AI clip maker pricing, compared by cost per hour
Clip makers price in credits, minutes or clips, which makes their plans hard to compare. This page puts them on one scale: what each plan costs per hour of source video, read from each tool's own pricing page.
| Tool and plan | Per hour | Price a month | Video a month | Per hour, billed yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YTShorts.aiStarter | $0.72 | $2.99 | 4 h 10 min | $0.36 |
| Pro | $0.72 | $7.99 | 11 h 5 min | $0.36 |
| Max | $0.60 | $15.99 | 26 h 40 min | $0.30 |
| Free plan | 30 min a month, watermark, no card | |||
| VizardCreator | $2.90 | $29 | 10 h | $1.45 |
| Business | $3.90 | $39 | 10 h | $1.95 |
| Free plan | 1 h a month, watermark, 720p export | |||
| Opus ClipStarter | $6.00 | $15 | 2 h 30 min | — |
| Pro | $5.80 | $29 | 5 h | $3.89 |
| Free plan | 1 h a month, watermark | |||
| OpenShortsStarter | $7.20 | $12 | 1 h 40 min | — |
| Creator | $5.80 | $29 | 5 h | — |
| Pro | $4.72 | $59 | 12 h 30 min | — |
| Free plan | 20 min a month, watermark; first video up to 60 min | |||
Competitor prices were read from each tool's own pricing page on 30 September 2026, in US dollars, before tax. Pricing changes often: check the linked pages before you decide.
How we worked it out
Cost per hour is each plan's price divided by the hours of source video its monthly allowance covers. That is the number that decides what a month of clipping costs you, whatever the plan calls its unit.
Opus Clip and Vizard count credits, and both define 1 credit as 1 minute of imported video. OpenShorts states minutes directly. For YTShorts.ai we used Extract Shorts, the most expensive of our clipping tools, which charges per 5 minutes of source video; Add Captions and Smart Short cover more video for the same credits.
We assumed each plan's full monthly allowance and no extra purchases. Where a tool offers a yearly price we show it too, as the per-month rate you pay billed yearly.
Tools that don't price by the hour
Some popular tools charge per output clip or per video instead, so they can't sit in the same table. Klap charges by clips generated: 100 clips a month for $14, 300 for $39 and 1000 for $94, each billed yearly. Submagic, mainly a captioning editor, charges per video: its Starter plan is 15 videos of up to 2 minutes for $19 a month.
If you post a handful of finished clips a week, per-clip pricing can be fair. If you clip long videos, podcasts or streams, paying per hour of source is the model that stays predictable.
Which one fits you
If the most video per dollar matters most, YTShorts.ai is the cheapest per hour here on every paid plan, and its free plan needs no card.
If you need a shared team workspace, auto-posting to social accounts or export into a pro editor today, Opus Clip and Vizard have those built in, and YTShorts.ai does not yet. If you want to run the software on your own machine, OpenShorts is open source and can be self-hosted.
Common questions
What is the cheapest AI clip maker?
Of the tools compared here, YTShorts.ai costs the least per hour of video on every paid plan: from $2.99 a month, about $0.72 per hour of video with Extract Shorts. Billed yearly it halves again.
Why compare by cost per hour instead of plan price?
Because plans include very different amounts of video. A $29 plan that covers 5 hours costs more per video than a $29 plan that covers 10, and the plan price alone hides that.
What happens if I run out of credits on YTShorts.ai?
Buy extra credits on any plan from $0.50, at 125 credits per $1. They stay usable for 90 days, and your monthly credits are always used first.
Are these prices current?
They were read from each tool's own pricing page on 30 September 2026. Prices change, so each tool in the table links to its pricing page.
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