Best AI clipping tools, grouped by what you start from

The short answer

Seven tools are compared here, and they are built around four different starting points. You may hold a finished recording, record a show inside the tool, stream live, or want one full editor that also cuts clips. Choosing the starting point first removes most of the list.

For the first case, clips from a file you upload, GPT-Video costs $19 a month for 250 source minutes. We make GPT-Video, so it is listed first, and its limits are written out below. Opus Clip is the closest rival and posts for you. Riverside suits a podcast recorded in Riverside. Eklipse suits streams. Descript and Kapwing are full editors with a clip tool. Submagic starts from captions.

Every price and limit comes from the vendor's own pages, read on 2026-10-04, at monthly prices unless a line says otherwise.

How we grouped them

We used one question. What does a creator need to turn one long recording into short vertical clips? Four things answer it.

• Where the footage starts. A file on your disk, a show recorded inside the tool, or a live channel.
• What the counter counts. Source minutes, recording hours, finished videos or AI actions. The unit decides what a busy month costs.
• Who posts. Some tools end at the exported file. Others push the clip to your accounts.
• The first plan that does the work. Its price, written with its unit.

The groups follow from that. Tools that cut a file you already hold come first (GPT-Video, Opus Clip, Submagic). Then the tool that records the show (Riverside), the tool that watches a stream (Eklipse), and the two full editors (Descript, Kapwing). Inside a group the order is ours and carries no score.

1. GPT-Video (clips from a file you upload)

We make GPT-Video, so we list it first. Treat this section as our claim and the rest of the page as the check on it.

GPT-Video takes a long video you already have and cuts vertical clips from it. It transcribes the source and ranks each moment, and next to every pick it shows the reasoning, which is the first line of the clip and the sentence that carried the score. The reframe follows the speaker's face, captions are added, and you change a clip by typing a sentence to the Editor Assistant, with every change reversible. Beyond the plain clip it makes split screen, fake text message and Reddit story videos, and it can add an AI voiceover.

One credit is one minute of source at Standard. Draft costs half a credit a minute and Maximum costs two and a half. Starter is $19 a month for 250 credits, about four hours of source, or $0.076 a minute. Creator is $49 for 800 credits at $0.061, and Studio is $199 for 6,000 credits at $0.033. The changes you then type to the Editor Assistant add no credits.

Here is what it lacks. No plan stays free for good. After the email check, a new account receives free access: 50 credits, roughly 50 minutes of Standard source, spread over 14 days and with no card. It ends when the credits, the days or its AI allowance run out, whichever comes first. Places for it are limited. Clips leave as exported files, because posting and scheduling are absent on every plan. The source has to be uploaded, since links and YouTube addresses are not accepted. Programmatic access goes through a REST API for Creator and Studio accounts (API docs) or an MCP connector (how to set it up). More on the clip generator.

2. Opus Clip (clips from a file, with posting built in)

Opus Clip is the nearest match to GPT-Video, and in several ways it goes further. It imports from YouTube, Google Drive, Zoom, Twitch and more, and Pro publishes and schedules to nine networks. Pro also adds Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve export, an API in beta, Zapier and a hosted MCP server with 29 tools. For footage without a talking head it offers moving-object tracking and a genre-specific reframing model, where our reframe follows faces.

The entry plan, Starter, is $15 a month for a monthly pot of 150 credits at one source minute each, with output limited to 9:16. Pro is $29 for 300 credits, or $174 a year on yearly billing, which is $14.50 a month. A no-cost plan gives 60 credits a month, and a new account gets a 7-day Pro trial with 90 minutes and no card.

The limit is the meter. It charges a flat credit per source minute with no cheaper draft pass, and a post to X costs 3 more credits per clip. Starter works out to $0.10 a source minute (15 divided by 150), against our $0.076. Four hours a month is 240 minutes, which is more than Starter holds, so that month needs Pro at $29.

3. Submagic (a caption-first short-form editor)

Submagic is for creators who want the captions to be the main design element, with B-roll, auto-zoom and hook titles on top. It also has Magic Clips for long video, scheduling to social platforms from the editor, a REST API and an MCP server that share one key and one credit pool.

Starter costs $19 a month, or $12 a month on annual billing, and the plan lists 45 credits that it also counts as 15 videos. A credit pays for at most one minute of video, and a partial minute is billed as a whole one. Divide $19 by 45 and a credit costs about $0.42, where the same $19 buys 250 credits here. Business is $69 for 300 credits and exports 4K at 60 FPS.

The limit is length. The pricing page states a maximum video duration of 2, 5 and 30 minutes on Starter, Pro and Business. We could not tell from the pages we read whether that cap applies to a Magic Clips source, so check before you upload a one-hour episode. Starter and Pro export at 1080p and 30 FPS only and include one social profile. A short trial of 3 watermarked videos exists, per its help centre, and it has no no-cost plan.

