Listing checkedFreemiumCapCut
ByteDance's video editor for web, mobile and desktop: free multi-track editing, auto captions and AI tools built for short-form social content.
- Ratings
- No member reviews yet
- Price
- From $9.99/mo
- Last updated
Key takeaways
- CapCut is ByteDance's video editor for web, iOS, Android, Windows and Mac, and few creative tools run at its scale: a 2024 industry report citing Sensor Tower put Jianying and CapCut past 300 million monthly active users, and Google Play showed roughly 12.6 million reviews and an update as recent as August 28, 2026.
- The audience has widened from casual TikTok editors to paying creators and businesses. A membership restructure on March 25, 2026 introduced a Standard plan aimed at editing enthusiasts and rebuilt Pro around 1,200 AI points, 1TB of cloud storage and marketing-oriented benefits.
- What you pay depends on region, platform and account. The public pricing page was reportedly returning 404 in August 2026, and the best dated capture, from August 25, 2026, put US App Store references at $9.99 a month for Standard and $19.99 a month or $179.99 a year for Pro, on top of a permanent free tier.
- Third-party estimates put capcut.com at about 52.5 million visits in June 2026, roughly flat on the month. That figure was not independently confirmed, and the web editor is only one of five platforms the product runs on.
- The biggest caveat is billing and rights. Trustpilot showed 1.3 out of 5 from 1,181 reviews in July 2026, 88% of them one-star and dominated by billing or paywall complaints, and CapCut's US privacy policy permits scanning user content and using it to train machine-learning models.
What is CapCut?
CapCut is the international video editor from ByteDance. In China it's Jianying, and it originally launched abroad as ViaMaker before the rebrand. It runs as a web editor, iOS and Android apps and desktop software for Windows and Mac, and its homepage presents it as an online AI video editor and design suite: you edit video, images, audio and text on a timeline, generate or transform media with AI, add captions and export straight to social platforms.
What sets it apart is how much editing the free tier actually does. The Google Play listing documents multi-track editing, keyframes, optical-flow slow motion, chroma key, stabilization, auto captions, text-to-speech, background removal and 4K/60fps export. Most tools reserve that combination for paid plans. That breadth, plus templates tuned for short-form, explains both the iOS listing's 4.6 out of 5 from 1.1 million ratings as retrieved in August 2026 and the 2024 report that CapCut was the second-most-downloaded US App Store app in 2023.
Around the editor sits a larger machine. CapCut grew up inside the same world as TikTok and Douyin, and its AI features partly aggregate third-party technology: the terms of service name Runway, Stable Diffusion, Google, YouTube, FLUX and Luma as integrated providers whose own terms apply. Paid access runs through a subscription ladder that ByteDance restructured on March 25, 2026, and credits, called AI points, meter the heavier AI operations separately from the subscription itself.
How it works
Open or install
Start in the web editor at capcut.com, install the iOS or Android app, or download the desktop editor for Mac or Windows. Basic editing can begin free. You may need an account for cloud storage, sharing or paid features.
Create a project
Import video, images and audio into the multi-track timeline, or start from a template or an AI creation workflow. According to its product page, the online Creative Suite supports unlimited video, audio, image and text tracks.
Edit and enhance
Trim, split, arrange and style clips, then add transitions, effects, text, music, keyframes, chroma key and stabilization. AI tools remove backgrounds, generate captions, synthesize speech, upscale footage or transform media; some operations draw on Pro entitlements or credits.
Review and export
Choose your output settings, including the 4K/60fps export documented on the Android listing, then save locally or share to supported social platforms. Premium materials and certain AI operations may require Pro or credits, and regional and platform restrictions apply to sharing.
Features
Multi-track editing
The Creative Suite advertises unlimited video, audio, image and text tracks for browser projects, so layered edits with separate music, voiceover and caption tracks do not hit an arbitrary ceiling.
Auto Captions
Speech recognition generates subtitles from your audio, and you can position and adjust the resulting captions on the timeline rather than having them burned in blind.
Text-to-Speech
Converts written text into narrated audio in multiple languages and voices, which covers narration for videos recorded without a usable voice track.
