Sharpy vs Submagic: captions and shorts in the cloud, or on your Mac

Submagic's details here were checked on 6 October 2026, against its pricing page, help centre and changelog. The sources are listed at the end, and prices and features can change.

How are Sharpy and Submagic different?

	Submagic	Sharpy
What it is	A browser app for short-form video: captions, zooms, B-roll and clips	An agentic editor for video of any length, captions included
Where it runs	In the browser; videos upload to its cloud	On your Mac; nothing uploads
Longest video	2 minutes on Starter, 5 on Pro, 30 on Business	Any length
Videos a month	15, 40 or 100 per member	Unlimited
Captions	35+ animated styles in 123 languages, SRT export	Karaoke captions on measured word timings, SRT and WebVTT, subtitle tracks and 608 closed captions
Cleanup	Silence, filler-word and bad-take removal on Pro and Business	Fillers, stumbles, restarts and dead air, each cut with its reason
B-roll and music	Stock B-roll, with Storyblocks on Pro and Business; AI-generated B-roll; a music library	Free-licence footage and licensed music, found, checked and credited
Long video to clips	Magic Clips, a paid add-on: 20+ clips with virality scores	Finds the moments that fit a reference short, by meaning
Price	$12, $23 or $41 a month billed yearly	$20 a month or $200 a year at launch

How do they work?

Submagic styles a short in a few clicks. Upload a video or paste a YouTube link, choose a caption style, and it transcribes the speech and animates the words, with emojis, highlighted keywords, zooms, transitions, sound effects, music and B-roll from stock libraries or generated from a prompt. Smart Trim cuts silences, filler words and bad takes, and AI Auto Edit applies a whole editing style in one click. Magic Clips, a paid add-on, turns a long video into 20 or more short clips with virality scores. Since 2026 it also offers an MCP server for Claude, Claude Code and Cursor, and publishing to six platforms.

Sharpy edits the whole piece, at any length. It understands every word, pause and shot on your Mac, picks the best takes, cuts what breaks a sentence, keeps what belongs to the delivery, and adds karaoke captions timed to the moment each word is spoken, placed clear of each app's buttons. It finds free-licence B-roll and licensed music, reads each licence and writes the credits beside the render. For shorts, give it a reference you like and it finds the moments that fit and reframes them around the speaker's face; turning a long video into shorts shows how.

A woman at a kitchen table at night browses stock clips of a city, waves, typing hands and a forest on a MacBook Pro, beside a vertical video in her editor. — Both add B-roll; Sharpy also reads each clip's licence and writes the credits beside the render.

Where do your videos go?

Submagic works in its cloud. Videos upload to it, up to 3 GB a file, and its privacy notice lists Amazon Web Services for hosting, storage and processing, with servers in the United States. Its terms say you keep ownership of your content and grant Submagic a licence to use it on and through the platform, which is how a hosted service processes and shows your videos.

Sharpy works on your Mac. Your footage, transcripts and projects never leave it. Editing with AI without uploading your footage covers why that matters.

What does each cost?

Submagic plan	Billed yearly	Billed monthly	Each month	Longest video	Export
Starter	$12	$19	15 videos per member	2 minutes	1080p at 30 fps
Pro	$23	$39	40 videos per member	5 minutes	Up to 2K at 30 fps
Business	$41	$69	100 videos per member	30 minutes	Up to 4K at 60 fps

Starter leaves out silence, filler-word and bad-take removal, auto zooms and hook titles, and Magic Clips costs extra on every plan. The free trial gives three videos with watermarked downloads.

Sharpy is one plan with everything included: $20 a month or $200 a year at launch, with no count of videos and no length limit, because nothing runs on our servers.

Which should you choose?

Choose Submagic if you make short clips from any computer, you want dozens of ready-made caption styles and stock B-roll, you caption in many languages, or you want to publish straight to your social accounts.

Choose Sharpy if you work on a Mac with Apple silicon, your videos run longer than a few minutes, you make more videos than a plan allows, your footage has to stay on your machine, or you want the whole edit made with a reason for every cut.

Frequently asked questions

Is Sharpy a Submagic alternative?

For captioned short videos made on a Mac, yes, and Sharpy also edits long videos. Submagic is built around styling short clips in the browser; Sharpy edits the whole piece on your Mac at any length.

Does Submagic work offline?

No. It is a web application, and your videos upload to its cloud for processing.

How long can a Submagic video be?

2 minutes on Starter, 5 on Pro and 30 on Business. Sharpy has no length limit.

Which has more caption styles?

Submagic, with more than 35 animated styles. Sharpy's captions are karaoke captions timed to the moment each word is spoken, in a library of styles, and it also writes SRT and WebVTT files, subtitle tracks and broadcast closed captions.

Sources

Checked on 6 October 2026.