Updated: August 2, 2026
Premiere Pro already transcribes for free. Speech to Text is in the app right now, it runs on your own machine, it needs no upload and there is no limit on how much you use it. That is the whole case for it, and it is a real one.
It is free, but it is far from great. The transcription misses names, product terms and anything said with an accent, so you read the transcript and retype the mistakes on every job. Line breaks are decided by character count rather than meaning, so captions split mid-thought and read badly even when every word is correct. And the language list is short - if Adobe never shipped a pack for your language, the feature cannot help you at all.
You do not have to leave Premiere to fix any of that. AEJuice Auto Captions runs inside Premiere Pro as a plugin, on the same sequence, on the same timeline. Nothing gets uploaded except the extracted audio, nothing is exported and re-imported, and the captions land as text layers you keep editing in Premiere. It also runs in After Effects, where Adobe’s Speech to Text does not exist at all.
So the real choice is not Premiere versus some web app. It is Premiere’s basic built-in captions versus better captions in the same Premiere project.
Comparison
| AEJuice Auto Captions | Premiere Speech to Text | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | 10 min free monthly, then from $9/mo or one-time credits | Included with Premiere |
| Works in Premiere Pro | Yes, as a plugin on your timeline | Yes, built in |
| Works in After Effects | Yes | Does not exist |
| Runs offline | No, audio is sent for transcription | Yes, fully on device |
| What is uploaded | Extracted audio only, a few MB | Nothing |
| Usage limit | Metered transcription minutes | Unlimited |
| Transcription accuracy | Best-in-class, 96.7% on English | Built for offline speed, not top accuracy |
| Languages | 145 | Around a dozen language packs |
| Translation | Yes | Yes, via Translate Captions |
| Captions land as | Animated text layers | Caption track |
| Caption styling | Fonts, colors, position, highlight words, emoji, animation | Basic styling, or convert to graphics |
| Line grouping | AI, grouped by meaning | Character count and timing |
| Word-by-word animation | Yes | No |
| Highlight spoken word | Yes | No |
| Emoji, with skin tone | Yes | No |
| 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 | Manual |
| Pause removal | Yes | Manual |
| Repeated word handling | Yes | Manual |
| Audio events like [laughter] | Yes | No |
| SRT export | Yes | Yes |
| Chapters, title, description | Yes | No |
| Edit video by transcript | Yes, Text Based Editing in AE and Premiere | Yes, Premiere only |
Where Premiere’s built-in wins
- It is free and already installed. No account, no credits, no extra purchase.
- It runs entirely on your machine. Since Premiere 22.2 transcription uses downloadable on-device language packs, so nothing is uploaded and it works with no internet at all. For footage under NDA that cannot leave the building, this matters more than any feature.
- No limits. Transcribe as much as you like, forever, at no cost.
- It is a real caption track. Standards-compliant, exports to broadcast caption formats, understood by every downstream tool.
If you need plain subtitles on a Premiere timeline and you do not mind verifying and editing the result each time, use it.
Where AEJuice wins
Transcription accuracy. This is the difference you notice first. We run the most accurate transcription model available - on the standard FLEURS and Common Voice benchmarks it holds the lowest word error rate across 99 languages, beating Whisper Large V3, Google Gemini 2.0 Flash and Deepgram Nova-3, at 96.7% accuracy on English.
Adobe’s on-device packs are solving a different problem: they have to be small enough to run on your laptop with no internet and no GPU, and that costs accuracy. You feel it on accents, crosstalk, music beds and technical vocabulary - exactly the material where fixing the transcript by hand eats the time the tool was supposed to save.
Languages. 145 against Adobe’s short list of language packs. If you work in a language Adobe never shipped a pack for, the built-in feature simply cannot help you.
After Effects. Speech to Text does not exist in After Effects. There is nothing to compare.
Captions as designed graphics. Premiere gives you a caption track with basic styling. We give animated text layers: word-by-word reveals, the spoken word highlighted, emoji with skin tone, fonts and colors you control, positioned where you want, keyframeable like any other layer.
Cleanup during transcription. Filler words, pauses and repeated words removed as part of the pass, with emphatic repetition preserved. Custom find-and-replace, brand spelling so a product name is never wrong, and a typo check.
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 for advertiser-restricted words. Custom flagged words. None of this exists in the built-in feature and it is usually why agencies stop using it.
Text Based Editing in both apps. Cutting a video by deleting words from the transcript works in After Effects as well as Premiere, and it runs on the same accurate transcript the captions use. Adobe’s version is Premiere only.
No retyping. This is the hidden cost of a cheaper transcription model. Every misheard name, product term and accented word is a manual fix, and on a long interview that is the whole time saving gone. A more accurate transcript is worth more than any feature in this list.
AI decides where lines break. We group words into captions by meaning, so a phrase does not split across two cards and a line does not end mid-thought. Premiere splits on character count and timing, which is why built-in captions often read awkwardly even when the transcription is right.
Extras from the same transcript. Chapters, title and description generated for YouTube upload.
How to choose
Use Premiere’s built-in if you do not mind checking and correcting the result every time. It is free, it is offline and it is unlimited, and you pay for that with your own time on every job - reading the transcript, retyping the words it got wrong, and fixing line breaks that landed mid-thought. On a short clip in a language Adobe supports, with clean audio, that is a fair trade.
Use AEJuice if you want the transcript right the first time instead of proofreading every job, captions that look designed rather than transcribed, a language Adobe never shipped, or profanity masking and ad-safe wording. It installs into Premiere Pro and After Effects, so you keep working exactly where you already work.
Using both is reasonable: the built-in for a quick subtitle pass on clean audio, AEJuice when accuracy matters, the captions are part of the design, or compliance rules apply.
Try it free
Auto Captions gives you 10 minutes of transcription free every month - a real allowance that renews, not a trial that expires. You need an account, no card.
- Auto Captions: Auto Captions - AEJuice
- The plugin itself is free to install: https://aejuice.com/free-plugins/?utm_source=forum&utm_medium=comparison&utm_campaign=vs-premiere-builtin
It works in Premiere Pro and After Effects. Caption one real project on the free minutes and compare the transcript against what the built-in gives you on the same audio - that is the honest test.
Checked on August 2, 2026. Adobe’s supported language list is on their site and changes as packs are added - reply if anything here is out of date and we will correct it.