Captions AI Pricing and Captions App Pricing With Credit Costs in 2026

Captions AI has two paid plan families in 2026: Max at $24.99 a month with 500 credits, and Frontier at $69.99 a month with 1,400 credits, sold in 2x ($139.99, 2,800 credits) and 4x ($279.99, 5,600 credits) sizes. Enterprise is quoted by sales, and the Free plan gives basic editing tools with a small one-time credit allowance. Credits pay for every AI feature, and generating a video from a prompt uses 16 credits every 6 seconds, so 500 credits buys about three minutes of generated video.

Captions is a mobile-first AI video editor. Most people use it to edit clips they film themselves: AI Edit cuts the pauses, adds captions, zooms, b-roll, and music, and the app also offers AI avatars, digital twins, lip-synced dubbing, and prompt to video generation. The prices below come from the Captions pricing page and the credit rates from the official Captions help center, both checked in October 2026 for US buyers. Captions notes that the prices on its pricing page reflect its iOS plans, so check the in-app checkout on the day you pay.

Captions AI pricing plans in 2026

Captions sells yearly plans billed 12 months up front at a discount, but the pricing page does not show the yearly price, so you only see it in checkout. The help center also lists a Basic plan at $9.99 a month with 200 credits, which is not shown on the current pricing page. Many review sites still call the top plans Scale, Scale 2x, and Scale 4x; those are the same credit sizes now sold under the Frontier name.

How much does Captions AI cost per month?

Captions AI costs $24.99 a month for Max and $69.99, $139.99, or $279.99 a month for the three Frontier sizes on monthly billing. Yearly billing is cheaper per month but is charged up front, and the exact yearly price appears only at checkout. Enterprise pricing is custom. The Free plan costs nothing but includes almost no AI usage.

The jump from Max to Frontier 1x is $45 a month for 900 more credits and access to the newest generation models. Above that, the Frontier sizes are a straight multiple: double the price, double the credits, same features. That makes the per-credit price flat at about 5 cents from Max to Frontier 4x, so moving up a tier buys volume, not a discount.

How Captions credits work and what a minute of video costs

A Captions credit is a unit of AI usage, not a minute of video. Every AI feature draws from the same monthly balance, and the cost depends on what you ask for. These are the rates published in the Captions help center:

The minute and edit columns are arithmetic on the official rates and assume the whole balance goes to one feature. Real months mix them: an AI Edit plus a few generated b-roll clips and a handful of chat edits can use 60 to 100 credits on one short.

The split matters. If you film yourself and use Captions to edit, credits stretch a long way, because an AI Edit is a flat 10 to 40 credits whatever you shot. If you want Captions to generate the video from a prompt, the same 500 credits buys about three minutes in total, which is three one-minute shorts a month on Max.

How many videos can you make on each Captions plan?

For AI Edit on clips you record, Max covers roughly 12 to 50 edited videos a month and Frontier 1x roughly 35 to 140, before any extra generated b-roll. For one-minute videos generated from a prompt at about 160 credits each, Max makes about 3 a month, Frontier 1x about 8, Frontier 2x about 17, and Frontier 4x about 35.

Unused credits roll over to the next month on paid plans, up to three times your monthly allowance, so a quiet month on Max can bank up to 1,500 credits. Only Frontier 4x, Teams, and Business customers can buy top-up credits, and Captions does not publish the top-up price.

Is Captions AI free?

Captions has a Free plan, but it is for trying the editor rather than publishing with AI. The pricing page lists basic tools like trimming, transitions, and some media library assets, and the help center says free users get a one-time allotment of 60 to 200 credits that never refreshes. Once those are spent, AI Edit, avatars, and generation need Max at $24.99 a month or higher.

How much does the Captions API cost?

The Captions developer API, branded Mirage, is billed separately from the app plans and charged by usage. According to the Captions help center, adding captions to a video costs $0.15 per minute, rounded up to the nearest minute, so a 2.5 minute video bills as 3 minutes, or $0.45. Generating avatar video with Mirage costs $0.15 per second, rounded up to 6 second increments, which works out to $9 for each minute of avatar video.

That split tells you what the API is good for. Captioning recorded video in bulk is cheap at 15 cents a minute. Generating avatar video through the API is priced like a premium avatar tool, so budget it per finished minute before you build a product on it.

What does a year of Captions cost for a team?

