Comparison
Cutroom compared to Submagic, Jupitrr, Captions and Descript
Five tools take the same thing, one video of you talking, and hand back something edited. Here is where each of them stops, in their own published words and their own customers' words.
- tools doing the same job, one at a time
- 5
- the longest take Cutroom accepts
- 3 min
- the only shape it exports
- 9:16
Five tools, one job each
Every complaint below is quoted word for word from a public review or from a company's own help centre, with its date.
One thing worth knowing before you scroll. Most of what people write is not about the editing. It is about being charged: renewals nobody was warned about, refunds that never came, and a paywall that turns up after the work is done.
The five, in one line each
What each one is for, as we read their public material. No feature matrix: we have not verified theirs, and a guessed tick would cost this page the rest of it.
| What it is | What it does | |
|---|---|---|
| Cutroom | The AI editor | B-roll on the words you said. No timeline, so you never drag blocks along a strip hoping the rest still lines up |
| Submagic | The one most people have heard of | Captions and b-roll on short clips |
| Jupitrr | The closest thing to what we do | B-roll from your script |
| Captions | The phone-first one | Record and caption on your phone |
| Descript | The one we would recommend if you want a timeline | A full editing program you steer by editing the typed-out text of what you said |
Submagic: quick captions, and a refund policy stated in their own help centre
Good at: fast captions on short clips, with a lot of caption styles to pick from.
What people run into: money. Renewals with no warning, and a refund policy their own help centre states plainly.
Submagic help centre, under "Do you have a refund policy?", updated 15 December 2023: "Unfortunately, we do not offer refunds for our SaaS."
Submagic, one star on Trustpilot, 2 February 2025: "It pumped out 14 clips and none of the captions matched the words."
In Cutroom: your first charge comes back in full for seven days, and it is written on our refunds page before you spend anything.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Jupitrr: the closest idea to ours, and their only US ad ran thirteen days
Good at: b-roll placed against your script, the same idea Cutroom is built on.
What people run into: they have gone quiet. Their only US ad ran for thirteen days in August 2025 and has not run since.
Jupitrr's only US ad, in the Google Ads Transparency Center: "Create stunning B-Roll with AI. No editing needed. Try Jupitrr free!"
In Cutroom: same idea, but you can see where every shot landed and drag it onto different words. And we are still running ads ourselves. That is not much, but it is more than they are doing.
Captions: good on a phone, and the paywall arrives after the work
Good at: you can shoot, caption and post without leaving your phone. The app is genuinely good at that.
What people run into: the paywall arrives after the work, and how much you get depends on which device you are on.
Captions, one star on Google Play: "Nowhere did it say I need to get a PAID subscription to use it. I upload my 2 minute long video, it creates captions for 1.20 minutes of it. I said fine, I can do the rest manually. I finish after 1.20 minutes and try to download it AND IT ASKS ME TO PAY."
Captions, Google Play review: "The fact that the android app doesn't have all the same features as ios and desktop is completely disrespectful to android users."
In Cutroom: the export price sits next to the Export button before you press it, and there is one version of the product, not one per device.
Descript: the one we would recommend if you want a timeline, and it costs less
Good at: a full editing program you steer by editing the typed-out text of what you said, with suggested b-roll. What Descript publishes is cheaper than us: $24 a month billed yearly, against our $29.99 a month billed yearly, or $39.99 if you pay month to month.
What people run into: nothing worth holding against them. Descript is a good product and it is cheaper than us.
In Cutroom: a different job. Descript gives you a full editor with a timeline and every control on it. Cutroom deliberately has no timeline, eleven moves, and hands back a finished vertical ad. If you want to edit, use Descript. If you want it edited, use us.
What Cutroom does that none of them do
One thing, and everything else follows from it. You place a shot by pointing at a word, and there is no timeline anywhere in the product.
You say "our warehouse in New York" and a warehouse shot covers those five words. Not the sentence before. Not the one after.
If you disagree, you drag it onto different words and it goes there. Nothing else in the edit moves, and nothing you already fixed comes undone.
Your own footage gets used first. Upload it once and Cutroom labels what is in each clip, so "back in my workshop" gets your workshop. The free library covers everything you have not filmed.
Five words get one shot
Drag it and it moves with the words, not with a clock.
And what it does not do
Your video has to be under three minutes. It comes back as a vertical 1080p video: one size, no 4K.
There is no timeline, so if you want control over every single frame this is the wrong tool and we would rather you knew that here.
The free tier is three videos with our logo across the middle, and the editor. Nothing else opens on it.
Submagic, Jupitrr, Captions and Descript are trademarks of their respective owners. We are not affiliated with any of them, and this is our own comparison.
- Three minutes in, one 9:16 MP4 out, captions burned in
- 100 credits to cut one upload, 20 credits an exported minute
- One speaker, one take, one vertical ad at the end of it
What each plan opens
The editor is on every plan, including free. Everything else is a room next door, and this says which key opens which door.
| What you can make | What it costs | |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Three finished videos with our logo across the middle, editor only | $0, and no card |
| Basic | 2,500 credits a month, plus avatars and music | $39.99 a month, $29.99 billed yearly |
| Premium | 5,000 credits a month, plus animation and product shots | $79.99 a month, $59.99 billed yearly |
Questions people ask
- If I make an ad, can I actually download it, or is there a paywall at the end?
