Comparison /Checked Aug 17, 2026
Stay with Captions if you shoot short vertical video on your phone — it styles a clip faster than you could by hand. Come to BitterClip if you record real conversations: podcasts, coaching calls, workshops, anything from 20 minutes to 2 hours. Captions runs out of room there — the manual editor stops at 10 minutes and AI Edit takes one to two minutes of footage — while BitterClip takes the whole session and hands back a finished cut plus vertical clips.
Where Captions winsThe fastest way to style a short vertical video on your phone.
Pick BitterClip
BitterClip is where your recordings become finished episodes and clips. Record straight into a project from your browser, or bring footage from anywhere — phone, Zoom, Riverside, a camera — and a long session turns into a full cut and vertical clips you can keep changing. Cuts land on the word, undo works all the way back, and anything you can click you can also just ask for in ChatGPT or Claude.
Pick Captions
Captions, now made by Mirage, is a phone-first video app. It records, captions, and styles short vertical clips with almost no manual work, and it has bet hard on AI avatars and generated video. The iPhone app is the real product: the manual editor caps projects at 10 minutes, and AI Edit accepts at most 2 minutes of single-speaker vertical footage.
The comparison
| What you're comparing | BitterClip | Captions |
|---|---|---|
| Getting the footage in the first place | Record in the browser.Camera and mic from a phone or laptop, or upload footage you shot elsewhere. | Records on your phone. — better for Getting the footage in the first placeThe iOS app records in-app with a teleprompter and edits without leaving the app. |
| When the conversation ran ninety minutes | That's the normal case. — better for When the conversation ran ninety minutesA 20-minute-to-2-hour session comes in whole, and you cut from all of it. | You hit the ceiling fast.The manual editor caps at 10 minutes; AI Edit takes 2 minutes on iOS, 1 on web. |
| Cutting out a rambling answer | Delete the words. — better for Cutting out a rambling answerSelect the sentence in the transcript, delete it, and the cut lands on the word. | No editing by transcript.You correct caption wording phrase by phrase in a side panel; the video isn't cut from it. |
| When the first cut is wrong | Fix the cut you have. — better for When the first cut is wrongSay what's off and the same cut changes; undo works all the way back. | Undo it or roll again.Revert AI Edit cuts one at a time, or re-run the style at 10 to 40 credits a pass. |
| Asking for an edit instead of clicking for it | Ask instead of click. — better for Asking for an edit instead of clicking for itIn ChatGPT, Claude, any MCP client, or the editor — same edits, same result either way. | Chat editing on the top plan.Captions has a chat editor on Max and a public API for captioning and generation. |
| Two or three cameras on one conversation | Cut between five angles. — better for Two or three cameras on one conversationTwo-up, picture-in-picture, speaker rail or grid — switching never disturbs the audio. | One speaker, raw footage.AI Edit requires single-speaker unedited video, and no multicam appears in the docs. |
| Working at a desk rather than on a phone | Same editor everywhere. — better for Working at a desk rather than on a phoneIt runs in any browser with nothing to install, and it works from a phone browser. | The iPhone app is the product.Their own docs list what web is missing — manual trimming, text, keyframes, transitions. |
| A styled vertical clip in the next ten minutes | One tap for the vertical.Any landscape cut gets a 9:16 version with captions and timing carried across. | Posted before you've decided. — better for A styled vertical clip in the next ten minutesShort single-speaker vertical footage comes back styled with almost no manual work. |
| Wanting a presenter you never filmed | Only footage you recorded.BitterClip doesn't generate presenters, and no mystery score picks your moments either. | That is the whole bet. — better for Wanting a presenter you never filmedAvatars, digital twins, and prompt-to-video sit at the center of the Mirage product. |
| What the monthly bill looks likeTie | Trial, then source-footage hours.Creator is $0 today, then $24/month after seven days; paid Creator includes 10 source-footage hours and $10 of included agent work. | Credits burn per feature.Max is $24.99 for 500 credits, and unused credits are forfeited when you cancel. |
“Working through session footage is the worst three hours of my week — and the most important. It’s how I remember exactly what happened with a client and build on it next session.”
