CapCut Freemium

What it is

CapCut is ByteDance's video editor for phones, desktop and the web. It is known for trend templates, auto captions and fast vertical editing for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, and it has added AI generation, including ByteDance's own Dreamina Seedance video model. In the United States CapCut is now run by TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, the company set up on 22 January 2026 that also runs TikTok and Lemon8 in the US; US users are covered by separate CapCut US Terms of Service.

Key features

• Multi-track editor on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS and web
• Auto captions, caption translation, text-to-speech and background removal
• Thousands of templates, effects, stickers and licensed music
• AI tools such as noise reduction, motion tracking and auto reframe
• Dreamina Seedance 2.0 text/image-to-video and Seedream images, in markets where they are available
• Team workspaces for shared projects

Models inside

CapCut uses ByteDance models: Dreamina Seedance 2.0 for video and Seedream for images. When Seedance 2.0 came to CapCut in March 2026 it launched first in Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and was not yet available in the US. It blocks real faces as input and adds an invisible watermark to its output.

Pricing and rights

Prices vary by region and platform. The US web price for Pro is $19.99 a month or $179.99 a year, with about 1 TB of cloud storage; a Team plan starts at about $24.99. On the free plan, manual edits export without a watermark, but Pro templates, premium assets and some AI clips add one, and a CapCut end clip can be appended. Commercial use is checked asset by asset under CapCut's materials licence, and mixing non-commercial materials into a video limits the whole export to non-commercial use. The terms have been controversial: a June 2025 update, still in the global terms dated April 2026, gives CapCut a perpetual, worldwide, sublicensable, royalty-free licence to your uploaded content and lets it use your name and likeness, including in sponsored content.

Who it is for

Short-form creators and social teams who want templates and quick captions on a phone.

Verdict

CapCut is quick and capable, and the free tier goes further than most, but check the licence on templates and music before commercial use, read the broad content licence, and expect features and AI models to differ by country.