Kick clip maker: turn Kick streams into clips
First video free up to 60 min, then 20 min a month, watermarked, no card. No watermark from $12/month, or self-host free under MIT.
No link? Upload the file in the app instead. Sources need at least 45 seconds of material.
Kick clips are how a Kick stream travels: the twenty seconds of a long broadcast that make sense to someone scrolling TikTok who has never heard of the streamer. Paste the link of a Kick VOD and OpenShorts listens to the whole stream, ranks every stretch for how well it stands alone, and cuts the best into vertical clips with captions and a hook, facecam kept.
It works the same whether you are the streamer, their editor or part of a clipping programme they run. What it will not do is decide for you whether you have permission: that part is yours.
Free plan: your first video clipped whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month, with a watermark and no credit card. Paid plans start at $12/month with no watermark, and the self-hosted edition is free under MIT.
How to make Kick clips with AI
1. Copy the Kick VOD or clip link
On the streamer's Kick page open Videos and copy the link of the past stream, or copy the link of a Kick clip that runs 45 seconds or more. Paste it in the box. A bare channel link is the live channel, so the box asks for the recording.
2. AI picks the moments worth posting
The stream is transcribed word by word, Gemini ranks every stretch of it for how well it plays with no context, and the strongest are cut on sentence boundaries into clips of 15 to 60 seconds. A stream with almost no speech is watched by the model instead.
3. Vertical clips, ready to post
Each clip is reframed to 9:16 (facecam stacked under gameplay, IRL footage tracked and steadied), captioned and given a hook. Post to TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, or download.
Which Kick links to paste
Three kinds of Kick address look alike and only two of them are recordings:
- A past stream, from the Videos tab of a channel. Its address contains
/videos/. This is the one to paste for clipping a whole broadcast. - A Kick clip, made by the streamer or a viewer. Its address contains
clip. It works if it runs at least 45 seconds, which is the minimum any source needs, and comes back reframed and captioned. - The channel itself (
kick.com/name). That is the live stream or an offline page, not a recording, so the box asks for the VOD instead.
Kick changes its site more often than YouTube or Twitch do. If a link that looks right fails to download, the fallback is the file: if it is your stream, the local recording your streaming software made works best, and an upload works on every plan, the free one included.
IRL, just chatting, gaming: three kinds of stream, three crops
A lot of Kick is not a person at a desk. Each clip is laid out by what is actually in the frame, decided scene by scene:
IRL and outdoor streams
A camera on a gimbal or a selfie stick moves all the time, and a crop that follows every movement makes a clip nobody can watch. The tracker follows the face with a stabiliser that only moves the frame when the subject leaves a safe zone in the middle, and holds still otherwise. Shots with nobody in them (the street, the view, the car) keep their full width over a blurred backdrop instead of being cropped to a random strip. A stream shot vertical on a phone is passed through untouched; it already fits.
Just chatting
One face filling a 16:9 frame is the easy case: a steady face-tracked crop. A guest in the same shot gets stacked, one person per half, with the captions on the seam between them where they cover nobody.
Gaming with a facecam
The webcam box in the corner is found by its geometry (small, off centre, still between samples) and the clip renders gameplay full width on top and the facecam enlarged below. The Twitch clip maker page covers that layout in more detail, along with what happens on gameplay with no commentary.
Volume: clipping a streamer who goes live every day
A daily streamer produces more hours than anyone can watch back, which is the whole reason clipping is a job. Two things matter at that volume.
First, the shape of a job. One job returns the best 6 to 12 moments of whatever it is given, however long that is. A five-hour stream clipped in one job is ranked against itself and loses good moments to better ones. Clipped in parts with clip only part of it (each hour, or the segment someone flagged), it yields more candidates, and only the stretch you pick is downloaded and billed.
Second, the meter. OpenShorts Cloud bills minutes of source, like the credit-based tools below; at several hours a day that adds up on any hosted plan. The self-hosted edition has no meter at all: it runs on your own machine with Docker and your own API keys. Speed is the trade-off: on a typical CPU an 8-minute video takes 5 to 8 minutes to process on your own machine, while on OpenShorts Cloud an NVIDIA GPU clips the same 8-minute video in about 50 seconds.
Posting Kick clips
Kick clips are meant to leave Kick. Connect your accounts in the dashboard and each clip can go to YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels directly, and to TikTok, where it arrives as a draft in your inbox to finish with a sound and a caption. Schedule a week spreads a batch over the coming days at the hour you choose. Each clip comes with a title and descriptions written for the platforms, and a hook burned over the first seconds.
