The free, open source Submagic alternative
Checked October 2026 Prices and plans read on Submagic's public pricing page; vendors change them without notice. For what Submagic is and how it works, see the Submagic review.
Submagic is a caption editor that added clipping (Magic Clips); OpenShorts is a clipper built for long recordings. Submagic has no free plan and starts at $12/month billed yearly, $19 month to month.
Every Submagic plan counts videos and caps each one at 2, 5 or 30 minutes. OpenShorts is free and uncapped when self-hosted under MIT, or hosted from $12/month by the source minute.
Stay on Submagic if captions are the product and your videos are short. Move the long-form clipping to OpenShorts if your sources are podcasts, streams or webinars.
Your first video free up to 60 minutes, then 20 free minutes a month, no credit card. Or self-host it free under MIT.
Is OpenShorts a real alternative to Submagic?
Yes, with one honest caveat. Submagic and OpenShorts overlap where Magic Clips begins: turning a long video into clips. Submagic arrived there from captions, OpenShorts was built for it, and the meters show it: videos with a length cap on one side, source minutes or nothing at all on the other. It adds two things Submagic does not have: AI voice dubbing into more than 30 languages (with your own ElevenLabs key) and an AI UGC generator with lip-synced actors. The caveat is the setup: the free edition runs on your own machine with Docker, and the no-setup version is OpenShorts Cloud, a paid service above 20 minutes a month.
Real OpenShorts output, not a mock-up. A 39-minute interview: Gemini picked the moment, the crop follows the speaker, and the captions come from the word-level transcript. Source: Startup Founder & CEO Mark Bush on How to Overcome Adversity, Foundation for Economic Education, CC BY.
What does Submagic cost?
The cheapest paid plan is $12/month billed yearly. On the free side: No free plan. A trial with no credit card is offered instead. Every plan, what each one includes and the free-plan limits are in the Submagic review.
Submagic is captions-first. It now has Magic Clips, which cuts a long video into clips, but every plan is metered in videos with a per-video length cap (2, 5 or 30 minutes) and the pricing page does not publish a separate allowance for Magic Clips. Check that an hour-long source fits your plan before you pay.
What does OpenShorts cost?
Leaving Submagic for OpenShorts, you choose between two bills. Zero, when you self-host the MIT code with Docker: no watermark, no cap, no subscription, only your machine's time and your own API keys. Or a flat hosted plan on OpenShorts Cloud, from $12/month for 100 minutes of source without a watermark, after a free plan with the first video clipped whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month with a watermark and no credit card.
Submagic vs OpenShorts, feature by feature
| Feature | OpenShorts | Submagic |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $0 self-hosted · $0 hosted for 20 min/mo · $12/mo hosted without watermark | $12/month billed yearly |
| Open source | Yes, MIT | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes, Docker Compose | No, cloud only |
| Source video stays on your machine | Yes when self-hosted | No |
| AI viral moment detection | Yes, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | Yes |
| Face-tracked 9:16 reframing | Yes, MediaPipe + YOLOv8 | Yes |
| Word-level auto subtitles | Yes, faster-whisper | Yes |
| AI voice dubbing, 30+ languages | Yes, with your own ElevenLabs key | No |
| AI UGC video with lip-synced actors | Yes, from $0.65/video | No |
| Free AI YouTube thumbnail & title studio | Yes when self-hosted · thumbnails on paid Cloud plans | No |
| Usage cap | None when self-hosted · metered on Cloud | Metered in videos per month, each capped at 2-30 min |
When to stay on Submagic
- Captions are the product, and its caption designs are the most refined in this category.
- Your videos fit its per-video caps: 2 minutes on Starter, 5 on Pro, 30 on Business.
- You want B-roll, auto zooms, hook titles and silence removal in the same editor as the captions.
Where the two differ
- OpenShorts was built clipping-first: moment scoring, scene detection and 9:16 reframing with face tracking, two-speaker and screencast layouts. In Submagic clipping is one feature of a caption editor.
- Submagic's caption designs are more refined than ours. If captions are the entire reason you are shopping, it is the stronger tool.
- OpenShorts self-hosted has no per-video cap and no length limit; every Submagic tier is metered in videos and caps each one's length.
- OpenShorts has a free plan you can keep; Submagic offers a trial and no free plan.
Migrating from Submagic to OpenShorts
- Check your source lengths first: any recording over 30 minutes does not fit a single Submagic video on any self-serve plan, and it is a normal input for OpenShorts.
- Move the long-form clipping to OpenShorts and judge the caption style on one episode: the first video is clipped free up to 60 minutes.
- Compare the meter: Submagic counts videos a month (15, 40 or 100); OpenShorts Cloud counts source minutes, and the self-hosted edition counts nothing.
- If caption design is non-negotiable for a short, Submagic's Starter plan covers 15 videos of up to 2 minutes for $12/month billed yearly.
Which one should you pick?
- Captions are your product and you want the best designs
- Your videos are short
- You want B-roll, zooms and silence removal in one editor
- You start from long recordings: podcasts, streams, webinars
- You need two speakers or a screen kept in frame
- You want a free plan, or to self-host with no cap
Submagic is the better pick if captions are the product and your videos are short. OpenShorts is the better pick if you are starting from long-form video and want the moment finding and reframing to be the core of the tool, or want it free and self-hosted.
Common questions
- Is there a free alternative to Submagic?
- Yes. OpenShorts self-hosted is free and open source under MIT, with no watermark and no usage cap, on your own machine with Docker. OpenShorts Cloud has a free plan too: the first video clipped whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month with a watermark and no credit card. Submagic's own free side, checked October 2026: No free plan. A trial with no credit card is offered instead.
- Is there an open source alternative to Submagic?
- Submagic itself is closed source and cloud only. OpenShorts is MIT-licensed with the full source at github.com/mutonby/openshorts, which matters if you need to audit what happens to your video or change how the reframing behaves.
- How do I switch from Submagic to OpenShorts?
- Check your source lengths first: any recording over 30 minutes does not fit a single Submagic video on any self-serve plan, and it is a normal input for OpenShorts. Move the long-form clipping to OpenShorts and judge the caption style on one episode: the first video is clipped free up to 60 minutes. Compare the meter: Submagic counts videos a month (15, 40 or 100); OpenShorts Cloud counts source minutes, and the self-hosted edition counts nothing. If caption design is non-negotiable for a short, Submagic's Starter plan covers 15 videos of up to 2 minutes for $12/month billed yearly.
- Does Submagic add a watermark, and does OpenShorts?
- Submagic has no free plan to watermark: there is a trial, and Starter ($12/month yearly, $19 monthly) exports without a watermark. OpenShorts self-hosted never does. On OpenShorts Cloud the free plan is watermarked; every paid plan from $12/month is not, and upgrading removes the mark from the clips you already made.
- Is Sub Magic the same as Submagic (submagic.co)?
- Yes. Sub Magic is a common spelling of Submagic, the caption editor at submagic.co, which also clips long videos with Magic Clips. Plans start at $12/month billed yearly ($19 month to month), with a trial and no free plan, checked October 2026.
Sources
- Submagic pricing, checked 2026-10-05 on the vendor's public pricing page.
- OpenShorts pipeline details from the project source at github.com/mutonby/openshorts.