OpenShortsThe free, open source Submagic alternative
OpenShorts is an open source AI clip generator you can run yourself for free, or use hosted from $12/month. Submagic is a closed-source cloud product starting at $12/month billed yearly.
Both find viral moments in long video and reframe them to 9:16 with face tracking. OpenShorts adds dubbing into 30+ languages (with your own ElevenLabs key) and AI UGC video with lip-synced actors. Submagic has the more refined caption designs.
Pick Submagic if you want zero setup and nothing else matters. Pick OpenShorts if you want to self-host for privacy, keep costs near zero, or change how the pipeline behaves.
Your first video free up to 60 minutes, then 20 free minutes a month, no credit card. Or self-host it free under MIT.
Is OpenShorts a real alternative to Submagic?
Yes, with one honest caveat. OpenShorts covers the same core job: it takes a long video, finds the segments worth clipping, cuts them, reframes them to 9:16 and burns in subtitles. It adds two things Submagic does not have, AI voice dubbing into more than 30 languages (with your own ElevenLabs key) and an AI UGC generator with lip-synced actors. The caveat is that the free edition is self-hosted, which means Docker and a machine to run it on. If you want a hosted product with no setup, that is OpenShorts Cloud, and it is a paid service above 20 minutes a month.
Real OpenShorts output, not a mock-up. A two-person podcast: both speakers stacked in half-frames, captions on the seam where they cover nobody. Source: Turn the Tables with Dan and Shoshana Jordan, Heritage of Faith, CC BY.
What does Submagic cost?
Pricing checked 2026-10-05. Vendors change plans without notice; verify before you buy.
- Free: No free plan. A trial with no credit card is offered instead.
- Starter: $19/month, or $12/month billed yearly: 15 videos a month, up to 2 minutes each, 1080p, no watermark
- Pro: $39/month, or $23/month billed yearly: 40 videos a month, up to 5 minutes each, auto zooms, silence removal, social publishing
- Business: $69/month per member, or $41/month billed yearly: 100 videos a month, up to 30 minutes each, 4K at 60 fps, 100 API minutes
Submagic is captions-first. It now has Magic Clips, which cuts a long video into clips, but every plan is metered in videos with a per-video length cap (2, 5 or 30 minutes) and the pricing page does not publish a separate allowance for Magic Clips. Check that an hour-long source fits your plan before you pay.
What does OpenShorts cost?
OpenShorts comes in two editions and they are priced very differently, so it is worth being precise. OpenShorts (self-hosted) is free and open source under the MIT licence: Free and open source under MIT. You run it with Docker on your own machine and bring your own API keys. No watermark, no usage cap, no subscription. What it costs you is hardware and time: on a typical CPU an 8-minute video takes 5 to 8 minutes to process. OpenShorts Cloud is the hosted service: The same software with the compute and API keys covered. An NVIDIA GPU clips that same 8-minute video in about 50 seconds. Free plan: the first video is clipped whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month, with a watermark and no credit card. Paid plans start at $12/month for 100 minutes with no watermark, up to $59/month.
Submagic vs OpenShorts, feature by feature
| Feature | OpenShorts | Submagic |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $0 self-hosted · $0 hosted for 20 min/mo · $12/mo hosted without watermark | $12/month billed yearly |
| Open source | Yes, MIT | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes, Docker Compose | No, cloud only |
| Source video stays on your machine | Yes when self-hosted | No |
| AI viral moment detection | Yes, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | Yes |
| Face-tracked 9:16 reframing | Yes, MediaPipe + YOLOv8 | Yes |
| Word-level auto subtitles | Yes, faster-whisper | Yes |
| AI voice dubbing, 30+ languages | Yes, with your own ElevenLabs key | No |
| AI UGC video with lip-synced actors | Yes, from $0.65/video | No |
| Free AI YouTube thumbnail & title studio | Yes | No |
| Usage cap | None when self-hosted · metered on Cloud | Metered in videos per month, each capped at 2-30 min |
What Submagic does better
A comparison that finds nothing good to say about the other tool is not worth reading, so here is where Submagic genuinely wins:
- The best caption styling in this category, by a clear margin
- A full short-form editor around the captions: B-roll, auto zooms, hook titles, silence and bad-take removal
- Magic Clips now turns a long video or a YouTube link into clips inside the same tool
Where the two differ
- OpenShorts was built clipping-first: moment scoring, scene detection and 9:16 reframing with face tracking, two-speaker and screencast layouts. In Submagic clipping is one feature of a caption editor.
- Submagic's caption designs are more refined than ours. If captions are the entire reason you are shopping, it is the stronger tool.
- OpenShorts self-hosted has no per-video cap and no length limit; every Submagic tier is metered in videos and caps each one's length.
- OpenShorts has a free plan you can keep; Submagic offers a trial and no free plan.
Which one should you pick?
- Captions are your product and you want the best designs
- Your videos are short
- You want B-roll, zooms and silence removal in one editor
- You start from long recordings: podcasts, streams, webinars
- You need two speakers or a screen kept in frame
- You want a free plan, or to self-host with no cap
Submagic is the better pick if captions are the product and your videos are short. OpenShorts is the better pick if you are starting from long-form video and want the moment finding and reframing to be the core of the tool, or want it free and self-hosted.
Common questions
- Is there a free alternative to Submagic?
- Yes. OpenShorts self-hosted is free and open source under MIT, with no watermark and no usage cap, and it runs on your own machine with Docker. OpenShorts Cloud also has a free plan: your first video clipped whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month, with a watermark and no credit card. Submagic starts at $12/month billed yearly.
- Is there an open source alternative to Submagic?
- OpenShorts is MIT-licensed and the full source is on GitHub at github.com/mutonby/openshorts. Submagic is closed source. Being able to read the pipeline matters if you need to audit what happens to your video or change how the reframing behaves.
- Can I switch from Submagic without losing quality?
- The pipelines are comparable on the core job. OpenShorts transcribes with faster-whisper at word level, detects scenes with PySceneDetect, and scores moments with Google Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, then reframes with MediaPipe face tracking stabilised against jitter. The honest difference is caption styling, where the commercial tools generally ship more presets.
- Does OpenShorts put a watermark on clips?
- Self-hosted, never. On OpenShorts Cloud the free plan is watermarked; every paid plan from $12/month is not, and upgrading removes the mark from the clips you already made.
Sources
- Submagic pricing, checked 2026-10-05 on the vendor's public pricing page.
- OpenShorts pipeline details from the project source at github.com/mutonby/openshorts.