Aegisub vs Subtitle Edit

Aegisub is a free, open-source tool for creating and modifying subtitles on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its audio interface includes waveform and spectrum views for timing subtitles, while video mode previews edits as they are made. Visual controls on the video frame let users position, rotate, scale, and clip subtitles. Aegisub imports and exports several subtitle formats, including MPEG-4 Timed Text and MicroDVD, and it supports subtitle translation. Editing aids include a translation assistant, spell checking, a thesaurus, syntax highlighting, and macros. The Automation module runs Lua scripts for macros and export filters. Multi-level undo and redo, autosaving, backups, and emergency recovery saving are included. Direct saving to SRT is blocked when override tags would lose information, though the Export dialog can export to SRT. Aegisub does not create DVD subtitles directly; its FAQ describes using an external program to convert SSA to VOBSubs. The optional update checker sends anonymous operating-environment details, including an IP address, and can be left disabled. Version 3.5.0 is listed for download.

Subtitle Edit is a free subtitle editor for creating, styling, converting, and reviewing subtitles. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and its documentation covers the cross-platform Subtitle Edit 5, which uses an Avalonia-based version. The editor supports speaker identification, caption styling, burn-in, and export to other formats; documentation references SRT, WebVTT, and ASSA. Speech-to-text options include Whisper, Qwen3 ASR, Crisp ASR, and related engines. Translation tools include automatic translation and local engines, while OCR support includes Tesseract, PaddleOCR, and cloud engines. Video tools handle burn-in, re-encoding, cutting, and remuxing. For proofreading, it can use llama.cpp, Ollama, or an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. The seconv command-line tool supports headless and bulk conversion, and documentation covers creating and installing plugins. The open-source project is maintained at SubtitleEdit and hosted on GitHub Pages. Documentation, a FAQ, and contributing guidance are available. It is free, with no stated free-tier limits.