- You download it. On a paid plan nothing of ours sits on the picture. The free tier is three videos with our logo across the middle, and that logo is the only difference between what you make free and what you buy: the same editor, the same length, the same cut. Exporting costs credits, and the price sits on the Export button before you press it, so nothing about the bill turns up at the end. There is no card at the front door, and you get seven days to walk through it: the free tier is three finished videos, with 600 credits, which covers those three edits and re-exporting them after you change a caption.
- Will it work with my kind of video?
- Cutroom takes one upright video of a person talking, up to three minutes, with sound on it. You get back one upright video at 1080 by 1920. Landscape footage is refused at upload, before a single credit is charged. A wide take inside an upright frame is a strip between black bars, and we would rather stop you than sell you that. A video with no sound is refused for the same reason. There is no widescreen export and no 4K; a 4K upload comes back at 1080p, the same as everyone else's. If you shoot horizontal, or your videos run twenty minutes, this is not your tool yet, and we would rather you knew that here than after paying.
- If something breaks, do I get a real person or a chatbot?
- A person. There is no support bot, and nothing in the product answers you automatically. Support is a live chat inside the app: if somebody is at the desk your reply lands while you are still sitting there, and if nobody is, it comes back by email and stays in the same thread so it cannot get lost. You can also reply to any email we send.
- Does this work in my language, or only English?
- Eight languages today, by name: English (US), English (UK), Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), German, French, Dutch and Italian. You pick yours from a list when you upload. If your language is not one of those eight, Cutroom will not do a good job for you yet. We would rather write that down than sell you a subscription and let you find out.
- If I want out, can I do it myself, and does the charging actually stop?
- Yourself, without emailing or calling anyone. In Settings, then Billing, you press Cancel subscription, a screen tells you exactly what that does, and you finish in Stripe's own billing portal, so the cancellation sits on the biller's books rather than on our word. Your plan then runs to the end of the period you already paid for and stops. Nothing is charged after that. There is no fee and we do not ask why.
- How many videos do I actually get for this?
- Two charges make an ad, and you see both before you spend them. Cutting one upload is 100 credits: writing out what you said, the edit itself, and the b-roll search. Exporting is 20 credits for every finished minute, charged for the length you actually export, so a thirty-second ad is 10. That makes a thirty-second ad 110 credits from upload to finished file. Basic gives 2,500 credits a month, which is about twenty finished ads. Everything between those two charges is free: editing, previewing, undoing, searching for clips, uploading your own footage, changing your mind. Exporting the same cut again unchanged is free too. Credits you do not use stay in the account.
- Can I post what comes out, or will I still be in there for an hour?
- Two things make the difference, and both are structural rather than a promise about quality. First, Cutroom does not pick which parts of your video to keep. Your whole take stays in, in order. It tightens the dead air and drops the ums, and it only ever cuts where a sentence ends, never mid-word. Second, when it gets something wrong you fix it by pointing, not by editing. Highlight a phrase and a clip lands over exactly those words. Delete a line and the cut rebuilds around it. Correct a word it misheard and every caption of that word changes. All of it is free, all of it is undoable, and there is no timeline to learn.
- If I cancel, do I keep what I already made?
- Yes. Cancelling moves you to the free plan. Your projects stay, your exported videos stay, and credits already in your balance stay spendable. Nothing is deleted because you stopped paying. Files only go when you delete a project yourself, or when you ask us to close the account, and then everything goes within 30 days.
- If it turns out not to be what I thought, do I get my money back?
- Your first charge: yes, in full, if you tell us within seven days that you did not mean to be billed. No argument. Later charges: we refund unused subscription time when something went wrong on our side, and we say so plainly when we think it did not. Credits already spent on finished videos are not refundable, because that video was made and the machines were paid at the moment it ran. There is one case where we say no, and it is written on the refunds page rather than discovered by you. And if an export fails on our side, you do not need to ask at all: the credits come back on their own.
- Does this work on my phone, or do I need a computer?
- It works on a phone. Cutroom is a website, not an app, so there is no iPhone version and no Android version, and no feature that lives on one device and not the other. A big screen is more comfortable for marking up your words, and the app says so once, but nothing is locked away.
- My last tool charged me for exports that failed. What happens here?
- Nothing. A failed export hands the credits straight back, automatically, without a ticket. If the job stalls instead of failing, a sweeper finds it and does the same.
- Will the price go up, or will features quietly leave the plan I am on?
- If we change the price of a plan you are on, you get an email at least 30 days before it applies, and you can leave before it does. A price you have already paid is never changed afterwards.
- The last tool put the one thing I needed in the tier above. What is gated here?
- Credits, and four rooms next to the editor. The editor itself is on every plan, including free. Lite at $19.99 takes the mark off; avatars and music open on Basic at $39.99 a month. Animation and product shots open on Premium at $79.99. Both paid plans export the same file at the same size and neither puts anything on your video; on the free tier the three videos carry our logo across the middle.
Upload something you already filmed and watch where the b-roll lands. Three finished videos free, no card, and a week to make them. If you do pay and did not mean to, the first charge comes back in full within seven days.