CapCut pricing: free plan and Pro cost

CapCut says prices vary by region, platform (mobile, desktop or web), taxes and promotions, so the price in your app store may differ.

CapCut's rate card is the simplest in video editing: one free tier and one paid tier. That makes the decision binary rather than a tier-selection exercise, and it means the only real pricing question is whether the free plan covers your work.

The annual option is the only discount on offer. Twelve monthly payments at $19.99 total $239.88, while the year up front is $179.99, so annual billing saves $59.89 and works out at roughly $15 a month.

That is about a quarter off, which is a larger gap than most editing tools publish.

The trade with annual billing is reversibility. The whole $179.99 leaves your account at once, and monthly at $19.99 is the option that lets you stop after a busy editing month.

For a creator with seasonal output, paying monthly in the months you edit can cost less across a year than the annual rate.

Because there is no team tier, cost scales linearly with headcount. Three editors on Pro cost $59.97/mo combined, and five cost $99.95/mo.

Tools with a seat-based plan usually discount at that point, so a production team of more than two should price CapCut against them rather than assuming the low single-user rate carries over.

Where you buy changes what you pay. CapCut's pricing help page lists region, platform and taxes as reasons the figure you see differs from the US rate, and a subscription bought inside a mobile app store is billed by that store rather than by CapCut.

Check the web price against the in-app price before subscribing, and expect local tax on top of either.

We do not publish the feature split between Free and Pro, because our verified snapshot covers the rate card and not the per-tier capability list.

The honest way to settle it is behavioural rather than documentary: edit for a week on the free tier and count how often a template, effect or export setting you wanted was locked.

Fewer than a handful of times and the free plan is doing the job.

Availability is the one risk that bears directly on how you pay. CapCut's status in individual countries has been the subject of public argument, and we hold no dated primary source for the current position anywhere, so we state none.

If availability where you live has been in question, that is an argument for the $19.99 monthly rate rather than the $179.99 annual commitment.

On price against the obvious alternatives, CapCut Pro at $19.99/mo sits above Canva Pro at $15/mo per person and below Descript's Hobbyist plan at $24/mo and Kapwing Pro at $24/mo, checked between June and October 2026.

Descript and Kapwing both publish a $0 tier as well, so the free-tier comparison is as live as the paid one.

Those three are different products wearing similar labels. Canva is template-led and sits in the graphic design tools category, while Descript is transcript-led editing and Kapwing is browser-based.

The Descript and Kapwing comparison covers the browser editing pair, and the Canva profile carries its full rate card.

For the wider field, the video editing software category lists every editor we track and short-form video tools narrows it to the vertical formats CapCut is built for.

Our guide to TikTok editing apps covers the mobile-first options, and the pricing calculators will take a multi-editor headcount if you are costing a team.

Stay on the free plan if you edit occasionally and rarely meet a locked feature.

It has no expiry date in our 6 October 2026 check, so nothing forces a decision, and the signal to upgrade is practical: you keep reaching for templates or effects that sit behind Pro.

Pay monthly at $19.99 if your editing is seasonal, if you want to stop after a launch, or if CapCut's availability where you live has been uncertain.

Across a year you only pay for the months you edit, which can beat the annual rate for intermittent output.

Pay $179.99 for the year once you have edited weekly for a couple of months on the monthly plan. That is the point where the $59.89 saving is real rather than theoretical, because you already know the tool is part of your week.

Price alternatives instead if you are a team. With no seat-based tier, three Pro subscriptions cost $59.97/mo combined, and editors that do publish team pricing become competitive quickly at that level.

Check Descript and Kapwing, both of which run tiered plans above a free one.