The self-serve plans are built for one creator per subscription. A team that needs several people publishing usually buys a plan per person or talks to sales about Enterprise seats. Here is the yearly cost on monthly billing, with the flat VidUp plans next to them for teams that want finished footage videos from text rather than edits of their own recordings.

Captions yearly prices are lower than the monthly totals shown, but Captions does not publish them, so the table uses monthly billing. The comparison only holds if you need the same kind of video. If you are the face of your channel and film on your phone, Captions Max is the cheaper and better tool, and VidUp does not edit your recordings at all.

Which Captions plan should you buy?

Stay on Free to test the editor and the caption styles. The one-time credits run out quickly once you try AI Edit.

Buy Max if you film yourself and want AI Edit to cut, caption, and dress up your clips. At 10 to 40 credits per edit, 500 credits covers a daily posting schedule for most solo creators, and rollover protects slow months.

Buy Frontier 1x if you also want generated scenes, b-roll, or full prompt to video with the newest models. If the whole balance goes to prompt to video, that is about 8 generated minutes a month.

Buy Frontier 2x or 4x only after a month of real usage shows you need it, since the features are identical and only the credits change. Frontier 4x is also the only self-serve size that can buy top-ups.

Talk to sales about Enterprise if several people need access under one bill, or you need training data exclusion in the contract.

When a flat text-to-video plan is the better buy

Captions is worth its price when you are on camera: talking-head shorts, podcast clips, and creator content where AI Edit saves an hour of trimming per video. It is also popular for AI actor ads, and teams producing those at volume often compare it with an AI UGC ad generator that builds the ad from a product URL, since the brief starts from the product page either way.

A lot of business video has nobody on camera. Product explainers, ads, blog posts turned into video, and faceless social shorts run on footage, voiceover, and captions. For that, VidUp takes a script, an article, or a product URL and returns a narrated video with burned-in captions, licensed stock footage matched to each line, and music, in 9:16, 1:1, and 16:9 from one render. Starter is $49 a month ($24 billed yearly) for 30 videos, Growth is $99 ($49 billed yearly) for 75 with 2 seats, and Pro is $199 ($99 billed yearly) for 200 with 3 seats, 4K, and an API. There are no credits and no per-second rates. VidUp does not edit your own clips, has no avatars or digital twins, and narrates in English, so if any of those is the reason you are buying, Captions is the better fit.

If you are weighing a switch, Captions AI alternatives without avatars or credits covers who should switch and who should stay, and VidUp vs Captions compares the two feature by feature. The no-presenter workflow is on the faceless video generator page, and the other creator tools are priced in Submagic pricing, Opus Clip pricing, and HeyGen pricing. Category-wide numbers are in how much AI video generators cost, and the VidUp plans are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions about Captions AI pricing

Is Captions AI worth the money?

Captions is worth it for creators who film themselves often, because Max at $24.99 a month turns raw phone clips into captioned, edited shorts for 10 to 40 credits each. It is weaker value for fully generated video, since prompt to video uses about 160 credits a minute, which is about three minutes a month on Max.

Do Captions credits roll over?

Yes. On paid plans, unused credits roll over to the next month, up to a maximum of three times your monthly allowance, so Max can hold up to 1,500 credits and Frontier 1x up to 4,200. Free plan credits are a one-time allotment and never refresh.

What is the difference between Captions Max and Frontier?

Frontier costs $69.99 a month instead of $24.99, includes 1,400 credits instead of 500, and adds access to the most advanced generative AI models. Frontier also comes in 2x and 4x sizes with the same features and two or four times the credits, and Frontier 4x can buy extra credit top-ups.

How much is Captions Pro?

Captions no longer sells a plan called Pro on its pricing page. The older Pro and Scale names were replaced by Max at $24.99 a month and Frontier at $69.99, $139.99, and $279.99 a month. Older reviews quoting a Pro price around $9.99 refer to the earlier entry tier, now listed in the help center as Basic with 200 credits.

Can I cancel Captions anytime?

Yes. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your plan at any time, and the change applies from the next billing period. Yearly plans are billed 12 months up front, so read the refund terms before you pick yearly billing. Subscriptions bought through the App Store are managed and cancelled in your Apple account settings, not inside the app.

How many credits does a Captions video use?

It depends on how the video is made. Editing your own clip with AI Edit uses 10 to 40 credits per pass, while generating video from a prompt uses 16 credits every 6 seconds, about 160 a minute. Generated b-roll clips, images, and music add 1 to 140 credits each, depending on the model.