Short answer
On list price, AI clipping costs between about $0.017 and $0.29 per minute of source video on the plans we priced. The cheapest per included minute were 2short.ai Premium ($0.017), 2short.ai Pro ($0.022) and Vizard Creator on annual billing ($0.024). Opus Clip, the usual benchmark, comes to $0.100 on Starter and $0.048 on Pro billed annually.
Those numbers assume you use every included minute. If you process half your allowance, your real cost per minute doubles. That is why the right comparison is the price divided by the minutes you will actually send, which the worked example walks through.
Cost per source minute, plan by plan
This table covers tools whose pricing pages state how many minutes of video a plan processes, either directly or through a credit that equals a minute. Rows are ordered by vendor, then plan.
| Tool | Plan | Billing | Price | Included video | Per minute* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opus Clip | Starter | Monthly only | $15.00 / month | 150 min (2.5 h) / month | $0.100 |
| Opus Clip | Pro | Monthly | $29.00 / month | 300 min (5 h) / month | $0.097 |
| Opus Clip | Pro | Annual ($14.50 / mo) | $174.00 / year | 3,600 min (60 h) / year | $0.048 |
| Vizard | Creator | Monthly | $29.00 / month | 600 min (10 h) / month | $0.048 |
| Vizard | Creator | Annual ($14.50 / mo) | $174.00 / year | 7,200 min (120 h) / year | $0.024 |
| Vizard | Business | Monthly | $39.00 / month | 600 min (10 h) / month | $0.065 |
| Vizard | Business | Annual ($19.50 / mo) | $234.00 / year | 7,200 min (120 h) / year | $0.033 |
| quso.ai | Lite | Monthly | $29.00 / month | 100 min (1.7 h) / month | ≈$0.290 |
| quso.ai | Lite | Annual, Halloween offer | $174.00 / year | 1,200 min (20 h) / year | ≈$0.145 |
| quso.ai | Essential | Monthly | $39.00 / month | 300 min (5 h) / month | ≈$0.130 |
| quso.ai | Essential | Annual, Halloween offer | $234.00 / year | 3,600 min (60 h) / year | ≈$0.065 |
| quso.ai | Growth | Monthly | $49.00 / month | 600 min (10 h) / month | ≈$0.082 |
| quso.ai | Growth | Annual, Halloween offer | $294.00 / year | 7,200 min (120 h) / year | ≈$0.041 |
| 2short.ai | Lite | Monthly | $9.90 / month | 300 min (5 h) / month | $0.033 |
| 2short.ai | Pro | Monthly | $19.90 / month | 900 min (15 h) / month | $0.022 |
| 2short.ai | Premium | Monthly | $49.90 / month | 3,000 min (50 h) / month | $0.017 |
*Price ÷ included minutes, rounded to three decimals. “≈” marks quso.ai, whose FAQ says one credit is approximately one minute of processed video and that captioning and editing draw from the same credits. 2short.ai sells hours of “AI video analyzing”; we list only its monthly prices because annual prices were not shown.
Three things stand out. First, Opus Clip and Vizard both charge 1 credit per minute, but Vizard’s Creator plan includes twice the minutes at the same $29 monthly price, so its list price per minute is half. Second, annual billing roughly halves the per-minute price everywhere it is offered. Third, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive rows is more than tenfold, which is far bigger than the gap in features between most of these tools.
How we did the math
For each plan we took the price for one billing period and divided it by the minutes of source video that period includes:
Price per minute = plan price ÷ included source minutes
- Opus Clip: the credits help article says processing costs 1 credit per minute of the original video. Starter includes 150 credits a month for $15, so $15 ÷ 150 = $0.100. Pro annual is $14.50 a month, or $174 a year, for 3,600 credits: $174 ÷ 3,600 ≈ $0.048.
- Vizard: the pricing page says “1 credit = 1 minute of video” and lists 600 monthly credits on Creator, or 7,200 a year on annual billing. $29 ÷ 600 ≈ $0.048; $174 ÷ 7,200 ≈ $0.024.
- quso.ai: Lite is $29 a month for 100 credits, so $0.290 per credit, and its FAQ equates a credit with roughly a minute. On the yearly Halloween offer, Lite is $174 for 1,200 credits, about $0.145.
- 2short.ai: Lite is $9.90 for 5 hours (300 minutes) of analysis: $9.90 ÷ 300 = $0.033.
We did not include tax, add-on packs, top-ups or promotional first-month discounts. Opus Clip Pro can be bought in more than one pack, each adding 300 credits a month; we only priced the first pack, which is the one the pricing page shows.
Included minutes vs minutes you use
A per-minute list price is a best case. The number that matters is:
Effective cost per minute = what you pay in a period ÷ minutes you actually process in that period
Unused minutes are money you paid for nothing, unless the vendor lets them roll over. Opus Clip is the one vendor in this comparison whose help center states a rule: monthly credits expire after 60 days, so they carry over for one extra month, and annual credits arrive up front and last 12 months. For the others, the pricing pages we read did not say, so treat unused minutes as lost until the vendor tells you otherwise.
The trap runs both ways. Buy too small a plan and you run out mid-month, which forces an upgrade or a top-up at a worse rate. Buy too big a plan to get the lowest list price per minute and you pay for footage you never send. Size the plan from a real month of recordings, minus the intros, ad reads and dead air you can skip before processing. Opus Clip, for example, has a processing-timeframe slider for exactly this.
