Updated: August 2, 2026
CapCut auto captions are not free anymore. That is the short version. CapCut restructured its plans and pushed auto captions behind a paid tier, and it did it quietly - no announcement, just Pro prompts appearing where the feature used to be. Standard is $10 a month, Pro is $19.99.
So if you are here because captions stopped working the way they used to, you are now choosing which caption tool to pay for. Worth knowing what you get for the money.
AEJuice Auto Captions is $9 a month, or you can skip subscriptions entirely and buy credits once. It runs inside After Effects and Premiere Pro, so captions land on the timeline you are already editing instead of in a separate app. It covers 145 languages against CapCut’s 25, only uploads the extracted audio rather than your whole video, and gives you 10 minutes free every month to test it.
Comparison
| AEJuice Auto Captions | CapCut | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Inside After Effects and Premiere Pro | Desktop, web, mobile app |
| Captions land as | Native text layers on your timeline | Text blocks in a CapCut project, burned into export |
| Use in your existing AE or Premiere edit | Yes, same sequence | No, separate app then export |
| What is uploaded | Extracted audio only, a few MB | The whole video |
| Languages | 145 | 25 |
| Transcription accuracy | Best in class, 96.7% on English | 96% claimed by CapCut |
| Free tier | 10 min transcription every month, renews | Free plan, with limits that vary by region and version |
| Paid from | $9/mo, or one-time credits, no subscription | $10/mo Standard, $19.99/mo Pro |
| Works without a subscription | Yes, buy credits once | No |
| 4K export | Whatever your comp renders | Pro plan only |
| Per-speaker caption colors | Yes, auto speaker detection with a color each | Speaker-ID captions on Pro plan |
| Profanity masking (text) | Full or partial | No |
| Profanity handling (audio) | Beep or mute | No |
| Ad-platform safe modes | Meta and YouTube | No |
| Custom flagged words | Yes | No |
| Brand spelling terms | Yes | No |
| Typo check | Yes | No |
| Filler word removal | Yes | No |
| Pause removal | Yes | No |
| Line grouping | AI, grouped by meaning | Automatic, not controllable |
| Highlight spoken word | Yes | Template dependent |
| Emoji, with skin tone | Yes | Emoji available |
| Chapters, title, description | Yes | No |
| Edit video by transcript | Yes, Text Based Editing | Yes, transcript-based editing |
| Templates and effects library | Separate AEJuice packs | Very large built-in library |
| Direct social publishing | No | Yes |
Where CapCut wins
- A full free editor. The timeline, 1080p export, templates and basic effects still cost nothing, even if auto captions no longer do.
- Everywhere. Desktop, web, iOS, Android, synced. Caption on a phone on the way home.
- Enormous template and effect library. Over 12 million royalty-free assets on the paid tiers, and social-native caption styles that already look like what performs on TikTok.
- Speed for short vertical video. Import, generate, style, post. No plugin, no render queue, no project management.
If you are making short social video, not working in Adobe apps, and happy to pay for captions, CapCut is a reasonable choice.
Where AEJuice wins
It works where you already edit. Auto Captions is a plugin inside After Effects and Premiere Pro. The captions land on the sequence you are already cutting, as text layers, and render with everything else. With CapCut you leave your edit, rebuild it in another app, and bring back a flattened video.
Languages: 145 against 25. CapCut covers the major ones. If your language is not in those 25, it cannot help you at all.
Transcription accuracy. On the standard FLEURS and Common Voice benchmarks, the model behind Auto Captions holds the lowest word error rate across 99 languages, ahead of Whisper Large V3, Google Gemini 2.0 Flash and Deepgram Nova-3, at 96.7% on English. CapCut claims 96%. The gap shows up on accents, crosstalk and technical vocabulary, and it is paid for in the time you spend retyping.
Captions stay editable. CapCut burns them into the export. Change a word next month and you reopen the CapCut project and export again. Ours stay as live text layers in your project.
Nothing large gets uploaded. We send the extracted audio - a few MB for an hour of speech. CapCut takes the video file.
Compliance controls. Profanity masked in the text, full or partial, plus beep or mute on the audio itself. Meta Ads and YouTube Ads safe modes. Custom flagged words. Brand spelling so a product name is never wrong. CapCut has none of this, and for client and ad work it is usually the deciding factor.
Transcript cleanup. Filler words, pauses and repeated words removed during the pass, with emphatic repetition preserved.
No subscription needed. CapCut is $10 or $19.99 a month. We start at $9, and you can skip subscriptions entirely and buy credits once - they do not expire at the end of the month.
About that free tier
CapCut moved auto captions behind a paid tier in its pricing restructure, and availability on free now depends on your platform, region and app version. Some accounts hit usage caps or Pro prompts, some do not - and it can change under you at any time, which is what caught people out this year.
Ours is smaller but it is a stated allowance, not a moving target: 10 minutes of transcription every month, renewing, on every plan including free, with an account and no card. And if you only caption occasionally, buy credits once and never hold a subscription at all - CapCut has no equivalent to that.
How to choose
Use CapCut if you work on short social video, you are not in After Effects or Premiere, you want its template library, or you edit on a phone - and you do not mind paying for captions.
Use AEJuice if you are paying for captions either way and want the better deal: $9 a month against $10 or $19.99, or no subscription at all. You also get captions in the timeline you already edit, 145 languages instead of 25, audio-only upload, profanity masking and ad-safe wording, and text layers you can still change next month.
Try it free
Auto Captions runs inside After Effects and Premiere Pro. 10 minutes of transcription free every month, renewing, account required, no card.
- Auto Captions: Auto Captions - AEJuice
- The plugin is free to install: https://aejuice.com/free-plugins/?utm_source=forum&utm_medium=comparison&utm_campaign=vs-capcut
Checked on August 2, 2026 against public pricing and documentation. CapCut changes plans and free-tier limits often - reply if anything here is out of date and we will correct it.