Best AI podcast clip makers in 2026: 7 tools compared

How to test them: one episode, one scoring sheet

Every comparison article that skips this step is really a feature list. The fix is cheap: pick one 60-minute episode with two hosts on camera, run it through each tool, and score the output on the same sheet. Use an episode you have the rights to clip, and keep it the same file for every tool so the only variable is the software.

Score five things from 1 to 5. First, clip-pick quality: of the clips the tool returns, how many would you post without changing the start or end? Second, caption accuracy: read ten clips with the sound on and count wrong words, especially names and jargon. Third, reframing: in a two-speaker scene, does the crop move to whoever is talking, and does it jump when they interrupt each other? Fourth, export limits: resolution, watermark, file length and how long files stay available. Fifth, price per episode: what one 60-minute run costs on the plan you would actually buy.

Write down the minutes it took you to fix each tool's clips. That number, more than any feature table, tells you which tool saves time. Because we have not run this across all seven tools, everything below about competitors comes from their published pages, not from our own scoring.

Quick picks

Solo podcasters who want ranked clips with the least setup: KeyMo or OpusClip. Both pick and rank the moments, so you choose from a list instead of scrubbing a timeline.

Clippers working through many episodes a week: pay attention to how usage is counted. KeyMo and Vizard count source minutes or credits that equal minutes, OpusClip charges one credit per minute of imported video, and Klap counts clips generated. Which one is cheaper depends on how many minutes you import against how many clips you keep.

Teams: look at seats and shared workspaces. OpusClip's Pro plan includes two seats, Vizard charges extra per added seat, and Submagic prices per member.

Caption-first editing: Submagic and Descript, because the work is in the words on screen rather than in finding the moment. Shows recorded in Riverside: its Magic Clips run on the recording you already have there.

1. KeyMo

KeyMo takes a YouTube link or an MP4 or MOV upload (up to 10 GB), scores moments and returns up to 15 clips, best first, each with a score out of 10 and a one-line reason. Only clips scoring 7 or higher are kept, so a weak episode returns fewer. Clips are reframed to 9:16 with automatic face tracking, captioned word by word in one of 12 styles, and exported as 1080p H.264/AAC MP4 with no watermark on any plan. A chat editor handles fixes.

Pricing is by source minutes: Starter is $12 a month for 300 source minutes and Pro is $29 a month for 900. There is no free plan and no trial. A 60-minute episode uses 60 source minutes, so Starter covers about five such episodes a month.

Limits: KeyMo does not export audio-only clips, does not import from Spotify links, and we have not published results for specific two-camera layouts, so check each reframed clip before posting.

2. OpusClip

OpusClip's help centre says processing costs 1 credit per minute of the original video imported, so a 30-minute video is 30 credits (checked 2026-10-11). Its pricing page lists Starter at $15 a month with 150 credits and Pro at $29 a month with 300 credits per pack, with a Free plan of 60 credits that carries a watermark (checked 2026-10-11). On those numbers one 60-minute episode costs 60 credits, which is 40 percent of a Starter month.

Its help centre gives a virality score from 0 to 99, available on Starter and Pro, and guidance of 23 to 32 clips from a 30 to 60 minute video (checked 2026-10-11). Supported length is up to 10 hours. The Free plan crops a 1080p source to 608 by 1080 rather than a full 1080 by 1920 frame, according to the help centre figures we recorded. Note that OpusClip advertises a free trial, which KeyMo does not have.

3. Vizard

Vizard's pricing page lists a free plan of 60 credits a month with 720p export and a watermark, Creator at $29 a month and Business at $39 a month, with 1 credit equal to 1 minute of uploaded video (checked 2026-10-11). Credits are charged once per project even if you use both clipping and transcription. Extra team members on Business are charged per seat.

Vizard says it works best on speech-based video such as podcasts and interviews and recommends videos longer than 15 minutes; its help centre notes that background music, accented speech and poor audio can reduce transcription quality. Its pricing table lists 40 transcription languages. The pricing page and the help centre disagree on some upload limits, so confirm before uploading very long files.

4. Klap

Klap bills by clips generated rather than by minutes. Its pricing page lists $14 a month for 100 clips, $39 for 300 and $94 for 1,000, each shown as billed yearly, and offers 1 video free with no credit card (checked 2026-10-11). Klap states it never adds its own watermark, including on the free video, and that it handles source videos up to 4 hours long.