Free tier compared
Competitor plans checked 5 October 2026 on their public pricing pages.
| Tool | Free plan | Paid from |
|---|---|---|
| OpenShorts Cloud | First video up to 60 min, then 20 min/month. Watermark, no credit card | $12/month, 100 min, no watermark |
| OpenShorts self-hosted | Free under MIT. No watermark, no cap; your hardware and API keys | $0 |
| Opus Clip | 60 min/mo. Watermarked, export within 3 days | $15/month |
| Klap | 1 video. To try it, no ongoing free tier | $14/month billed yearly |
| Submagic | None. A trial with no credit card | $12/month billed yearly |
| 2short.ai | 30 min/mo. No watermark, YouTube links only | $9.90/month |
Submagic and Klap have no ongoing free plan, and 2short.ai takes YouTube links only on its free plan, which leaves Kick VODs out unless you upload them somewhere first. Per-minute meters (Opus Clip, OpenShorts Cloud) count every minute of the stream you import, which is why clipping a stretch rather than a whole VOD matters.
What it does not do
- It does not clip live. It works on the VOD or a clip after the fact.
- It does not read Kick chat or follow alerts; it ranks what is said, and for silent footage what is shown.
- It does not guarantee a Kick link downloads. When one fails, upload the file.
- It does not take clips under 45 seconds as a source.
- It does not post to Kick. Clips go to TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, or to your disk.
- Free clips carry a watermark. A paid plan removes it, from earlier clips too.
Permission, plainly
A Kick VOD belongs to the streamer. Clipping it is fine when the streamer said so: you are the streamer, you edit for them, or you are part of a clipping programme they run and its rules. Clipping it without that and posting the result is a reupload, and TikTok, YouTube and Instagram remove those when the owner reports them. Music playing on stream travels into the clip and gets matched on those platforms far more strictly than on a live stream. Every OpenShorts job asks you to confirm the rights before it starts.
Common questions
- Is this Kick clip maker free?
- The hosted free plan clips your first video whole up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes a month, with a watermark and no credit card. Paid plans start at $12/month with no watermark. Self-hosted OpenShorts is free under MIT, with no watermark and no meter on how many hours you clip.
- Which Kick links work?
- Links to a past stream (from the Videos tab of a channel) and links to a Kick clip of at least 45 seconds. A channel link on its own points at the live stream, so it is refused with a note to paste the recording instead.
- What if a Kick link does not work?
- Kick changes its site more often than the older platforms, and a link that fails to download is not the end of it: upload the recording instead (for your own streams, the local recording your streaming software made is the best copy). Uploads work on every plan.
- Can it clip a Kick stream while it is live?
- No. It works from the recording after the stream has ended.
- Does it handle IRL streams?
- Yes. A face in the frame is tracked with a stabiliser that holds the crop still inside a safe zone, so a walking, shaky camera does not turn into a shaky clip. Scenes where nobody is in frame keep the full width over a blurred backdrop. A stream shot vertical on a phone is left as it is.
- Will the facecam be kept on gaming streams?
- With the vertical layout on auto, a webcam box in a corner is detected and the clip renders with the gameplay across the top and the facecam enlarged underneath.
- How many clips does one Kick stream give?
- Each job returns its best 6 to 12 moments for anything longer than about 12 minutes. For a stream of several hours, clip it in parts with "clip only part of it" to get more candidates.
- Can I clip a Kick streamer's VOD if I am not that streamer?
- With their permission: as their editor, or as part of a clipping programme they run. Clipping someone's stream without it and posting the result is a reupload the platforms will take down when the streamer reports it.
- Can I post Kick clips to TikTok and YouTube?
- Yes, from the dashboard. YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are published directly; TikTok receives each clip as a draft in your TikTok inbox, which you finish in the app.
- How does it compare with Opus Clip or Klap for Kick?
- Opus Clip bills a credit per imported minute, from $15/month; Klap bills clips, from $14/month billed yearly, and leans on speech detection (both checked 5 October 2026). OpenShorts is open source and self-hostable with no meter, and hosted from $12/month.
Sources
- Competitor plans: our comparison data, checked 5 October 2026. See all alternatives.
- Processing speeds and the pipeline: how OpenShorts works. Layout code (tracking, inset, stacked speakers): github.com/mutonby/openshorts.