Past five captions a month, do the math
CaptionX's free tier is genuinely free — five caption generations, five silence removals, no trial clock. Once you outgrow it, the jump is to $19.95 a month, or $199 a year paid upfront. Backstage Cut, a Premiere Pro extension, charges by the minute instead, and the same transcript also drives zooms, chapters and B-roll.
CaptionX pricing as published on their own pricing page, August 2026 · Free (limited), $19.95–$79/month · Backstage Cut is $9/month with 30 free minutes
The short version: CaptionX's free tier is real but capped at 5 caption generations a month. Its Pro tier is $19.95/month ($199/year) for unlimited captions — Backstage Cut is $9/month with 300 minutes and three features CaptionX doesn't have.
| CaptionX | Backstage Cut | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 5 caption generations, 5 silence removals, 3 profanity filters, 2 eye-contact corrections a month — no time limit. | 30 free minutes total, every AI feature unlocked, no credit card. |
| Paid tier | $19.95/month ($199/year) for unlimited captions and silence removal. Eye-contact correction needs the $79/month Pro+ tier. | $9/month for 300 minutes, any mix of features. |
| Distribution | Listed on Adobe Exchange. | Installed as a .zxp through ZXP Installer, self-signed by us rather than a commercial certificate authority — installers may show an unverified-publisher notice (see FAQ). |
| Eye contact correction | AI eye-contact correction, up to 7 hours/month on the top tier. | No eye-contact correction. |
| Beyond captions | Captions, silence removal, profanity filter, eye-contact correction. | Captions, zooms, B-roll matching, chapters, silence cutting. |
Where CaptionX wins
Every comparison page on the internet says the other tool is worse at everything. Here is where CaptionX genuinely beats us — if one of these is your situation, buy theirs and save yourself the trial.
CaptionX does it better
- AI eye-contact correction has no equivalent here at all
- Listed on Adobe Exchange, which some studios require for procurement
- A genuinely usable free tier with no expiry, not just a trial
- Profanity filtering built in; we don't have a dedicated version of that
What you get here instead
- Zooms, B-roll matching and chapters — CaptionX doesn't do any of the three, at any tier
- One transcript drives all six features, instead of separate limits per feature (5 captions, 5 silence removals, 3 profanity filters)
- 300 minutes on the entry paid plan against a fixed monthly generation count
- Per-minute pricing scales down in a quiet month instead of a flat annual charge
- $9/month against $19.95/month (or $199/year) once you outgrow their free tier
- $59/year (about $4.92/month) against their $199/year, if you'd rather pay once
Five captions a month is genuinely enough for you, or eye-contact correction and Adobe Exchange procurement matter more than zooms, chapters or B-roll. If you'll outgrow the free tier, compare $19.95/month against what 300 minutes actually costs you here.
Try it on the video
you're editing tonight
30 free minutes is a whole video, start to finish, on your own footage — no card, and nothing to undo if you don't like it.