Comparison
Their video isn't yours. Yours is.
One tool builds a video out of a script. The other edits the video you already filmed. Start there, because everything else follows from it.
- scripts you have to write first
- 0
- the longest take it accepts
- 3 min
- finished videos free, no card
- 3 in 7 days
One assembles a video about your topic. One edits the video of you.
Hypernatural builds a video out of a script, assembled from stock footage. It is quick, and nobody in it is you: the result could belong to anyone selling what you sell.
Cutroom edits the video you already filmed. Your face, your room, your voice, and your own b-roll if you have uploaded any.
That is not a small difference in a feed where the whole point is that a person is talking to you. It is the difference between an advert and somebody you might follow.
We looked for customer complaints about Hypernatural in a corpus of 4,495 public reviews and comments and found none, so nothing on this page is an accusation. It is a choice with an honest answer at the bottom.
Where each one starts, and what that gets you
Our reading of Hypernatural's public material on the left. What happens here today on the right.
| Hypernatural | Cutroom | |
|---|---|---|
| The starting point | A script or a prompt | A video of you talking |
| What it does with it | Assembles footage around your words | Cuts your take and puts b-roll on your words |
| Who is on screen | Not you | You. The b-roll supports you |
| When it is the right answer | When you have nothing filmed | When you have filmed something |
| Where the shots come from | A stock library | Your own clips first, then the free library |
The b-roll lands on the words you said
This is the part nobody else does. You say a phrase and a clip covers exactly those words, not the sentence before, not the one after. Disagree, and you drag it onto different words. There is no timeline anywhere.
You say "our warehouse in New York" and a warehouse shot covers those five words.
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. For anything you have not filmed yourself, it uses ready-made clips that cost nothing extra.
A phrase gets a picture, and the picture stops when the phrase does
Five words get one shot. Drag it and it moves with the words, not with a clock.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
It is your video, not a video about your topic
A script-to-video tool makes something that could belong to anyone in your industry. Cutroom edits the take you actually recorded, in the room you actually stood in.
And the b-roll can be yours too. Upload your own clips once and Cutroom uses them first, so the workshop on screen is your workshop rather than a stranger's.
When you are talking about the product itself, Cutroom will not drop generic stock over it. It uses your own footage there or it leaves you on screen, which is the right call: a stranger's hand holding a different jar is worse than no shot at all.
The same word, searched two ways
A stock search gives you somebody else's warehouse. Your library gives you yours.
If you have no footage of yourself, we can do that too
Record a voiceover, give it a photo, and it talks for you. That sits in the same room as the editor, and an avatar you make there drops straight into your edit rather than being downloaded and re-uploaded.
There is also music you generate by describing the vibe rather than picking a genre, an animation tool for the explainer look, and product shots for when you sell something you can hold and have no decent photos of it.
Avatars and generated music open on Basic at $39.99 a month. The animation tool and product shots open on Premium at $79.99. The editor itself, and the b-roll library, are on every plan including the free one.
Which plan opens which room
The editor and the b-roll library sit on every plan, including the free one. These are the doors next to it.
| Basic, $39.99 a month | Premium, $79.99 a month | |
|---|---|---|
| Avatars from a photo and a voiceover | Yes | Yes |
| Music you describe instead of pick | Yes | Yes |
| The animation tool, for the explainer look | No | Yes |
| Product shots without a shoot | No | Yes |
| Credits a month | 2,500 | 5,000 |
The rest of the edit comes with it
Captions in six styles, part of the picture itself, not a separate subtitle file, and they follow your voice word for word. Transitions between shots. Music you turn on in one tap, which then follows your pace. Your ums are taken out and your long silences are made shorter.
The timing is measured from the sound of your own voice instead of guessed by the AI. So a word on screen never lands on the wrong word, and never stays up while the picture changes.
There was no setting for any of that.
- Clean: one line in a pill. Out of the way.
- Bold: huge condensed caps with a hard shadow.
- Karaoke: a marker box on the word you are saying.
- Meme: white outlined text, top and bottom.
Meme: white outlined text, top and bottom
One of six caption packs. You pick the pack, the colour, the weight, the size and where it sits on the frame.
What Hypernatural does better
Starting from nothing. If you have no camera, no footage and no wish to be on screen, a script-to-video tool is the right answer and we are the wrong one. Cutroom needs a video of somebody talking before it can do anything at all.
And here is our limit, said plainly: up to three minutes goes in, and one upright phone-shaped video comes out at 1080p, which is full HD. That is the only size we make. There is no sharper 4K version, and no dearer plan that exports a bigger one.
Hypernatural is a trademark of its owner. We are not affiliated with them, our description of what they do is our reading of their public material, and this is our own comparison.
Hypernatural and Cutroom, row by row
Three rows go to them outright and two are a draw. If you have filmed nothing, the honest answer is at the top of this table, not the bottom.
| Hypernatural | Cutroom | |
|---|---|---|
| Making a video when you have filmed nothing | The job it is built for | We need a take of somebody talking |
| A script or a prompt as the starting point | Type and it builds | You film first, then upload |
| Never having to be on camera | Nobody in it is you | An avatar from a photo, on Basic and up |
| Your own face carrying the video | Assembled footage | Your take, in full, in order |
| B-roll on the words you said | Footage assembled around a script | Highlight a phrase, a clip lands |
| Your own clips used before stock | A stock library | Labelled on upload, reached for first |
| Burned-in captions timed to your voice | Standard in this category | Six packs, word-level timing |
| Longest video you can make | Not limited the way we are | Three minutes, enforced at upload |
Questions people ask
- If I make an ad, can I actually download it, or is there a paywall at the end?
- You download it. 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. The free plan gives you three videos, and those three carry the Cutroom mark across the middle. On Basic and Premium there is nothing of ours on the file. 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.
- I have no footage of myself at all. Can I still use this?
- Only by making some. On Basic and up you can record a voiceover, give it a photo, and get an avatar that talks for you, and that avatar drops straight into your edit. What Cutroom cannot do is start from a script alone: something has to be said out loud by somebody before there is anything to cut. If you want a video built out of typed words and stock footage, a script-to-video tool is the right buy and we would rather tell you here.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. 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.
If you have filmed nothing, buy the tool that starts from a script. If there is a take on your phone already, upload it here and see whose video comes back.