Cutroom is a complete desktop editor, and the editing all happens on your own PC. Connect your Claude in one click, then ask in plain words and watch it cut, caption, grade, and reframe your footage, live on the timeline. Nothing uploads, and it never guesses.
● connected to Cutroom on this machine
›make this a vertical short, add captions, cut the dead air
Reading each tool's manual first, then reframing to 9:16 on your face. Captions and the silence cuts after that.
Done. Trimmed 47s, 9:16 with captions on the timeline.
The same timeline and the same tools either way. Drive it yourself, or ask your Claude and watch it work.
Editing, transcription, and background removal all run on your machine. Nothing to upload, so nothing to wait for.
One paste connects Claude, Codex, Gemini, or Cursor. Your account, your bill, no AI charge from us.
Connect nothing and it is still a pro editor. The AI speeds you up, but it is never a requirement.
Most AI video tools throw a prompt at a model and hope. Cutroom does the opposite. Every tool ships with its own manual, full of worked examples, and your Claude has to read the right one before it touches a frame. By the time it grades your shot, it already knows what every control does and what the result will look like.
There is no AI-only mode and no human-only mode. 96 tools, and your AI reaches every one you do. Whatever it makes lands on the real timeline, so you can grab it and change it.
By hand
Set the project to 9:16, turn on subject tracking, and let the crop follow your face.
Or just ask
“make this a vertical short and keep me in frame”
By hand
Transcribe on your machine, pick one of 27 styles, then fix any word in the caption editor.
Or just ask
“add captions in the bold style and fix my name”
By hand
Open smart editing, set a silence threshold, and run it over the clip.
Or just ask
“cut the silences and the filler words”
By hand
Open the color panel, pick one of 7 Looks, or import your own .cube LUT.
Or just ask
“warm this up and protect the skin tones”
By hand
Select the clip, open the voice tools in the Inspector, and pick a language.
Or just ask
“dub this one into Arabic”
Cutroom speaks MCP, the open standard, so it connects to the agent you already pay for. You copy the setup and paste it in. Your credentials stay on your machine, and there is no extra AI bill from us. Or use the built-in chat with your own Claude account.
One paste links Claude Code or Claude Desktop. No API keys to buy from us, and you need Node.js installed. Then ask in plain words: make a vertical short, add captions, cut the dead air, match the color. Every edit streams onto the timeline as it happens, and you can steer or stop it any time.
Drop in a 16:9 recording and ask for a vertical cut. Cutroom finds your face and reframes for mobile, and you stay in frame the whole way. It handles 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, and 21:9, and it reads the ratio off your footage. One source, every size your platforms need.
Everything the AI does, you can do by hand: a genuine timeline with tracks and keyframes, 200 steps of undo, word-perfect captions, color, speed, green screen, and studio audio. Export up to 4K and source quality with ProRes masters, and render TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram in a single pass.
An AI that cannot see what it made is guessing. So before an export runs, Cutroom makes the AI render the real frames, listen to the audio, and write down what it found. Skip the review and the export does not start.
Not the preview. It renders the frames that will actually ship, then reads them back.
It scans the audio for clipping, and for cuts that land in the middle of a word.
The review gets logged. No logged review, no file. That is enforced, not suggested.
cutroom.render_frame
real export frames rendered and read
cutroom.audio_scan
audio scanned, no clipping
cutroom.verify_cuts
every cut lands between words
cutroom.log_review
review logged
Export unlocked
Cutroom is a local AI video editor for Windows, and the local part is the whole point. The editor, the transcription, and the background removal all run on your own machine. We do not have a bucket somewhere with your rushes in it, because there is no upload.
The honest exception: connect an AI and it does read frames and audio, because that is how it checks its own work. Anything you ask it to generate goes to the provider whose key you brought. None of that comes to us, and your files stay where they are.
Cutroom edits from proxies and writes a new file at the end. The file you dragged in is the file you still have.
whisper.cpp, offline, word-level timing. Your voice is not sent anywhere to be turned into text.
Local ONNX matting. No green screen, and no round trip to somebody's cloud.
Stored encrypted on your machine. The AI can use a key. It can never read one back out.
