Move your team from Descript to Captions.
Each person gets a short interview, then a personalized step-by-step guide showing exactly where their saved work, prompts, and projects land in Captions — and the few things that need a manual step, walked through. You send one invite; nobody becomes the help desk, and nothing in Descript is changed or cancelled. Want to see where you’re paying for both first? Run the free audit.
Both tools turn raw or long footage into a finished, captioned vertical clip for TikTok/Reels/Shorts — auto-trimming silences, adding captions, B-roll, music, transitions, and zooms. A team repurposing content in Descript (Underlord finds high-engagement moments and cuts vertical clips that inherit captions) can do the same in Captions: upload the footage, let AI Edit apply a style and the automatic edits, then refine by typing plain-language requests to the chat Co-editor ('add B-roll', 'make captions bigger') instead of touching a timeline, and export in the right aspect ratio per platform. Keep Captions; cut Descript.
- Warning: Plan gap: full AI Edit and Chat to Edit are gated to Captions Max ($24.99/mo) and above — the Pro plan ($9.99/mo) has manual/assisted editing but not one-tap AI Edit. Descript's clip generation runs on lower paid tiers, so budget for Max if the auto-edit workflow is the reason you're switching.
- Warning: Workflow model differs: Captions is no-timeline and mobile-first; it does not edit by editing a transcript. Descript's signature 'delete words in the script to cut the video' workflow (node:descript/text-based-editing) has no equivalent — power editors who rely on transcript editing or multitrack timelines will feel the loss.
- Warning: Captions applies an AI-chosen style/look rather than reproducing a specific Descript template, and auto-derived assets differ: Descript also spins out YouTube descriptions, chapters, and blog drafts from one recording, which Captions' clip flow does not generate — keep a separate step for those if you depend on them.
Both tools auto-generate stylized, animated, burned-in on-screen captions from AI speech recognition for short-form video. A team can drop Descript and caption in Captions instead: upload the clip, let Captions transcribe and time the words, pick a preset caption design (then tweak font/color, auto-emojis, and animation), review the lines, and export the rendered video with captions baked in for TikTok, Reels, Shorts, and LinkedIn. Captions covers 100+ languages versus Descript's ~23, and basic captioning with watermark-free export is on the Free tier, so the everyday 'add captions to a vertical clip' job moves over cleanly. Keep Captions; cut Descript.
- Warning: Output format differs: Descript can export a separate soft subtitle file (SRT/VTT via Publish > Export > Subtitles), but Captions produces 'open'/burned-in captions only — there is no closed-caption SRT/VTT track. If you need a deliverable subtitle file (e.g. for YouTube CC, broadcast, or accessibility compliance), Captions will not replace that; keep a separate transcription/SRT tool for those jobs.
- Warning: The full 100+ caption-style library and advanced styling sit behind Captions Pro ($9.99/mo); the Free tier gives basic captioning only. Confirm the styles your brand uses exist on the plan you intend to buy before cancelling Descript.
- Warning: Captions is mobile-first (iOS, with an Android Lite tier) and has no transcript-document editing model — you cannot fix a caption by editing a script the way Descript does; you edit caption lines directly in the Captions editor.