Comparison
Captions app pricing: plans, credits and what a month costs
By the KeyMo team · Updated
The Captions app has a free plan for basic editing, but AI features need a paid plan. Its pricing page lists Max at $24.99 a month with 500 credits and Frontier from $69.99, and its help centre adds Basic at $9.99. The Clips tool, which cuts long videos into shorts, starts at Max. Prices are USD and reflect iOS plans.
What the Captions app costs, plan by plan
If you are asking what Captions app costs, the short version is: nothing for basic editing, and from $9.99 to $279.99 a month once AI features come in. The vendor's own pages do not fully agree with each other, so the table notes which page each row came from. Prices are in US dollars as read on 2026-10-11.
| Plan | Price per month | Credits per month | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Pricing page: none. Help centre: 60 to 200 lifetime credits that do not refresh | Basic tools such as trimming and transitions, and one caption template |
| Lite (Android only) | $4.99 | Not listed | Help centre only. Essential manual editing on Android |
| Basic | $9.99 | 200 | Help centre only; not on the pricing page. Formerly called Pro or Starter |
| Max | $24.99 | 500 | Includes Clips, the chat editor, AI twins, generative B-roll, music and sound effects |
| Frontier | $69.99 | 1,400 | Everything in Max plus the most sophisticated generative models |
| Frontier 2x | $139.99 | 2,800 | Same features, bigger credit pool |
| Frontier 4x | $279.99 | 5,600 | Top-up credits are offered on this tier, and to legacy Teams and Business customers |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Bulk credit discounts, custom seats, account management |
What credits pay for
Most of the plan comparison is about credits, so it helps to know what burns them. The help centre lists these costs:
- Prompt to Video: 16 credits for every 6 seconds generated.
- AI Edit: 10 to 40 credits, depending on video length, model and algorithm.
- Changing an AI Edit clip style: 1 credit.
- Chat-based editing: 2 credits per message you send, plus 1 credit per action it takes.
- Credits are spent even if you never export the project.
Unused credits roll over on Basic and above, up to a total of 3 times your monthly allowance. Downgrading forfeits the excess, and cancelling forfeits what is left when the billing period ends. You cannot buy individual credits on standard plans: the page says to move up a plan instead. The help centre does not list a credit cost for a Clips run, which matters for the example below.
Worked example: one 60-minute podcast a week for a month
A month holds four or five weekly episodes, so a one-hour show means 240 to 300 minutes of source video. Here is what each plan can say about that job from published rules.
| Option | Monthly price | What the published rules say |
|---|---|---|
| Captions Free | $0 | Basic editing only. Projects that use AI features need a paid plan to export. Clips is not included. |
| Captions Basic | $9.99 | 200 credits a month, but the pricing page lists Clips under Max and the subscriptions page lists it under Max, not Basic. |
| Captions Max | $24.99 | Includes Clips, which takes a file up to 3 hours and 10 GB or a YouTube link, and returns up to 30+ clips ranked by a virality score. A one-hour episode fits. The credit cost of a Clips run is not published, so we cannot say how many episodes 500 credits cover once you add chat edits. |
| KeyMo Starter | $12 | 300 source minutes: four hour-long episodes use 240, five use exactly 300. |
| KeyMo Pro | $29 | 900 source minutes, enough for the same weekly show plus a back catalogue. |
On price alone the gap between Captions Max and KeyMo Starter is $12.99 a month. Captions' yearly plans are discounted but the pages give no figure. KeyMo's yearly price is ten times the monthly one, so Starter is $120 a year and Pro is $290. KeyMo has no free plan and no trial, so there is nothing to try before paying.
One more catch for longer shows. The Clips page says up to 3 hours, but the general Import and Upload page says up to 60 minutes per file. A 60-minute episode sits at that line, and a 75-minute one might not. The pages do not reconcile this, so test with your longest file.
Free plan, watermark and export rules
The answer to does Captions AI cost money is therefore yes for anything beyond basic editing. Free exports of basic manual edits are allowed. If a project uses AI features such as AI Edit, caption styles, eye contact correction or background music, a paid subscription is required to export.
On watermarks, the help centre lists no watermark for Free and paid plans, with one exception: a Basic subscriber who uses a Max-only feature (Co-Editor, AI Edit, AI-generated media or AI Creator for non-grandfathered users) gets a watermark on the export. The export screen lets you choose resolution, frame rate and bitrate, and download captions as a separate SRT file. No maximum resolution is stated.
Yearly billing, cancelling and refunds
- Yearly plans bill 12 months upfront at a discount. The discount is not stated on the pages we read.
- Monthly plans bought on the website are non-refundable but can be cancelled any time. For App Store and Play Store purchases, refund requests go through Apple or Google.
- Subscriptions renew automatically. Cancel at least 24 hours before renewal; they can be cancelled but not paused, and deleting the app does not cancel.
- Subscriptions are meant for one person and cannot be shared. Legacy Teams and Business plans can add seats, and Enterprise has custom seats.
- The terms say Captions may offer promotional free or discounted trials, but no specific trial is on the pricing page.
Captions app or KeyMo for a weekly show?
Captions is a wider product: a mobile and web app with captions in 100+ languages, 100+ caption styles, AI twins and generative B-roll. If you want an all-in-one editor on your phone, it does more. The cost is a credit system with several price tiers, and Clips only from Max upward.
KeyMo does one job. It turns an uploaded MP4 or MOV, or a YouTube link on paid plans, into up to 15 vertical clips scored out of 10 with 12 caption styles, no watermark on any plan, and a price counted in source minutes. See the KeyMo plans or the Captions app review. If you are weighing Captions against another clipper, read Captions app vs OpusClip.
- Pick Captions if you want in-app editing, many caption languages or avatar features, and can live with credits.
- Pick KeyMo if the job is clipping a weekly long video and you want a flat price, scored clips and clean exports.
Sources: Captions pricing (checked 11 October 2026); Captions help: subscriptions and plans (checked 11 October 2026); Captions help: understanding credits (checked 11 October 2026); Captions help: manage subscription and billing (checked 11 October 2026); Captions help: cancel your subscription (checked 11 October 2026); Captions help: publish and export (checked 11 October 2026); Captions help: watermark on exported video (checked 11 October 2026); Captions help: import and upload (checked 11 October 2026); Captions help: add captions (checked 11 October 2026); Captions Clips feature page (checked 11 October 2026); Captions caption feature page (checked 11 October 2026); Captions terms and conditions (checked 11 October 2026).