What does AI video editing actually cost — and why prices vary 50x

2026-08-16 · 7 min read

I started keeping track of this when I was paying human editors for vlogs and product videos, and every quote I got was structured differently enough that I could not compare them. AI tools have the same problem, so here is the honest version of how the pricing works — including where we are the more expensive option.

The cost is driven by watching, not exporting

Exporting a video file is nearly free. What costs money is everything before it: transcribing the audio, analysing the picture, and deciding what the edit should be. All three scale with how much footage goes in, not how many clips come out — which is why credible pricing is per minute of upload.

That also explains the minimum most tools apply per upload. A two-minute clip takes almost as much planning as a twenty-minute one, because the whole video has to be read either way. Without a floor, short uploads are subsidised by long ones.

Two different products wear the same label

• ✦Transcript-scored, template-filled. The words are ranked, the top passages are cut out, and each one is poured into the same layout at three sizes. Fast and genuinely cheap — a cent or two a minute is realistic. The tell is that several clips from one upload feel like the same clip.
• ✦Planned against the footage. The picture is analysed as well as the words, and each cut is composed for that specific video — which moment opens it, what it is about, where it ends, how the frame is built around the subject. Costs meaningfully more to run.

If you post a lot of short clips and the template look suits you, the cheaper option is genuinely the right call and I would not pretend otherwise. The second is worth paying for when the footage is yours, it is long, and a template would flatten it.

How to compare two tools honestly

• ✦Divide by minutes, not by clips. Take the monthly price and divide by the minutes of upload included. Clip counts are a marketing number — you will not post most of them.
• ✦Estimate what you actually shoot. A weekly vlog is often 30–60 minutes of raw footage. Product videos are shorter and more frequent. Multiply that by four.
• ✦Check what re-editing costs. Changing captions, re-framing or re-rendering is arithmetic over footage already analysed. If a tool charges for that, it is charging twice for one piece of work.
• ✦Check whether trimming happens before billing. This is the one most people miss — see below.
• ✦Check the rollover. Credits that expire monthly are a smaller allowance than they appear if your shooting is uneven, which for most people it is.

The lever that beats choosing a cheaper vendor

Most raw footage is mostly unusable — the walk to the camera, the false start, the pause while you think. A 40-minute recording usually holds 5 to 10 minutes worth keeping. Trimming that before you are billed is often a bigger saving than the entire price difference between two tools.

The catch is when the billing happens. If a tool charges on the uploaded duration, trimming afterwards saves you nothing at all — you paid for the 40 minutes and then threw 34 away. It only works if the trim happens before anything is charged. TailorClip does that in a separate free staging area for exactly this reason: you are billed on the seconds you keep.

What TailorClip costs, plainly

• ✦1 credit = 1 minute of uploaded footage, minimum 6 credits per upload. Past 6 minutes it is simply a credit a minute.
• ✦Three cuts included per upload — a full-length version, a short, and a wildcard that tries something different. Extra cuts from the same upload are 2 credits.
• ✦Editing what you get back is free and unlimited — captions, titles, music, colour, framing, re-cutting, re-rendering. No credits.
• ✦Trimming is free, and happens before billing.
• ✦Re-uploading the identical file is 40% off during beta, 25% at standard pricing.
• ✦Unused monthly credits roll over for 60 days; top-up credits never expire.

We are not the cheapest per minute and we are not trying to be. The price buys an edit planned against your actual footage rather than a template filled with your words — and the parts that are genuinely already paid for, like re-editing and trimming, cost you nothing.