Worked example: 5 hours a month
Say you record one 75-minute show a week, about 300 minutes a month. These inputs are hypothetical; the prices are the published ones above. Here is the cheapest plan on each tool that covers 300 minutes, and the effective cost per minute you would pay:
| Tool and plan | Monthly cost | Minutes included | Effective cost per minute used |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2short.ai Lite | $9.90 | 300 | $0.033 |
| Opus Clip Pro, annual | $14.50 | 3,600 a year | $0.048 |
| Vizard Creator, annual | $14.50 | 7,200 a year | $0.048 |
| quso.ai Essential, annual offer | $19.50 | about 3,600 a year | $0.065 |
| Opus Clip Pro, monthly | $29.00 | 300 | $0.097 |
| Vizard Creator, monthly | $29.00 | 600 | $0.097 |
| quso.ai Essential, monthly | $39.00 | about 300 | $0.130 |
Notice the Vizard rows. On list price Vizard Creator is half the cost per minute of Opus Clip Pro, but at 300 minutes a month you only use half of Vizard’s allowance, so the effective cost is the same $0.097. Vizard only pulls ahead if you process more than 300 minutes, up to its 600. Opus Clip Starter drops out entirely: its 150 minutes cover just two of the four shows.
2short.ai is the cheapest here by a wide margin, with conditions attached on its own pricing page: it works from spoken words and can only process videos with captions, and Lite includes 60 minutes of fast server-side exports a month. Check whether that fits your footage before you count the saving.
Tools that do not bill by the minute
Several popular tools price in units that cannot be turned into a per-minute figure without guessing. We list what they publish rather than invent a conversion.
| Tool | Unit | Published plans | Why no per-minute figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Klap | Generated clips | Basic $14 / mo for 100 clips, Pro $39 for 300, Pro+ $94 for 1,000 (all billed yearly) | You pay per clip, so cost per minute depends on how many clips you take from each minute. That works out to $0.14, $0.13 and $0.094 per clip. |
| Submagic | Credits per video, plus API minutes | Starter $19 / mo or $12 billed yearly: 45 credits = 15 videos up to 2 minutes each. API minute packs from $57 for 250 minutes (about $0.23 / min) down to $0.10 / min at 5,000 minutes, added on top of a plan. | The plans meter short videos, not long recordings; only the API add-on is priced per minute. |
| Vugola | AI credits | Starter $19.99 / mo for 50 credits, Creator $49.99 for 300, Pro $99.99 for 800 | The pricing page does not state how many minutes a credit covers. Per credit: $0.40, about $0.167 and about $0.125. Our Vugola pricing breakdown has more on credits. |
| StreamLadder | Flat monthly fee | Creator $27 / mo with unlimited ClipGPT AI clipping for Twitch and Kick streams, up to 30 clips per stream | Unlimited, so the cost per minute falls as you stream more: 20 hours a month would be $27 ÷ 1,200 ≈ $0.023. |
Per-clip pricing suits long recordings where you only want a handful of clips, because a three-hour stream costs the same as a ten-minute video if each yields five clips. Per-minute pricing suits short, dense recordings where most of the footage is usable. If your streams are long, also read our AI stream clipper guide.
Free minutes before you pay
Most tools let you test on real footage before you pay. The free allowances we found on October 18, 2026:
- Opus Clip Free: 60 minutes a month, watermark, exports available for 3 days.
- Vizard Free: 60 credits (minutes) a month, 720p export, 3-day storage.
- quso.ai Free: 75 credits a month, 720p render, 7-day data retention.
- 2short.ai Starter: 30 minutes of analysis a month on the plan card (a line further down the same page says 15).
Free minutes are the cheapest way to measure the number our formula needs: how many usable clips you get per minute you send. Run the same recording through two tools before you choose a plan.
How to choose on cost
- Add up a typical month of recordings, minus the parts you will skip.
- Shortlist two tools from the table whose plans cover that volume without leaving most of the allowance unused.
- Use each free tier on the same recording and count usable clips.
- Divide each plan’s monthly price by the usable clips you would get in a month. Pick the lower number, not the lower sticker price.
- Buy monthly first. Switch to annual billing only after a representative month proves the fit.
For which tool suits which kind of content, see our best AI clip makers guide; for Opus Clip’s plans in detail, see Opus Clip pricing.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest AI clipping tool per minute?
Among the plans we priced on October 18, 2026, 2short.ai Premium had the lowest list price per included minute (about $0.017), followed by 2short.ai Pro and Vizard Creator on annual billing (about $0.022 and $0.024). The cheapest list price only holds if you use every included minute.
How much does Opus Clip cost per minute?
Opus Clip charges 1 credit per minute of source video. That works out to $0.100 per minute on Starter, about $0.097 on Pro monthly and about $0.048 on Pro billed annually, assuming every credit is used.
Is per-minute pricing better than per-clip pricing?
Neither is better in general. Per-minute plans charge for the footage you send, however many clips come back. Per-clip plans such as Klap charge for output, which favours long recordings where you only want a few clips.
Do unused AI clipping minutes roll over?
It depends on the vendor. Opus Clip monthly credits expire after 60 days and annual credits after 12 months. We did not find rollover rules on the other pricing pages we checked, so ask before you buy a large plan.
Why do the annual prices look so low?
Most vendors discount annual billing by about half. quso.ai was also running a Halloween offer on yearly plans that ends November 1, so its annual figures may rise after that date.
Sources
Vendor facts on this page come from these public pages, checked October 18, 2026. Prices and plan limits change; confirm them at checkout.