Per-clip billing suits you if you keep most of what the tool returns. It suits you less if you want a long list to choose from and discard most of it, because every generated clip counts.

5. Submagic

Submagic is built around captions and short-form editing. Its pricing page lists Starter at $19 a month ($12 billed yearly) with 45 credits equal to 15 videos and a 2-minute video duration, Pro at $39 ($23 yearly) with 5 minutes, and Business at $69 ($41 yearly) with 30 minutes and 4K 60 FPS export (checked 2026-10-11). Those duration caps mean it is a poor fit for dropping in a raw 60-minute episode on the lower plans.

The Magic Clips feature is Submagic's route from long video to clips. Pick it when your priority is caption styling and polish on clips you already have, not when you want the tool to read an hour of conversation and rank it.

6. Descript

Descript is a text-based editor first: you edit video by editing the transcript, and its caption tool lets you fix the text once and have caption timing follow (checked 2026-10-13). Its pricing page lists a Free plan with 60 media minutes a month and watermarked 720p export, and paid plans with 600 to 2,400 media minutes a month per editor. Clips are limited on Free and included on paid plans, and the page says its Underlord assistant picks moments and makes clips.

The monthly and yearly prices on the page we read were not labelled, so we do not quote them here; check the page before you buy. Descript suits people who want a full editor with clipping as one feature, and costs you more time per clip than a pick-and-rank tool.

7. Riverside Magic Clips

Riverside's Magic Clips are created automatically for recordings longer than 3 minutes that have a transcript. Riverside says it typically finds 2 clips per 5 minutes of conversation, each generally 30 to 90 seconds, and calls the feature experimental (checked 2026-10-11). Clips are scored from 99 down to 70 relative to the others in the same batch.

The Pro plan is listed at $24 a month billed annually, with a 14-day free trial; the Free plan exports clips at up to 720p with a Riverside watermark. Riverside cannot transcribe a YouTube video from its link, so this option makes the most sense if you already record there.

Ranking and reframing of two-speaker video

Two things go wrong on interview video. The ranking can favor a loud tangent over a clean answer, and the reframe can crop to the wrong face. Check both on your test episode.

For ranking, open the top five clips from each tool and ask whether a stranger could follow them cold. A clip that needs the previous five minutes fails, whatever its score. A score or reason helps you decide faster, but treat it as a sorting aid, not proof a clip will perform.

For reframing, scrub through a part of the episode where the hosts talk over each other and where one host laughs while the other speaks. Watch for the crop swinging between faces, for a speaker cut off at the edge, and for captions that sit on top of a face. Most tools crop a landscape frame to 9:16, which discards roughly two thirds of the width, so a wide two-shot cannot show both people at once. If you need both people on screen, check whether a tool offers another layout before you pay.

Also check where captions sit, so they do not land under the buttons and text each platform overlays on a vertical video.

Pricing models: credits, minutes, clips and seats

The same episode costs different amounts depending on what is counted. KeyMo counts source minutes. OpusClip and Vizard use credits that equal one minute of video. Klap counts clips. Submagic converts credits into a number of videos with a length cap. Descript and Riverside count media hours plus separate AI credits.

For a clipper who imports a lot and keeps a few clips each, minute-based pricing is predictable: you know in advance what an episode costs. Per-clip pricing rewards a tool that returns few, strong clips. Seat pricing matters only if more than one person logs in. Whichever you pick, calculate the cost of your real month, for example four 60-minute episodes at 240 minutes, rather than reading the headline price.

On free plans, be exact. Several of these tools have one or offer a trial; KeyMo has neither. KeyMo's lowest price is the $12 Starter plan, and every clip is exported without a watermark on every plan.

Which one to pick for your workflow

If you want to hand over an episode and get a ranked list back, shortlist KeyMo, OpusClip, Vizard and Klap, then run your test episode through the two whose pricing model fits how you work. If your edge is caption design, start with Submagic. If you live inside a transcript editor, start with Descript. If you already record in Riverside, try Magic Clips first because you avoid an upload.

Run the sheet, count your fix-up minutes, and buy the tool with the lowest minutes per postable clip, not the one with the longest feature list. For a direct feature-by-feature view of any single rival, see our alternatives pages, for example /alternatives/opus-clip, and our walkthrough at /guides/how-to-clip-a-podcast. If you're specifically targeting YouTube Shorts, see /guides/best-ai-clip-tool-for-youtube-shorts-2026 for the resolution and safe-zone specifics.