Run an AI editor on your own machine today and something has to give. The two built for creators are Mac only. The free Windows one is built for generating clips, and wants a 16GB NVIDIA card to do it. The one that fits a pro workflow is not an editor at all: it drives Premiere or Resolve, which you buy separately. Cutroom asks for none of that.
| Product | Platform | Runs locally | Price model | AI provider |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CutroomThe whole editor, on its own. | Windows 10 and 11 | Yes | One time | Bring your own: Claude, Codex, Gemini |
| Descript | macOS, Windows, web | No, your footage uploads | Subscription | Built in |
| Opus Clip | Browser | No, your footage uploads | Subscription | Built in |
| Palmier Pro | macOS only, Apple Silicon | Partly, generation is cloud | Free editor, subscription for AI | Your own agent, or bundled models |
| ReelifyPhone apps too. The local editor is the Mac one. | macOS only, Apple Silicon | Yes, on the Mac | Subscription, or a one time deal | Built in, on device |
| LTX DesktopFree and open source. Generation first: its own repo calls it an app for generating videos. | Windows and Linux, NVIDIA only | Yes, with a 16GB VRAM card | Free | Built in, LTX models |
| JumperNot an editor on its own. It drives Premiere, Final Cut, Resolve Studio, or Avid, bought separately. | Windows and macOS | Yes | Lifetime or subscription, plus that editor | Bring your own |
Checked in July 2026, from each company's own site and docs. Two of them were running limited-time pricing that day, which is why this table states a model and not a number. Platforms and prices move, so check theirs before you decide.
96 tools, and anything you can do by hand, your AI can do by conversation. It never has to tell you the app cannot do that.
Seven export presets. Each one sets the size and the loudness that platform actually expects, and the encode is hardware accelerated. Tick the ones you need and Cutroom renders them in one pass.
Vertical, with the loudness the feed expects.
Vertical, ready to upload as a Short.
The landscape preset. This is the one to pick for YouTube too.
Sized and leveled for the timeline.
Source quality. Archive it, or hand it to a colorist.
A plain file for your own site or a doc.
A short loop for a README or a chat.
There is no separate YouTube preset, and you do not need one. The 1920×1080 preset is the landscape master, so pick that.
No demo reel yet. Rather than dress up stock footage as our own work, here is the honest version.
“Every video I have posted lately was cut in Cutroom, captions and all. I am pushing it on bigger edits now. Real clips go here when they are mine to show.”
No subscription, and no fee per export. One key, on every computer you own.
Cutroom · lifetime license
Cutroom drives a Claude or Codex account you bring yourself, so you will need one of those. That cost is between you and them. The editing itself runs on your machine.
Short list, and no surprises after you pay.
You connect your Claude in one click, then ask for what you want in plain words. Cutroom hands it the exact manual for each tool, so it makes precise edits: cuts, captions, color, reframes. Every change streams onto the real timeline live, and you can adjust or undo anything.
Not by us. Cutroom runs on your computer and edits your files in place. Transcription and background removal happen on your machine, not in a cloud. If you connect an AI, it does read frames and audio so it can check its own work, and anything you ask it to generate goes to the provider whose key you brought. Nothing goes to us, and your files stay where they are.
Yes, for the editing. Once Cutroom is activated, the editor, the transcription, and the background removal all run on your machine with no connection at all. Your license refreshes quietly in the background whenever you are online, and it stays valid for 14 days offline, so a long flight or a week off the grid changes nothing. Two things do need a connection, because neither one is local: driving Cutroom with your AI, which runs on your own cloud account, and generating images, video, or voice with your own key.
To use the AI, yes. You connect your own account, so the editing runs on your plan and we never charge per video. Cutroom also works fully by hand without any AI connected.
Yes. Drop in 16:9 footage and ask for a vertical short. Cutroom finds your face and reframes to 9:16, keeping you in frame. It handles 1:1, 4:5, and 21:9 too, auto-detected from your source.
No. Cutroom is a single one time purchase, not a subscription. The license key is yours, and every update in this version is included. You pay in your own currency at checkout.
Right after checkout you get an email with your license key. Open the app, sign in with the email you bought with, and your key attaches by itself. It works on every computer you own.
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, and that is the whole list for the editor itself. Transcription runs on your processor on any Windows PC, so no graphics card is required, though an NVIDIA one makes it faster. One thing worth knowing before you buy: connecting an AI needs Node.js installed on your machine. Cutroom checks and tells you if it is missing, and everything else in the app works without it. There is no Mac build.
Anything that speaks MCP, the open standard. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, OpenAI Codex, Google Gemini, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, and Cline all connect with one paste. You bring the account, so the editing runs on your plan and there is no AI bill from us.
Yes. Cutroom ships an MCP server with 96 tools, and that is how your AI reaches the timeline. The difference from an MCP server that wraps ffmpeg and hands you back a finished file: these tools drive a real editor you are watching. Every call lands on the timeline in front of you, and you can undo any of it.
A real editor on your own machine, run by your own AI.