4. Riverside (podcasts recorded inside the tool)

Riverside is the choice when the show is recorded in it. It records separate audio and video tracks up to 4K, and Magic Clips, captions and a text-based editor sit on top. Magic Clips can be made from a recording or from an uploaded video. On Grow and above, the MCP server can schedule and post to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X.

Pro is $29 a month, or $24 on annual billing, for 5 hours of recording a month. Grow is $39 for 15 hours. Five hours is 300 minutes, so $29 divided by 300 is about $0.097 a recorded minute. That is the price of studio time, and the pricing page gives no per-plan count of Magic Clips, so it is not the price of a clip. A no-cost plan gives 2 hours of multi-track recording once, at 720p.

The limit is that plans are sized in recording hours. If the show is recorded elsewhere, the studio hours go unused, and we did not find whether an uploaded video draws on them. API access is listed only on the custom Business plan, and the Magic Clips page describes reframing by speaker or topic and no face tracking. More on podcast clipping.

5. Eklipse (live streams)

Eklipse is built for gamers and streamers. You connect a Twitch, Kick or YouTube channel, it finds the best moments of a stream, and it cuts them into vertical clips for TikTok, Reels and Shorts. Detection is tuned for gaming, there are layouts that combine gameplay with a facecam, and a Content Publisher schedules and posts straight to TikTok and YouTube. GPT-Video works on a file you upload, so for a stream you export the recording first. See the stream highlights page for what we do there.

Premium is a single tier at $24.99 a month, or $14.99 a month on annual billing ($179.99 a year), according to its help articles. Signing up costs nothing and gives an AI scan of a recent stream as a preview, but creating and exporting clips needs Premium.

The limit is that Eklipse publishes no pricing page and no stated allowance. Its own blog says the current rate is confirmed at checkout, and its pages give different prices, so read the number you are charged. We found no API or MCP on its official pages, and face-tracking reframe is not described.

6. Descript (a full editor you edit by transcript)

Descript is for someone who wants one editor for the whole video. You cut by deleting words in a transcript, an AI editor called Underlord does edits, and there are captions, clip creation, AI voices, avatars and green screen. The API is open to every paying user, with an MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor and a Zapier connection. Creator and Business export 4K without a watermark.

Hobbyist is $24 a month, or $16 on annual billing, for 10 media hours and 400 AI credits, priced per person. Ten hours is 600 minutes, so $24 divided by 600 is $0.04 per media minute, below our entry rate. A no-cost plan covers 60 media minutes at 720p with a watermark.

The limit is that clipping is one feature of a general editor. Its clip maker page describes highlighting portions of the transcript and applying animated captions, and it does not mention automatic reframing or face tracking. Cost depends on two allowances, media minutes and AI credits, and unused amounts do not roll over. The API cannot export media files yet, so exports happen in the app.

7. Kapwing (a browser editor with a clip tool)

Kapwing is a browser editor with a wide set of AI tools. Its Repurpose Studio turns a long video into clips, accepts files up to three hours, keeps the active speaker centered with Auto Speaker Focus, outputs 9:16 by default and writes subtitles in 100+ languages. It also has a split screen tool, a fake text message video template, text to speech, dubbing and lip sync.

Pro is $24 a month, or $16 on annual billing, for 1,000 credits, with 4K export and no watermark. Business is $64 for 4,000 credits. A no-cost plan gives 10 credits at 720p with a watermark. Credits are spent per AI action. Subtitles cost a credit per minute, and we did not find the credit cost of a Repurpose run, so we cannot give you a cost per clip.

The limit is the other end of the length range. Repurpose does not accept a source shorter than 10 minutes. Credits reset on the first of each month and do not roll over. The MCP tools listed cover upload, export, subtitles, translation and dubbing, with no clip generation, and no scheduling is described. Pro has no trial, and refunds are not given after subscribing.

Side by side

How to choose

Each of these can be the right answer. Match your starting point.

• You hold a recording and want clips fast. GPT-Video or Opus Clip. Pick Opus Clip if the clip has to be posted from the same place or you want the API. Pick GPT-Video if you want a half-price Draft pass and a stated reason for every pick.
• You record a podcast and want one studio. Riverside.
• You stream on Twitch, Kick or YouTube. Eklipse.
• You want one editor for the whole video. Descript or Kapwing. Descript edits by transcript, Kapwing adds split screen and fake text templates.
• Your clips are short and the captions are the point. Submagic.

If your source is a file and you are happy to post the result yourself, send one recording through the free access first. Then size your month against Starter at $19 on the pricing page. The Editor Assistant lets you change the clips by typing what you want.