Background Removal
Automatically strips backgrounds from footage. Chroma key stays available as the manual, color-based alternative when the automatic pass isn't enough.
Keyframe animation, optical flow and stabilization
Keyframes animate movement and parameter changes across video settings, optical flow supports smooth slow motion, and stabilization reduces camera shake in handheld footage.
AI effects and Motion effects
CapCut's formal Credit Rules identify image-to-video Motion effects and video-to-video AI effects as Pro AI features that consume credits. The homepage promotes AI layout generation, visual creation from text or reference images, and text, image or keyframe-to-video workflows.
Cloud storage and sharing
The March 2026 Pro change notice describes 1TB of cloud storage, and you can share finished exports to social platforms within regional and platform restrictions.
What people use it for
- Creating TikTok videos and short-form social edits.
- Producing YouTube videos and extracting short clips from long footage.
- Designing Instagram Reels, lyric videos and photo videos.
- Making marketing, advertising and small-business videos.
- Generating AI avatars, narrated clips and synthetic voiceovers.
- Restoring or enhancing old photos and low-quality footage.
- Creating captioned educational or presentation videos.
CapCut is not a safe assumption for unrestricted commercial work or confidential client footage. Its Trust Center says only materials expressly labelled Commercial Use may be used commercially, and its privacy policy permits content analysis and machine-learning improvement on what you upload.
Who it’s for
Pricing
Individual plans
Free
$0
per month
Manual editing and exports with free tools and assets; premium materials and some AI operations prompt an upgrade
Standard
$9.99
per month
US App Store reference, Aug 2026; advanced editing tools, templates and materials for editing enthusiasts
Pro
$19.99
per month
1,200 AI points and 1TB cloud storage; US annual reference $179.99 a year
Business plans
Team
$24.99
per user per month
Third-party August 2026 report; official seat, pooled-credit and admin-control terms not confirmed
The written terms matter more than the sticker prices here. Credits, which CapCut values at $0.01 each, pay for specific AI operations on top of the subscription. Subscription credits expire after one subscription month and get consumed first; purchased credits last two years and cannot be refunded, exchanged for cash, transferred or used to buy a Pro or storage plan. Renewal is automatic, for a period equal to the preceding term, unless you cancel before the current period ends. A 14-day full refund applies only if the Premium Services have not been used at all; Apple and Google purchases follow store procedures instead. The ladder itself changed on March 25, 2026: old pricing became unavailable to new subscribers, Pro grew from 550 to 1,200 AI points and from 100GB to 1TB of storage, and a new Standard plan appeared. Prices vary by region, device, account and promotion, and the public pricing page was reportedly returning 404 in August 2026. A Team tier at a reported $24.99 per user per month, plus an Ultra tier seen in some signed-in checkouts, remain unconfirmed by any official public price list.
Traffic & reach
Third-party estimates put capcut.com at about 52.5 million visits in June 2026, essentially flat month on month. The United States, Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam were the largest sources, and traffic split mainly between organic search and direct visits. Treat the figure as a proxy rather than a measurement: it was not independently confirmed in our latest check, and it covers only the website of a product whose Android app alone showed roughly 12.6 million Google Play reviews in August 2026.
Visits, June 2026
52.5M
▼ 1.0% month over month
Nov '25Jun '26
Top countries
- United States13%
- Brazil8.9%
- Indonesia7.6%
- Vietnam7.4%
- India3.8%
Traffic sources
- Organic search33%
- Direct31%
- Paid search11%
- Organic social9.6%
- Referrals5.7%
- Paid social3.0%
- Display ads2.7%
- AI assistants2.1%
- Visits, last 3 months
- 156.7M
- Avg. visit
- 3m 01s
- Pages per visit
- 4.0
- Bounce rate
- 45.4%
- Brand searches / mo
- 7.1M
User reviews
Write a reviewNo reviews yet
Used CapCut on something real? Write down what you made, what it cost and what the trade-off was. The next person can decide in about a minute from that.
