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What Do You Get With CapCut Free?
What’s Included in CapCut Pro?
Comparing CapCut Free and CapCut Pro
Are CapCut's Beta Features Free?
Is CapCut Pro Worth It?
Key Takeaways
- CapCut's free version offers many useful features like video editing tools, fonts, and TikTok templates.
- CapCut Pro adds premium filters, transitions, and AI tools for better video editing.
- The CapCut Pro subscription is more affordable than other video editing software, and you can choose to pay a one-off fee to access the Pro features for one month.
CapCut offers great video editing features for free, so is the CapCut Pro subscription worth paying for? Let's discuss which features are available for free and whether it's worth making the switch.
What Do You Get With CapCut Free?
CapCut’s free video editing software offers a surprisingly large number of features cost-free. You can edit videos on both desktop and mobile and save them for use anywhere. The free version limits its video preview quality to only 720p, although exported videos can go up to 4k.
When editing CapCut free videos, the video naturally ends with a CapCut logo on the end-screen. Although this is automated, you can remove it before saving your video.
You can edit professional-quality videos up to 15 minutes long; however, CapCut shines the most for creating dynamic short-form videos—especially for TikTok. Its visual and audio library and available tools are constantly updated; not just for trend-hitting, but also adding new, intuitive ways to improve your videos.
You’ll find hundreds of TikTok templates and filters to apply to your videos for free. CapCut also includes featured audio for trending TikTok videos, royalty-free audio libraries, and trending templates ready for customization. If CapCat's audio library isn't enough, see our list of places to legally download music for free.
Although you can schedule videos from CapCut directly to TikTok, you can externally save your videos to upload elsewhere with no penalty—keep in mind that commercial licenses for audio and typefaces are listed only for TikTok and CapCut use.
What’s Included in CapCut Pro?
CapCut Pro offers everything available in the free version plus premium templates, filters, transitions, audio, and exclusive Pro tools. The premium offerings may help your videos stay on-trend, create new trends faster, or provide less overused editing options to give your videos an edge.
CapCut Pro is affordable compared to other premium video editing tools. We pitted CapCut against Adobe Premiere Pro and found CapCut was a serious contender but with an easier-to-learn interface and at a much better price point.
CapCut Pro is available under different price setups, including both a monthly or annual subscription, and also a one-off price for a month of use. The latter offering puts CapCut Pro above many subscription software which often only offer expensive annual or monthly contracts which are hard to get out of.
You can add manually written captions with the free version of CapCut, but for auto-captioning, you’ll need CapCut Pro (or use the browser version where it's offered for free). Adding captions or subtitles to videos can be laborious when they're not automated, so this may be a feature worth paying for.
While the video output is the same for both the free and Pro versions of CapCut, if you're looking to make a GIF, you're better off using CapCut Pro as it has a higher output quality for GIFs. See our guide on how and when to use GIFs if you're curious.
Comparing CapCut Free and CapCut Pro
We’ve combed through the different features available on CapCut and CapCut Pro to help you decide if the subscription is worth it.
Features | CapCat Free | CapCut Pro |
|---|---|---|
Price | Free. | 7-day free trial, then $7.99/month or $9.99 for a one-off month. Annual subscription from $74.99. |
Templates | Thousands of user-generated templates. | Thousands of user-generated templates. No Pro-specific templates. |
Fonts | Hundreds of typefaces—including commercial license, all text presets, some text templates for pre-designed or animated text, and some artistic text effects. | Commerical-use typefaces (toggle to switch on), extra text templates, and text effects. |
Audio | Commercial license audio for TikTok use. All audio is available to users for free. | Commercial license audio for TikTok use. All audio is available to all users. Vocal isolation feature. |
Transitions | Limited transitions. | All transitions, including trending and artistic transition styles. |
AI Features | AI Characters, AI Models for Products, Long-form to Shorts Converter, and Product Photos. | Script to Video, Clips to Video, Text to Design, Product URL to Ads, and Ad Script Generator. |
| | ||
Image Editing | Text-to-Image and Image-to-Image generators, all 17+ image filters, and background remover. | Batch Edit, Old Photo Restoration, Portrait Generator, Image Upscaler, Image Style Transfer, Photo Colorizer, and Low-Light Image Enhancer. |
Color Grading | Basic, HSL, Curves, and AI color correction. | Basic, HSL, Curves, and AI color correction. |
Scheduler | Scheduler is free to all users. | Scheduler is free to all users. |
Brand Kit | Brand kit for branded designs across multiple videos. | Brand kit for branded designs across multiple videos. |
Captions | Captions, caption highlights, Auto-captions* free from browser version only. | Auto-captions*, bilingual captions, filler word identifier, and some caption design presets. |
Storage | 1GB Cloud Storage. Storage can be expanded with small tasks like inviting friends to CapCut. | 100GB Cloud Storage. |
Platform Support | Browser, Windows, Mac, Android, iOS. | Browser, Windows, Mac, Android, iOS. |
Download Quality | Video: 480p, 720p, 1080p, 2k/4k. GIF: 240p. | Video: 480p, 720p, 1080p, 2k/4k. GIF: 240p, 320p, 640p. |
Are CapCut's Beta Features Free?
The Beta features are largely AI-based and mainly found in CapCut's image editing section, rather than its video editor.
At the time of writing, the Beta features are available to free users but are not strictly listed as free features. This suggests that once out of Beta, these features will only be available as Pro features, and thus we've listed them as such. You may find some features available to use for free from CapCut's browser version, but not from its apps on desktop or mobile.
It should also be noted that different global regions may be able to access different features available for free whereas other regions can access them as Pro-only. During my research, I found some features available for free, but users on forums in various regions suggested those features were only available on CapCut Pro.
Is CapCut Pro Worth It?
CapCut's free video editor offers so much, that even without subscribing to Pro, it is comparable to some professional video editors. The main benefits of subscribing to CapCut Pro are extensive choices for transition animations and filters, as well as AI tool additions.
Whether the subscription is worth it depends on your use of CapCut as a video editor. There are plenty of transitions and filters available for free without the need to upgrade. Arguably, you can create great videos without the extra Pro tools.
As mentioned, CapCut is one of few video editors that offer a one-off monthly Pro plan. We'd recommend purchasing this subscription to use the Pro features and tools as and when you might need them, or to try them out, rather than paying for tools that might go to waste.
Overall, CapCut is great as a free tool and the CapCut Pro subscription isn't worth it, but the one-off monthly payment is a good option to have.