The fine print
Every line below comes from Captions's own pricing, help, or terms pages. Follow the link and check us.
Captions' help docs say it plainly. On downgrade, "Balance is immediately reduced to the new plan's cap. Any excess credits are forfeited." On cancellation, "All remaining credits are forfeited at the end of the billing period." Rollover caps at three times your monthly allowance.
Captions help — AI usage and creditsThe fine print on Captions' own pricing page reads "Features and prices reflect iOS plans only." Their feature-availability docs list what the web editor is missing: manual trimming, text, keyframes, and transitions, among other tools.
Captions pricing page (fine print)You keep ownership of your content — and you grant Mirage a royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, reproduce, modify, and create derivative works from both your input and your output, scoped "to provide the Services, to improve the Services, and to develop new services and products." The license survives termination of the terms.
Captions Terms of Service, section 2.2Mirage's privacy policy states user information is used to "train our artificial intelligence/machine learning models," and describes no self-serve opt-out. Training-data exclusion appears on the pricing page as an Enterprise plan feature.
Mirage privacy policyYou finished a 70-minute conversation. It was good. Now it's sitting on a drive, and somewhere in it are the twelve minutes worth keeping and four clips worth posting — and you have no idea which twelve minutes.
Captions can't take that file the way you'd hope. Its manual editor caps projects at ten minutes. AI Edit wants at most two minutes on iOS, one on web, single speaker, vertical, unedited. AI Shorts will chop a long video into bite-sized pieces, though not on desktop. Those limits aren't bugs. They describe what the product is for: making one short talking video look styled, fast. It is genuinely good at that, and if that's your work, stop reading.
BitterClip starts where that stops. The whole recording goes in — phone, Zoom, Riverside, a camera, or recorded straight into the project from your browser — and you cut from all of it. That last one is worth a sentence: prop your phone up, hit record in the project, and the take uploads while you talk and arrives already transcribed. It's one person from one browser, not a remote interview studio. You read the transcript, select the sentence where the tangent starts, delete it, and the video loses that stretch. Cuts land on the word, not near it, because they resolve against the actual audio: no clipped syllables, no half-swallowed first word. When you have the landscape cut, one tap makes the vertical version, captions and timing carried across. Every clip remembers where it came from, so one click jumps back to that spot in the full recording.
This is the part you feel on a Tuesday afternoon, on the fourth pass.
In Captions, refinement has a price list. You can revert AI Edit cuts one at a time or re-run with a different style, which costs 10 to 40 credits a pass. On desktop, correcting a misspelled word regenerates the whole video for about a credit. The loop is: don't like it, generate again, pay again, hope.
In BitterClip you fix the cut you have. Say what's wrong and that same cut changes. Undo works all the way back. A review link you sent always plays the exact version the other person watched, so nobody argues about which version they saw. And no mystery score decides which moments are good — you pick, or you tell your assistant what to pick.
In September 2025, Captions rebranded as Mirage, an AI video research lab, and folded Mirage Studio into the creator product. The bet is generated video: avatars, digital twins, prompt-to-video. If you want a presenter made for you, that's the right shop, and BitterClip isn't in that business at all.
BitterClip bets the other way. The sessions you already recorded are the asset, and the work is finishing them. So the editing happens wherever you already are — in ChatGPT, in Claude, or right in the editor. Anything you can click, you can ask for. "Cut the tangent at 14:20 and tighten the intro" comes back as a normal edit: open it, keep going by hand, or undo it.
FAQ
Try it on one recording
Start Creator with one recording up to two hours. The card-required trial is $0 today, includes $5 of agent work for analysis, the First Cut, and direction, and becomes $24/month after seven days unless you cancel before it ends.