Auto-caption tools cap minutes, not just monthly price

The test

Two tools built specifically for vertical-video captioning publish their own pricing structures, each retrieved here as it stood on 16 September 2026: Submagic's pricing page and Captions AI's pricing page.

What the evidence says

Submagic's page lists a Starter plan at '$19/mo' providing '45 credits = 15 videos' capped at a '2 min video duration', a Pro plan at '$39/mo' with '120 credits = 40 videos' and a 5-minute cap, and a Business plan at '$69/mo' with '300 credits = 100 videos', a 30-minute cap, and 'Export in 4k & 60 FPS' as an added feature. Every tier includes the core 'AI Auto captions' feature; what changes between tiers is volume and maximum clip length, not whether captioning itself is available. Captions AI structures its plans differently: a Free plan with no AI usage credits, a Max plan at '$24.99/mo' with '500 credits per month' and access to a library of 'AI Edit styles', and three Scale tiers priced at '$69.99', '$139.99' and '$279.99' per month offering multiples of usage and 1,400 to 5,600 monthly credits. Both are the vendors' own stated current tiers; neither page independently verifies output accuracy, and both explicitly avoid claiming their captions are error-free.

The sample and the variance

These are self-reported, living pricing pages rather than a measured accuracy or throughput comparison. Submagic denominates its limits in a hybrid of credits and a stated video count, plus a maximum single-clip duration per tier; Captions AI denominates entirely in a monthly credit pool without a stated maximum clip length on the page as retrieved. That difference means a raw price-per-month comparison between the two tools does not, by itself, describe comparable usage, since a Submagic credit converts differently to output than a Captions AI credit. Neither page states a word-error rate or other accuracy figure for the underlying caption generation.

What to try next

As an editorial checklist, a short-form editor choosing between the two should map expected monthly output, number of videos and their typical length, against each platform's stated caps rather than comparing headline prices alone, since Submagic's tiers cap maximum clip duration directly while Captions AI's tiers cap total credit volume. Neither vendor's pricing page should be read as a claim that its auto-captions require no human review; both are consumer-facing pricing pages, not accuracy disclosures, and any error-rate claim would need a separate, dedicated source before being repeated.

• What is the typical clip length being produced, and does it fit under the per-tier duration cap a given plan states?
• How many videos per month are expected, and does that fit the credit-to-video ratio each platform's page describes?
• Do either vendor's current tier names, prices or caps still match this record, retrieved on 16 September 2026?

Both companies price access as a function of volume and clip length rather than a flat seat fee, and the specific numbers reported here describe each vendor's own current pricing page, not an independent benchmark of caption accuracy or editing quality between the two.