Descript edits by text. Cutroom refuses to let you free-type.

Descript does work this product does not attempt. Delete a word from the text and it leaves the video. Strip filler across a whole recording in one pass.

It handles long form properly. A ninety-minute podcast, multiple tracks, multiple speakers, a project structure that survives a month away.

For a podcaster or a course maker, that depth is the purchase. Say so plainly and move on.

An ad account is not that workload. It needs the same shape of video, thirty times, this month.

Depth does not help there. Every one of those tools is a decision somebody has to make again on the next ad.

Cutroom drafts the cut instead. One take in, a finished 9:16 MP4 out, captions burned in and b-roll already placed. Eleven marks are all that is left for you.

The batch is 100 credits and covers the transcript, the director pass and the b-roll search. Export is 20 credits per finished minute, with no per-video licence on top.

Open capability has a cost that never appears on the pricing page. Every session, you choose again what this video is going to be.

Which track. Which trim. Which transition. Whether that pause stays. Whether the b-roll runs two seconds or three.

Forty decisions, all reversible, all yours. Exactly what you want on a piece that has to be right. Exactly what kills you on the twentieth ad this month.

Cost per finished ad barely falls with practice. The decisions are the work, and there are always forty of them.

Cutroom removes the choice on purpose. Pace is a setting rather than a series of trims. Coverage is a ceiling rather than a judgement call per clip.

The tell is what happens to version two. In an open editor it rarely exists, because version one already ate the evening.

Here version two costs 20 credits a minute and about four minutes. That is the difference the account feels.

Upload one take, up to three minutes. It gets transcribed and drafted into a full cut. Back comes a 9:16 MP4 with captions burned in.

Highlight a phrase and a clip lands over exactly those words. Swap the clip, or search millions of free ones.

Delete a line and the cut rebuilds around the gap, every b-roll placement after it included. Change the pace and the whole piece re-cuts.

Emphasise the word your claim turns on. Fix a mis-heard word and the captions follow the correction.

Trim the opening or the ending. Choose how each clip enters. Write the headline. Set the music level under the read.

That is the list. Eleven marks, then export. Every one of them is a decision about the ad.

Three minutes is the ceiling on source. A podcast, a webinar or a lesson is the wrong input.

One speaker, one take. There is no multi-track assembly and no cutting between two camera angles.

The output is a 9:16 MP4. That is the shape TikTok, Reels, Shorts and Meta Stories all run.

There is no timeline. Every frame boundary belongs to the compiler, which is exactly why the edit takes four minutes.

Nothing of yours is stamped on the file. No logo, no closing frame.

Those are the facts a buyer plans around. They are the price of a cut that arrives already made.

One question decides it. How many finished videos do you need this month, and are they vertical ads?

Under five, or mixed shapes, or long form in the mix, the general text editor is the home for that work.

Twenty or thirty vertical ads from short takes is a different problem. There the decision count is the enemy, not the feature list.

The reason volume matters: winners run at 5 to 8 percent of creatives, per Motion's analysis of 550,000+ Meta ads.

Six a month draws about half a winner. Getting to thirty needs a second attempt to cost minutes, which is 20 credits and about four of them.

Seven days and 300 credits with no card is enough to test whether marking a transcript actually replaces your editing evening.

Basic is 39.99 dollars for 2,500 credits a month, which covers roughly twenty finished one-minute ads drawn from ten fresh takes.