Be the first to reviewWhat to know before you commit
The free tier is the real product for most people. A permanent free tier covers ordinary editing and exports using free tools and assets. It isn't a time-limited trial. Reviewers consistently credit the breadth available at no cost (multi-track editing, keyframes, auto captions, 4K/60fps export) as the reason beginners can publish short-form content without a desktop editing suite.
Ratings diverge sharply by platform. The US App Store showed 4.6 out of 5 from 1.1 million ratings as retrieved in August 2026, while Google Play sat around 3.6 out of 5 from roughly 12 to 13 million reviews over July and August 2026. Review aggregation associates the Android gap with compression, lag and crash complaints, so the experience you get depends heavily on the device you edit on.
Billing and paywall complaints are the dominant negative theme. A review aggregator recorded Trustpilot at 1.3 out of 5 from 1,181 reviews on July 21, 2026, with 88% one-star reviews, mainly about renewals, premium gating and support. That profile is self-selected and unclaimed, so don't read it as representative of all users. It's still a meaningful warning to read the renewal and refund terms before paying.
The terms and privacy record needs reading, not assuming. Secondary reporting in June 2025 described a terms update with unusually broad language about a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence over user content, while the current Trust Center presents a narrower message: users retain ownership, and commercial use is limited to labelled materials. Separately, an April 3, 2026 report said Danish child-welfare and consumer organizations complained to the Danish data-protection authority about comprehensibility, data collection and children's rights; that complaint has not been independently verified against an authority docket. The US privacy policy expressly permits scanning, analyzing and reviewing user content and training machine-learning models on it.
Pricing changed materially in 2026, so older guides are stale. The March 25, 2026 restructure replaced the old ladder for new subscribers, which makes earlier articles quoting Pro at $8 to $10 unreliable. Prices also differ by country, device and promotion, and some tiers only show up in signed-in checkouts. The number you see at upgrade time is the one that counts.
The scale claims are industry-reported, not audited. The 300 million monthly active user figure comes from a 2024 industry report citing Sensor Tower, which also credited Jianying and CapCut with 81% of mobile video-editor active users. No audited CapCut revenue or headcount exists in public sources. The numbers are plausible given store data, but they are not company-audited disclosures.
Alternatives to CapCut
WondershareA catalogue of separately priced desktop, web and mobile apps for video editing, PDFs, diagrams, data recovery and phone transfer, led by Filmora.
VEEDA browser-based video editor and AI creation platform for captioned, translated and branded social video, with a permanent free plan and per-seat paid tiers.
PicsartPhoto, video and design editor with an AI Playground that runs 140+ image, video and audio models on credits.
FotorFree-to-start online photo editor with background removal, enhancement and text-to-image generation on third-party models, plus iOS, Android, Mac and Windows apps.
Cutout.ProCredit-metered background removal, photo restoration, AI art and video background removal in one cloud account, with an API and a Shopify plugin.
PixlrA browser photo editor and design suite with free ad-supported use, Pixlr X for quick work, Pixlr E for layers, and AI generation metered in monthly credits.
Frequently asked questions
Company & links
- Company
- CapCut
- Founded
- 2019
- Leadership
- No CapCut-specific CEO or named executive has been confirmed in public sources. CapCut is a product line inside ByteDance rather than a separately incorporated startup, and the published support contact is capcut.support@bytedance.com.
- Funding
- There are no CapCut-specific funding rounds; Tracxn described it as unfunded in January 2025, and ByteDance itself is a private company whose financing should not be attributed to CapCut. ByteDance's reported acquisition of Shenzhen Lianmeng Technology, at approximately $300 million, is associated with the product's technology lineage but lacks primary-source confirmation of its date and terms.
- Scale
- LinkedIn showed approximately 945 CapCut employees across 67 countries in its 2026 profile, which is third-party platform data rather than an audited headcount. A 2024 industry report citing Sensor Tower said Jianying and CapCut exceeded 300 million monthly active users; no audited revenue, profitability or cash-flow figures have been published.
Try CapCut on work you already know
A task you’ve done before is the fastest way to judge whether CapCut fits your workflow and budget. Check the current plan terms on the official site before you subscribe.