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 $14–20/month depending on billing period and listing.
Both find viral moments in long video and reframe them to 9:16 with face tracking. OpenShorts adds dubbing into 30+ languages and AI UGC video with lip-synced actors. Submagic has the more polished caption library.
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.
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 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.
What does Submagic cost?
Pricing checked 2026-07-27. Vendors change plans without notice; verify before you buy.
- Free: 3 videos per month, watermarked
- Starter: From $14/month annual, around $20/month monthly, for roughly 30 videos
- Growth / Pro: Around $40/month, for roughly 100 videos
- Business / Agency: $60-80/month, for roughly 300 videos
Submagic does not find moments for you. You upload a clip you have already cut, and it styles the captions. To go from a 60-minute podcast to finished shorts you need a clipper in front of it, which means paying for two tools.
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 is 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 | $14–20/month depending on billing period and listing |
| 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 3.0 Flash | Yes |
| Face-tracked 9:16 reframing | Yes, MediaPipe + YOLOv8 | Yes |
| Word-level auto subtitles | Yes, faster-whisper | Yes |
| AI voice dubbing, 30+ languages | Yes, ElevenLabs | 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 on every tier |
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
- Very fast on short inputs because it is not doing moment detection
Where the two differ
- OpenShorts does the moment detection Submagic leaves out, so it replaces the pair rather than one half of it.
- 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; every Submagic tier is metered in videos per month.
Which one should you pick?
Submagic is the better pick if you already cut your own clips and only want captions. OpenShorts is the better pick if you are starting from long-form video and want the cutting done too.
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 tier of 20 minutes a month with a watermark and no credit card. Submagic starts at $14–20/month depending on billing period and listing.
- 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 3.0 Flash, 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 20-minute tier is watermarked; every paid plan from $12/month is not.
Sources
- Submagic pricing, checked 2026-07-27 on the vendor's public pricing page.
- OpenShorts pipeline details from the project source at github.com/mutonby/openshorts.