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, September 2026 · Free (limited), $19.95–$79/month · Backstage Cut is $9/month with a 7-day free trial
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. | Free 7-day trial, unlimited transcription, 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.
Asked about CaptionX
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. Backstage Cut is $9/month (₹699/month in India) for 300 transcribed minutes per rolling 30 days, after a 7-day free trial with no card, so the cheapest way to answer this for your own edit is to run the free trial on the video you are working on now and compare the result against CaptionX directly.
CaptionX is Free (limited), $19.95–$79/month, as published on their own pricing page in September 2026. Backstage Cut is $9/month (₹699/month in India) for 300 transcribed minutes per rolling 30 days, after a 7-day free trial with no card. Prices move, so check theirs before deciding — the date here is when we last read it.
Genuinely, these: 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. If one of those is your situation, CaptionX is the better buy and the trial will only cost you an evening finding that out.
Choose CaptionX if: 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. Choose Backstage Cut if what you want is: 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.
Try it on the video
you're editing tonight
7 days of unlimited transcription is plenty for a whole video, start to finish, on your own footage — no card, and nothing to undo if you don't like it.