The Submagic alternative that is actually free

Submagic's free plan covers 3 videos a month, caps them at 1 minute 30, and stamps its watermark on every export. Burncaps burns animated word-by-word captions into unlimited videos, free, with no watermark and nothing uploaded.

Caption a video free
  • No watermark
  • Nothing uploaded
  • No sign-up
  • No limits

Live preview, rendered on this page by the same engine that burns your video.

Where the two tools stand

What mattersBurncapsSubmagic
PriceFree. Pro is £29 onceFrom $12 per member per month billed annually, $19 monthly
Free planUnlimited videos, any length3 videos a month, 1 min 30 and 200 MB each
Watermark on free planNeverYes
Where your video is processedOn your device, in your browserUploaded to their servers
Account requiredNoYes
Cost after 12 months£0, or £29 total with ProFrom $144 per member

Submagic prices and free-plan limits taken from submagic.co/pricing, checked August 2026. If they have changed since, their page is the authority.

An honest line on what each does

What Burncaps does

One job, done properly: transcribe on your device, let you fix any word with a click, then burn animated word-by-word captions into a clean MP4. 10 styles, about 100 languages, SRT, VTT, ASS and text export included.

What Submagic does that we do not

AI b-roll suggestions, auto-zooms, hook templates, stock media and team workspaces. If those carry your workflow, a subscription tool earns its fee. Captions alone do not need one.

Why Burncaps can be free

Cloud caption tools pay for GPU servers every time you upload, so they must charge monthly and watermark free exports. Burncaps runs on your hardware. Our cost per video is zero, so the free tier is real and permanent.

Questions, answered plainly

Is Burncaps a full replacement for Submagic?

For captions, yes. For everything else, no. Submagic also sells AI b-roll, auto-zooms, hook templates and team workspaces. Burncaps does one job: it transcribes your video on your device and burns animated word-by-word captions into it. If captions are what you pay Submagic for, you can stop paying. If you rely on the other features, keep the tool that does them.

Do I need an account?

No. There is no sign-up, no email capture and no login. Open the page, drop a video, export. A Pro licence key exists only if you choose to buy the premium styles.

Is the caption quality as good?

Burncaps uses OpenAI's open-source Whisper model with word-level timestamps, the same family of speech recognition most caption tools build on. Every word is editable with one click before you export, so the final accuracy is in your hands. Pro adds the large-turbo model for harder audio.

What does Pro add?

Pro is a single payment of £29, not a subscription. It adds 5 premium styles (Neon, Fire, Boxed, Typewriter, Bounce), the max-accuracy Whisper model, and every future Pro feature. The free tier stays unlimited and unwatermarked either way.

Does it work on a phone?

Transcription, editing and subtitle-file export work in most modern browsers. Burned-in MP4 export needs Chrome or Edge on a computer, because those browsers expose hardware video encoding. That is an honest limit of doing everything on your device.