45 credits really are 15 standard videos before AI extras. What the trial cannot tell you is how fast the extras (1–3 credits each) and Magic Clips (8 credits) eat the pool in your real workflow — that only shows up in week two of a paid month.
- • No free plan exists — trial only, and trial videos are watermarked
- • Trial cannot produce a clean export, so caption quality is testable but output quality is not
- • Starter caps each video at 2 minutes; Pro at 5 minutes
- • Extra AI features cost 1–3 credits each on top of the 3-credit upload; Magic Clips cost 8
- • Pricing is per member — a team's bill multiplies by headcount
Submagic pricing plans
| Plan | Price | Credits included | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $19/month, or $12/month billed annually | 45 credits/month = 15 videos; 2-minute cap per video; 1080p/30fps, no watermark | Solo creators publishing a few captioned shorts a week |
| Pro | $39/month, or $23/month billed annually | 120 credits/month = 40 videos; 5-minute cap; Storyblocks B-roll, clean audio, Brand Kit, publishing | Regular creators who use the cleanup and B-roll features daily |
| Business | $69/month, or $41/month billed annually | 300 credits/month = 100 videos; 30-minute cap; 4K/60fps, custom templates, priority rendering, 100 API minutes/month | Teams and agencies finishing shorts at volume |
| Custom | Custom | Custom videos, minutes, Magic Clips limits and API limits; SSO and dedicated success | Organisations with negotiated volume or security needs |
Plans, prices, credits and caps are from Submagic's official pricing page and help centre, read this session (Nov 2026). Prices are per member.
Pros
- + Caption quality and styles are the category benchmark it is judged by
- + Published per-video credit rate makes costs predictable
- + No watermark on any paid plan, Starter included
- + Transcript editing plus silence/bad-take removal genuinely speeds finishing
- + Magic Clips covers repurposing in the same subscription
Cons
- − No free plan — and the watermarked trial cannot prove export quality
- − Per-video length caps (2 minutes on Starter) exclude longer content
- − AI extras and Magic Clips drain the same credit pool at extra cost
- − Per-member pricing adds up for teams
Best for
- ✓ Talking-head creators on TikTok, Reels and Shorts
- ✓ Coaches, podcasters and founders who record short talking clips
- ✓ Agencies finishing client shorts with a house caption style
- ✓ Anyone whose clips underperform because captions are an afterthought
Not ideal for
- ✕ Anyone who needs a free plan or a clean free export
- ✕ Editors working on videos longer than 5 minutes (below Business)
- ✕ Creators who want a full timeline editor rather than a finisher
Submagic alternatives
See all alternatives →OpusClip is the natural comparison for the clipping half of Submagic — it focuses on finding viral moments in long videos, with a free plan (watermarked) and virality scoring, from $15/month. Vizard suits teams clipping webinars in bulk. Captions, in this batch, is the rival for the finishing half: a phone-first app whose AI Edit styles do similar work, with avatars Submagic only touches lightly. If you mainly need captions on finished edits and nothing else, VEED or CapCut may cover you inside an editor you already use.
Pictory
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.
OpusClip
OpusClip analyses long videos and podcasts, scores moments for viral potential and produces captioned vertical clips with reframing. It is one of the most used tools by podcasters and streamers repurposing long content into Shorts, Reels and TikToks.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Submagic free to use?
No. There is a no-card trial with watermarked videos, but no free plan. Paid plans start at $12/month billed annually (Starter, 15 videos a month).
How many videos do I get on Submagic Starter?
15 standard videos a month: Starter includes 45 credits and Submagic's help centre prices an upload at 3 credits. AI extras cost 1–3 credits more per video, and Magic Clips cost 8 credits per job.
Does Submagic add a watermark?
The trial does. Every paid plan — Starter, Pro and Business — lists 'No watermark' on Submagic's pricing page.
What is the longest video Submagic accepts?
It depends on plan: 2 minutes per video on Starter, 5 on Pro and 30 on Business in the editor. Magic Clips accepts much longer source recordings for clipping.
Submagic or OpusClip?
Submagic is caption-first: it finishes shorts you recorded. OpusClip is moment-first: it finds the clips inside long videos. Many creators use OpusClip to find moments and a finisher like Submagic to style them — but Submagic's own Magic Clips now overlaps that job too.
Does Submagic have an API?
Yes — every plan includes an API and integrations allowance (10 minutes/month on Starter and Pro, 100 on Business per the pricing comparison), with extra API credit packs sold separately.