Reelsaw vs Submagic

Submagic alternative that starts from the long video

Submagic is a captioning and polishing tool: you bring a short video and it adds captions, zooms, B-roll and sound. Clipping long sources into shorts (its Magic Clips) is a limit on the custom plan rather than a headline feature.

Reelsaw starts one step earlier, at the two-hour recording, and ends with captioned vertical clips. If your problem is choosing moments from long videos, that difference matters more than any price.

Pricing checked 2026-10-18 on each vendor's public page. Vendors change plans without notice; verify before you buy.

What Submagic costs

Three plans priced by videos per month with a cap on each video's length; no free plan was listed.

Submagic plans
PlanPriceWhat it includes
Starter$19/mo, or $12/mo billed yearly15 videos a month up to 2 minutes each, AI captions, free B-roll and audio, text-based trimming, 1080p 30 fps, no watermark
Pro$39/mo, or $23/mo yearly40 videos a month up to 5 minutes, Storyblocks B-roll, AI auto zooms, bad-take and silence removal, AI clean audio, publishing and analytics, brand kit
Business$69/mo, or $41/mo yearly100 videos a month up to 30 minutes, 4K 60 fps, 10 templates, custom vocabulary, priority rendering, multi-account publishing
CustomContact salesUsage-based, Magic Clips limits, custom API limits, SSO

The page showed a few conflicting figures (Business videos as 100 and as unlimited; Pro export as 1080p and as 2K). Numbers above follow the pricing cards.

What Reelsaw costs for the same job

The software is free under the AGPL-3.0 and there is no hosted plan to upsell you to. What you pay for is the machine it runs on and, only if you choose cloud models, the per-call price of those models.

Fully local: Ollama for the language model and Speaches (Whisper) for transcription. The installer picks a model by GPU memory or RAM (qwen2.5:14b with 24 GB of RAM or a 12 GB GPU, qwen2.5:7b from 12 GB, gemma3:4b below that), reuses one Ollama already has, and puts both on an NVIDIA GPU when there is one. Nothing leaves the box and there is no per-minute cost at all.

With cloud models: set OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, Deepgram, AssemblyAI or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint as a provider:model string and you pay that vendor's metered price for transcription minutes and a few thousand tokens of selection per video. There is no Reelsaw margin on top.

Submagic vs Reelsaw, feature by feature

Submagic and Reelsaw compared
ReelsawSubmagic
Runs fully local, no API keysYes, and it is the installer's default: Ollama for the language model, a local Whisper for transcription, on-device alignment and face detection. Nothing leaves the machineNo, the video is uploaded to the vendor
Model providersAny, for each of the three models separately: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, Deepgram, AssemblyAI, Vercel AI Gateway, Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio or any OpenAI-compatible server. No vendor is baked in; admins switch at runtimeSubmagic's own models; not configurable
Entry price$0. AGPL-3.0 software; you supply the machine and, if you want cloud models, the API keys$19/mo, or $12/mo billed yearly (Starter)
Free tierEverything, with no plan and no meterNo free plan listed; 'no credit card required' to sign up
WatermarkNeverNo watermark on all listed plans
Open sourceYes, AGPL-3.0, pure TypeScriptNo
Self-hostableYes: Docker Compose, one-command installer for macOS, Linux and WindowsNo, cloud only
AI moment detectionYes: map, pool, rank with pairwise comparison; any language model, optional separate judge modelMagic Clips appears only as a Custom-plan limit
Face-tracked 9:16 reframingYes: face, split, stack and fit layouts per segment; 1.2 MB UltraFace detector on the CPUNot stated on the pricing page
Word-level captionsYes: karaoke highlight, AI-picked key words, boxed or outlined, drag positions on a live previewYes, the core product, with animated styles
Filler and false-start removalYes: jump cuts located by forced alignment, each one reviewableBad takes and silences removed on Pro and up
AI dubbing / translationNoNot stated on the pricing page
Direct social publishingNo. Export zip with paste-ready text, a YouTube Data API body and a TikTok post body per clipYes on Pro and up; multi-account on Business
Agent and API accessMCP server (Streamable HTTP, OAuth optional) and an operator CLIAPI credit packs from 250 minutes for $57/mo
Usage capNone15, 40 or 100 videos a month; 2, 5 or 30 minutes per video
Accounts and teamsMulti-user with admin approval, per-user quotas and usageMulti-account publishing on Business

What Submagic does better

Which one should you pick?

Pick Submagic if

  • You already have the short and want it to look like it was edited by hand.
  • You post from the tool and want analytics there too.
  • Your videos are under the plan's per-video length cap.

Pick Reelsaw if

  • Your input is the full episode, not a finished short.
  • A 30-minute per-video ceiling, even on the top plan, is too low.
  • You want zero per-video cost and the source kept on your machine.
  • You want an agent to run the whole thing through MCP.

Common questions

Does Submagic clip long videos into shorts?

Its pricing page lists Magic Clips only as a limit on the Custom plan; the Starter, Pro and Business plans are described by videos per month and a maximum video length of 2, 5 or 30 minutes, as of 2026-10-18.

Can Reelsaw do Submagic-style captions?

Reelsaw burns in word-level karaoke captions with AI-picked key words enlarged and coloured, boxed or outlined styles, size and uppercase options, and drag-to-place positions with platform safe zones. It does not add emojis, zooms, sound effects or B-roll.

Does either tool watermark the output?

Neither. Submagic lists 'no watermark' on every plan it sells; Reelsaw never adds one.

Related comparisons

Sources

Last updated 2026-10-18.