💬 Captionly
Burn karaoke captions onto your clips, all on your own hardware.
Captionly at a glance
| Price | $34, once — no renewal |
| Replaces | Submagic at $18–39/mo — roughly $216 a year, every year |
| Type | Desktop app — runs offline |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Category | Video & Audio |
Captionly features
🎙 Local Whisper transcription
whisper.cpp with word-level timestamps; the engine and model download once on first run, then run fully offline.
🎤 Karaoke word-highlight captions
Real ASS timing tags per word for the TikTok and Reels look, rendered by ffmpeg exactly as previewed.
🎨 3 style presets
Karaoke Highlight, Bold Center and Classic Subtitle, plus font size, position and highlight color controls.
✏️ Inline editing with re-sync
Click a caption, fix the words, and timings redistribute proportionally across the cue with no re-transcribing.
✨ Keyword to emoji decoration
Optional mapping turns words like money into an emoji, with 50+ built-in mappings.
🔥 Burn-in export
ffmpeg ass filter to H.264 MP4 with audio stream-copied and live progress.
📄 SRT and ASS export
Export subtitle files for YouTube uploads or further editing.
🔒 100% local
Your footage never leaves your machine — no accounts, no telemetry.
$34 once — that's the whole pricing page
Submagic charges $18–39/mo — roughly $216 a year, every year. Captionly is a single payment, and it keeps working whether or not we ever sell another copy.
Or get Captionly inside the full suite — every app in the catalog, currently $97 for the bundle. See the bundle →
Captionly guides & pages
Honest answers
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Captionly is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/video-clip-captioner-mvp. The $34 buys the signed Windows installer; building from source is free.
Does my footage get uploaded?
Never. Captionly runs Whisper and ffmpeg entirely on your machine — your footage never leaves it, with no accounts or telemetry.
Does it do everything Submagic does?
No. Submagic's AI b-roll, auto-zoom and template marketplace are real value if you use them. If what you use is transcribe, pretty word captions and export, Captionly does that pipeline locally for one month's price.