Want your Reels and TikToks to reach the widest possible audience? Captions are the key. They make your content accessible to everyone, even those watching without sound or speaking different languages.
While many automatic captioning apps have limitations (like watermarks or time restrictions), I’ve found some great free and accurate options. Except one in the end, which is freemium.
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Caption – The Simplest Auto-Caption Tool
This app is the easiest way to generate automatic captions – and it’s the one we use for our Instagram reels. It only supports vertical video formats such as reels, TikTok, and Youtube shorts. No YouTube long form.
One amazing thing—it’s currently free for Android users. However, the iPhone version costs about $10 per month. There’s a chance the Android version might become paid too, so grab it while you can.
Adding captions is simple. Open your video, tap Caption at the bottom, select Auto Captions, and choose your spoken language. The app will transcribe your audio and generate captions. Unlike the Instagram native caption feature, you can customize the font, color, position, style, and background.
In my tests with 3 videos, accuracy was about 90% with clear audio. This is likely because most apps use similar AI engines in their backend for speech recognition
Price: Currently free on Android, paid on iPhone ($10 per month, price may vary by region).
Capcut – Powerful Video Editor with Built-In Captions
Capcut is a popular video editing app (available on Android, iOS, and even computers) owned by TikTok. It may be banned in some countries due to data privacy concerns (including India), but works with a VPN.
Unlike previous apps, Capcut offers more than basic caption editing. It has an AI caption feature.
Imagine there is a portion in the video where the host is not saying anything. Capcut will smartly remove captions during pauses in your video for a cleaner look.
Note: Currently, there’s a way to get around Capcut’s paid features. You can apply paid filters/effects, preview the video in full-screen, and screen record it. There is a small play/pause icon on the screen which can easily cropped. This can be an intentional loophole, but Capcut may patch it.
Price: Free on Android and iPhone (some effects are paid).
Veed – Paid Webapp With Good Multilingual Support
Consider veed to be an advanced version of Capcut but web-based.
All options like generating captions automatically and changing text style, font, animation, etc. are present as usual. However, what separates it from the rest is multilingual support.
After uploading your video, Veed asks what language is spoken to provide subtitles in that same language. This means if your video is in Spanish, you get Spanish subtitles–a feature most other tools lack.
I tested it with a Hindi video (see GIF below), and the translation was quite accurate. The online editor lets you fix any errors. Veed also offers video dubbing (currently in beta, but worked well).
The free version has limitations: 720p downloads, watermarks, and a monthly time limit. You’ll need a paid plan to remove these.
Price: The upload file size limit for the Free Plan is 1GB and you get 30 minutes free each month with a watermark. To practically use the app, you will have to pay. Packages start from about $8 for a total of 720 mins of HD videos and about $15 for 3600 mins of 4K video.
Which Auto-Captioning App to Choose
- Simple Android captions: Caption App is perfect (grab it while it’s free).
- All-in-one video editing + captions: Capcut is a great choice.
- Multilingual captions or dubbing: If you need those features, Veed is worth considering despite the paid plans.
Few other options we have not included like submagic (has watermark) and kapwing (only allows 10 mins) in the free version.
