Captions vs SmartSub
Captions
captions.aiSmartSub
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Captions | SmartSub |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $4.99/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 12 | 1 |
| Spec score · AI Video Caption Generators | 9.5 (#2) | 9.0 (#6) |
| Dubbing | Users can dub videos into more than 30 languages with a cloned version of their voice. | Local Kokoro and VITS engines provide 103 and 174 voices respectively, while ZipVoice supports zero-shot cloning from a reference clip. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Licence | The product site presents Captions as proprietary software, gives no open-source licence, and displays an all-rights-reserved notice. | The repository is released under the MIT licence, with copyright attributed to Lin Xiaodong in 2024. |
| Translation | Captions offers multilingual subtitle translation in 100-plus languages. | It offers 20 translation services, including built-in free translation and integrations such as DeepSeek, Gemini, and Ollama. |
| What it does | Captions is an AI video editor and generator that turns uploaded footage or prompts into edited, captioned and shareable videos. | SmartSub combines video downloading, speech transcription, subtitle translation, proofreading, AI dubbing, voice cloning and subtitle rendering in one desktop application. |
Plans
Captions
- Max$24.99 a month
- Frontier$69.99 a month
- Frontier 2x$139.99 a month
- Frontier 4x$279.99 a month
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Lite$4.99 a month
- Basic$9.99 a month
- Frontier$69.99 a month
- Frontier 2x$139.99 a month
In their own words
Captions
Captions is an AI video platform for creating and editing videos from footage or prompts. AI Edit can apply cuts, captions, music, and formatting to uploaded material. The service offers automatic transcription, more than 100 caption styles, and translation into over 100 languages. Users can dub videos into more than 30 languages with a cloned version of their voice. Prompt to Video creates talking-head videos from scripts using built-in actors or an AI Twin. The platform is aimed at creators, marketers, and developers making materials such as ads, listing videos, and podcast clips. Its Mirage API generates content from scripts, image references, or actor IDs and uses credit-based billing. The free plan costs nothing and includes no AI usage credits, one caption template, and basic editing tools. Max costs $24.99 a month and includes 500 monthly credits; Frontier plans provide higher credit allowances. Unused credits can roll over for up to two extra months, capped at three times the monthly allowance. Captions is available on Android, iOS, and web, with an API offering.
SmartSub
SmartSub is an open-source desktop app for transcription, subtitle translation, proofreading, AI dubbing and video subtitle rendering. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and is free with no local usage limits. For local processing, its maker says models process files on the user's computer, so those files do not leave the device. Transcription options include whisper.cpp, faster-whisper, FunASR, Qwen3-ASR and FireRedASR. Translation includes 20 services, including built-in free translation and integrations such as DeepSeek, Gemini and Ollama. The proofreading workspace offers video-synced editing, undo and redo, search and replace, and AI proofreading. SmartSub can generate speech from subtitle lines, align audio to the timeline and clone voices with ZipVoice, Volcengine or ElevenLabs. It can burn subtitles into video or package soft subtitles, preview styles and include dubbed audio. It also downloads videos from links using yt-dlp and lux, supporting more than 1,800 sites. Cloud transcription uploads audio to the configured provider endpoint; the README advises against using it for sensitive content.