Is there a free alternative to Vizard?

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. Vizard starts at $14.50/month billed yearly ($29 monthly).

Is there an open source alternative to Vizard?

OpenShorts is MIT-licensed and the full source is on GitHub at github.com/mutonby/openshorts. Vizard 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 Vizard 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.

Partly. The free plan gives 60 credits a month (one credit is one minute of uploaded video), uploads up to 60 minutes, and 720p exports of up to 10 minutes with a watermark, kept for 3 days. Paid plans start at $29/month, or $14.50/month billed yearly. OpenShorts self-hosted is free with no watermark and no cap; OpenShorts Cloud clips your first video free up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month.

What is Vizard AI used for?

Turning long recordings into short vertical clips, with an emphasis on editing them afterwards: it finds the moments, transcribes them and gives you a timeline for the captions and the clip boundaries. It is also used as a video-to-text tool, because the transcript comes out of the same job.

Home Alternatives Vizard

The free, open source Vizard alternative

By the OpenShorts team· Published 2024-06-01· Updated 2026-10-05

OpenShorts is an open source AI clip generator you can run yourself for free, or use hosted from $12/month. Vizard is a closed-source cloud product starting at $14.50/month billed yearly ($29 monthly).

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. Vizard has the better editor for fixing each clip by hand.

Pick Vizard 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.

Free plan60 min/mo720p, watermark, exports up to 10 min

Paid from$14.50/moCreator billed yearly ($29 monthly), 600 min

Billed by1 credit = 1 minOf video uploaded

Open sourceNoCloud only. OpenShorts: MIT, self-hostable

Try it Paste a link, get vertical clips

Your first video free up to 60 minutes, then 20 free minutes a month, no credit card. Or self-host it free under MIT.

Get free clips

What is Vizard (also written Vizard AI)?

Vizard (written Vizard AI in most searches, and served from vizard.ai) is a browser-based clipper: it transcribes the video, finds candidate moments and hands you a timeline to fix them in. That transcription pass is also its video-to-text feature, so a transcript comes out of the same job as the clips. Lately it has added an AI agent and an AI Studio for generated video around the clipper.

Is OpenShorts a real alternative to Vizard?

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 Vizard 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 Vizard cost?

Pricing checked 2026-10-05. Vendors change plans without notice; verify before you buy.

Free: 60 credits a month (1 credit = 1 minute uploaded), uploads up to 60 minutes, 720p exports up to 10 minutes with a watermark, 3-day storage, transcript as TXT only
Creator: $29/month, or $14.50/month billed yearly: from 600 credits a month, 4K exports of any length, no watermark, scheduling, TXT and SRT transcripts, API
Business: $39/month, or $19.50/month billed yearly: shared workspace, 20 social accounts, team seats at $5/month each, brand kit

The part that catches people out

Vizard is built around a browser editing timeline, so it sits between a pure auto-clipper and a full editor. That is useful if you intend to hand-adjust every clip, and overhead if you do not. Like Opus Clip, it bills a credit per minute of video uploaded, whatever the number of clips.

What would you pay for your own usage?

Move the slider to the number of minutes of source video you clip in a month. Each bar is the cheapest published plan that covers it.

Minutes of source video you clip a month 300 min

OpenShorts self-hostedyour machine, MIT$0/mo · Docker, no watermark, no cap
OpenShorts Cloudper source minute$29/mo · Creator
Vizard1 credit per uploaded minute$29/mo · Creator
Opus Clip1 credit per source minute$29/mo · Pro

Cheapest published plan that covers that many minutes, per month. Prices checked 2026-10-05. Self-hosted needs Docker and your own Gemini key, whose free tier covers 1,500 requests a day.

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.

Vizard vs OpenShorts, feature by feature

Feature	OpenShorts	Vizard
Entry price	$0 self-hosted · $0 hosted for 20 min/mo · $12/mo hosted without watermark	$14.50/month billed yearly ($29 monthly)
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 credits (1 per uploaded minute)

What Vizard does better

A comparison that finds nothing good to say about the other tool is not worth reading, so here is where Vizard genuinely wins:

Genuinely usable in-browser editor after the AI pass
Strong multi-language subtitles and subtitle translation, with transcripts it says cover 180+ languages
Generous paid allowance: 600 credits a month on the entry plan, with the API included

Where the two differ

OpenShorts runs the whole pipeline unattended and is designed to be scripted or scheduled; Vizard expects a human in the timeline.
OpenShorts is open source and self-hostable; Vizard is a closed cloud product.
Vizard's editor is better than ours if you want to hand-correct each clip before posting.

Which one should you pick?

Pick Vizard if

You will hand-correct every clip in a timeline
You process up to 600 minutes a month and can pay yearly
You want subtitle translation in many languages

Pick OpenShorts if

You want clips without sitting in an editor
You want to automate it from n8n, an API or Claude
You want it free and self-hosted, or monthly from $12

Vizard is the better pick if you plan to manually refine every clip in a timeline. OpenShorts is the better pick for volume, automation, or self-hosting.

Common questions

Is there a free alternative to Vizard?: 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. Vizard starts at $14.50/month billed yearly ($29 monthly).
Is there an open source alternative to Vizard?: OpenShorts is MIT-licensed and the full source is on GitHub at github.com/mutonby/openshorts. Vizard 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 Vizard 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.
Is Vizard AI free?: Partly. The free plan gives 60 credits a month (one credit is one minute of uploaded video), uploads up to 60 minutes, and 720p exports of up to 10 minutes with a watermark, kept for 3 days. Paid plans start at $29/month, or $14.50/month billed yearly. OpenShorts self-hosted is free with no watermark and no cap; OpenShorts Cloud clips your first video free up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month.
What is Vizard AI used for?: Turning long recordings into short vertical clips, with an emphasis on editing them afterwards: it finds the moments, transcribes them and gives you a timeline for the captions and the clip boundaries. It is also used as a video-to-text tool, because the transcript comes out of the same job.

Sources

Vizard pricing, checked 2026-10-05 on the vendor's public pricing page.
OpenShorts pipeline details from the project source at github.com/mutonby/openshorts.

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