overcaption / compare / submagic
Looking for a Submagic alternative?
Submagic rents captions by the video: the entry plan allows 15 a month, two minutes each, and the free plan watermarks. Overcaption makes the same style of captions on your own machine, with no quota, no upload and no watermark.
The honest version
Submagic is a shorts editor. The animated captions are the headline, but the product is the pipeline around them: B-roll, auto zooms, AI hooks, clipping long videos into shorts, all in the browser. If you live in that pipeline, it earns its plan.
Overcaption is not a shorts editor. It is a subtitle studio that does the word-by-word caption look properly: transcribe on your own hardware, fix the text in a fast editor, pick the highlight style, burn it in as previewed or export SRT and VTT. Captions, editor, exports and 1080p burn-in are free with no quota; the animated styles, batch processing for many videos in one run, and the rest of the finishing suite are Overcaption Pro, free to try for 14 days.
What you get instead
- Captions, uncounted. Accurate automatic subtitles with word-level timing, generated on your own hardware in a few minutes or less for a typical video. No videos-per-month, no length cap, no plan.
- The word-by-word highlight look. Fill, spotlight and paint-on styles with real per-word timing and keyword emphasis, burned in exactly as previewed. Part of Pro, free to try for 14 days.
- An editor for when the AI gets it wrong. Inline text editing, a waveform with draggable subtitle regions, grammar-aware line breaks, and live reading-speed checks. Fixing a name or a mistimed line takes seconds, not a re-render.
- Vertical and square, natively. Any aspect ratio opens and burns in as-is, free. Pro adds recropping horizontal footage to 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5 with per-platform safe-area guides, so captions land clear of the app chrome.
- Titles and lower thirds. Name straps, title cards and animated callouts, dragged into place on the video. Part of Pro, with brand kits, free to try for 14 days.
- No watermark, no resolution stairs. 1080p burn-in is free. 4K is Pro, not a higher plan.
- SRT and VTT included. Take your captions to Premiere, Resolve, CapCut or anywhere else.
- Private by design. No uploads, no account, works on a plane. Client footage stays on your disk.
Side by side
| Submagic | Overcaption | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free with watermark; three paid monthly plans, cheaper billed yearly | Free core with no time limit; animated captions and the finishing suite in Pro, a yearly or monthly subscription, see the pricing page |
| Videos per month | 3 free, then 15, 40 or 100 by plan | No quota |
| Batch processing | Bulk upload on paid plans, each video counted against the monthly quota | Yes, in Pro: many videos in one run, none of them counted |
| Maximum video length | 1.5 minutes free; 2, 5 or 30 minutes by plan | No limit; long recordings just take longer on your machine |
| Watermark | On the free plan | Never, on anything |
| Where it runs | In the browser, footage uploaded to the cloud | On your Mac or PC, nothing leaves your machine |
| Account required | Yes | No |
| Caption styles | 35+ animated templates, emojis | Static styles and presets free; fill, spotlight and paint-on word-by-word styles with keyword emphasis in Pro |
| Editing captions | Text edits in the browser | Full subtitle editor: text, timing on a waveform, split and merge, line breaks, quality checks |
| Export resolution | 1080p; 2K and 4K on higher plans | 1080p free; 4K in Pro |
| SRT and VTT | Yes | Yes, free |
| Translation | Cloud, 100+ languages | Local models, 50+ languages, free; glossaries and cloud translation with frontier models in Pro |
| B-roll, zooms, hooks, clipping | Yes, the core of the product | No. It stays a subtitle studio |
| Removing silences and flubs | Automatic, on paid plans | Rough cut: you pick the range, the video is trimmed and the subtitles retime (Pro) |
| Team seats | 1, 3 or unlimited by plan | One license, up to three of your own machines |
When to stick with Submagic
- You want the whole shorts pipeline: B-roll, zooms, hooks, clipping long videos into shorts.
- You work in a team, in the browser, and the seats matter more than the quota.
- You post a handful of short clips a month and the plan fits comfortably.
Also compare: CapCut · Subtitle Edit · Aegisub · MacWhisper