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Paywall Dodgers

Audio and video editing

Transcribe speech and cut video without Descript. The free tools here cover transcripts and ordinary cuts.

Badge key
  • Fully free / open source. A standard open-source license.
  • Free tier. The product has a free plan.
  • Free app, paid API. The app is free to install. Making something still costs money.
  • Unofficial: use at your own risk. Someone else built this. It can break. Back up your files.
  • Early. Not a finished replacement.
  • Not yet tested by us. Listed from the project page. Not a hands-on test.
  • Tested by us. We ran it on our own machine. The card has the result.

Transcription and editing

Speech-to-text on your machine, plus a traditional video editor. FilmCraft, the early Premiere-style app, is on the design page.

What it costs

  • Descript

    • Free $0/month
    • Hobbyist $24/month, or $16/month billed annually
    • Creator $35/month, or $24/month billed annually
    • Business $65/month, or $50/month billed annually

    List prices checked , Pacific time. Official pricing page.

Free alternatives that best fit

Best for transcripts: whisper.cppEasiest editor: OpenShot

whisper.cpp

  • Fully free / open source
  • Tested by us

whisper.cpp turns speech into text on your own computer, the best free pick for the transcription half of Descript. It runs on a CPU. Deleting a sentence in the transcript does not edit the video.

Tested on CPU. Transcribed 45 seconds of speech in under 4 seconds with one wrong word.

Replaces
Descript
Price
Free
License
MIT
Hardware
388 MB of memory for the base model, and 3.9 GB for large.
Maintained
Updated October 12, 2026.

Repository

OpenShot

  • Fully free / open source
  • Not yet tested by us

OpenShot is a general video editor for ordinary cuts, the easiest free editor on this list. It runs as a desktop app. Transcript-style editing lives on Descript, not here.

Replaces
Descript
Price
Free
License
GPL 3.0The COPYING file is the GNU General Public License version 3.
Hardware
A desktop computer
Maintained
Updated October 16, 2026.

Repository