Updated: August 2, 2026
After Effects has no built-in speech to text. Premiere has it, After Effects does not, so every AE caption workflow runs through a plugin. This compares the ones people actually buy, with prices checked on August 2, 2026.
Short version: AEJuice Auto Captions is $9 a month or one-time credits with no subscription, covers 145 languages, and adds the moderation and cleanup controls the others do not have. AutoCaption is the one to look at if your footage can never leave your machine, because it transcribes locally. Captioneer is the closest on animation presets and offers a $150 lifetime license.
The field
| Plugin | Price | Transcription | Languages | Apps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AEJuice Auto Captions | 10 min free monthly, then $9/mo or one-time credits | AI, cloud, best-in-class accuracy | 145 | AE + Premiere |
| Captioneer | $15/mo or $150 lifetime | AI from audio | Not stated | AE + Premiere |
| AutoCaption | $8/mo, $80/yr or $150 perpetual | AI, runs locally, Deepgram Nova-3 and Whisper Large v3 | Not stated | AE |
| Voice2Captions | Paid | AI, Whisper | 99+ | AE + Premiere |
| Subtitle Pro | Freemium | None, manual | n/a | AE + Premiere |
| QuickCaption | Paid | None, SRT import | n/a | AE |
| pt_ImportSubtitles | Paid | None, SRT/WebVTT import | n/a | AE |
| Motion Subtitle Maker | Freemium | None, SRT import | n/a | AE |
| textsyncr | Freemium | Audio analysis to markers | Not stated | AE |
Two things stand out from that list.
Half of them do not transcribe at all. They import an SRT you got somewhere else and animate it. Fine and cheap if your transcript already exists, useless if it does not.
Most work in one app, not both. AutoCaption, QuickCaption, pt_ImportSubtitles, Motion Subtitle Maker and textsyncr are After Effects only. Others are Premiere only. If you cut in Premiere and finish graphics in After Effects - which is how most people actually work - you end up buying and learning two different tools, with two different caption looks that do not match. AEJuice, Captioneer and Voice2Captions are the ones that cover both.
Feature comparison, transcribing plugins only
| AEJuice | Captioneer | AutoCaption | Voice2Captions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works in After Effects | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Works in Premiere Pro | Yes | Yes | No, AE only | Yes |
| Same captions across both apps | Yes | Yes | n/a | Yes |
| Languages | 145 | Not stated | Not stated | 99+ |
| Runs offline | No | No | Yes | Depends on model |
| Nothing uploaded | Audio only | No | Yes, fully local | Local model |
| Captions as editable text layers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Per-speaker colors | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Profanity masking (text) | Full or partial | No | No | No |
| Profanity handling (audio) | Beep or mute | No | No | No |
| Meta / YouTube ad safe modes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Custom flagged words | Yes | No | No | No |
| Brand spelling terms | Yes | No | No | No |
| Typo check | Yes | No | No | No |
| Filler word removal | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Pause removal | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| AI line grouping by meaning | Yes | No | No | No |
| Emoji inserted where they fit | Yes, with skin tone | No | No | No |
| Spelling and brand-name correction | Yes | No | No | No |
| Translation | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Dual-language subtitles | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Chapters, title, description | Yes | No | No | No |
| Text Based Editing | Yes | No | No | No |
| SRT export | Yes | Not stated | Yes | Yes |
| One-time purchase option | Yes, credits | Yes, $150 lifetime | Yes, $150 perpetual | Not stated |
“Not stated” means it was not confirmed on the product’s public page - not that it is missing.
The local Whisper problem
AutoCaption and Voice2Captions run Whisper on your machine. That is a real privacy win and it is why people choose them. It also means the work stops at a raw transcript.
The accuracy claims do not survive contact with real audio. Whisper Large v3 is a 2023 model and it loses to current models on the standard benchmarks - our engine beats it, Deepgram Nova-3 and Gemini 2.0 Flash across 99 languages. Running it locally makes it worse, not better: a model small and quantized enough to run on an editing workstation without a dedicated GPU is not the full-size model in the benchmark. Names, product terms, accents and crosstalk come back wrong, and you fix them by hand on every job.
Phrasing is always off. Grouping words into caption cards is a language problem, not an audio problem. Without a language model you split on character count and timing, so a phrase breaks across two cards and a line ends mid-thought. The words can be perfectly correct and the captions still read badly. This is the part people notice on screen and cannot fix without retyping.
Everything after the transcript needs AI, and there is none. No emoji chosen to fit the sentence. No brand spelling, so your product name is misspelled every time it is said. No typo pass. No judgement about which repetitions are stumbles and which are emphasis. A local speech model transcribes; it cannot do any of this, because these are language tasks and the LLM is not there.
That is the honest trade. You get privacy and no subscription, and you pay for it in cleanup time on every single video.
Where the others win
AutoCaption transcribes locally. Nothing is uploaded, no account, no internet needed. If your footage is under an NDA that forbids anything leaving the building, that is decisive and no cloud tool can match it, ours included. It is also the cheapest subscription here at $8 a month. The cost is everything in the section above: a weaker transcript, mechanical line breaks, and no AI cleanup. AE only.
Captioneer has a lifetime license. $150 once and you are done, plus a strong preset library aimed at animated social captions. If you caption constantly for years, the maths beats any subscription.
Voice2Captions covers 99+ languages with Whisper, in both AE and Premiere.
The SRT importers are cheaper. If your transcript already exists - from a client, from Premiere, from a transcription service - Subtitle Pro, QuickCaption, pt_ImportSubtitles and Motion Subtitle Maker just animate it, for less money.
Where AEJuice wins
Accuracy, then AI on top of it. 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. Then an LLM does the part a speech model cannot: grouping lines by meaning, fixing spelling and brand names, placing emoji where they fit, telling a stumble from emphasis. That second stage is the whole difference between a transcript and finished captions.
Languages: 145. More than any other plugin here.
Moderation and compliance. 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. Brand spelling so a product name is never wrong. No other AE caption plugin has this, and for agency and ad work it is usually the deciding factor.
Transcript cleanup in the same pass. Filler words, pauses and repeated words removed, with emphatic repetition preserved. Find and replace, and a typo check.
AI line grouping. Captions are grouped by meaning, so a phrase does not split across two cards. Most tools split on character count and it shows.
More than captions from one transcript. Chapters, title and description for YouTube. Text Based Editing to cut the video by editing the transcript, in both AE and Premiere. Translation and dual-language subtitles.
Price and no lock-in. $9 a month is below Captioneer at $15. If you caption occasionally, buy credits once and hold no subscription at all - your credits do not expire at the end of the month.
How to choose
- Footage cannot leave your machine - AutoCaption, and accept the cleanup work that comes with it.
- You want to buy once and caption for years - Captioneer at $150 lifetime, or AEJuice credits.
- You already have the SRT - Subtitle Pro, QuickCaption or pt_ImportSubtitles.
- You want the most accurate transcript, the most languages, and advertiser-safe wording - AEJuice.
- You work in Premiere as well as After Effects - AEJuice, Captioneer or Voice2Captions. Most of the rest are one app only, so check before you buy: a plugin that cannot follow you between AE and Premiere means a second purchase and a second caption style.
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-ae-plugins
Caption one real project on the free minutes and compare the transcript against whatever you use now, on the same audio.
Checked on August 2, 2026 against public product pages. Prices change - reply if anything here is out of date and we will correct it.