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OpenShorts (openshorts.app) and ShortFast (shortfast.com) are different products from different companies. OpenShorts is an open-source AI clip generator with an MIT-licensed core: it turns long videos into vertical clips, and you can self-host it free or use its hosted cloud. ShortFast is a hosted generator that writes, renders and posts faceless shorts from a topic, on a schedule.
ShortFast is our product, made by SachaSoft LLC; OpenShorts is a different product from a different company, and it is a clipper: per its homepage, you paste a YouTube link or upload a podcast, stream or interview, and its AI picks the 3 to 15 moments worth posting, reframes them to 9:16 and burns in the captions. Pick OpenShorts if you already record long videos and want clips cut from them, above all if you want software you can run and change yourself; pick ShortFast if you have nothing to clip and want new faceless shorts written from a topic and posted to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts on a schedule.
Open source is where OpenShorts leads: its core is MIT-licensed, and self-hosted with Docker it has no watermark, no usage cap and no subscription; its README says that costs you “a machine, your own API keys and the time to keep it running”. ShortFast isn't open source and runs only as our hosted service. What it adds is a different starting point: from a topic, it writes the script, renders the video in one of 27 styles with a voiceover and captions, and its automations write and post each next episode. It doesn't clip videos you upload; for that, OpenShorts or another clipper such as OpusClip fits better.
ShortFast's plans are $29, $39 and $99 a month, and every monthly plan starts with a 3-day trial for $1; there's no free plan. OpenShorts' self-hosted edition is free, and on October 24, 2026, OpenShorts Cloud, its hosted version, listed a watermarked free plan and paid plans at $12, $29 and $59 a month. Looking for OpenShorts itself? Its hosted app is at openshorts.app, which links to its code on GitHub.
Side by side
| Dimension | ShortFast | OpenShorts |
|---|---|---|
| Core job | Writes, renders and posts faceless short videos from a topic, on a schedule. | “Free AI Clipping Tool, Open Source (MIT)”, per its page title. Its README lists three tools: Clip Generator, AI Shorts (UGC videos with AI actors) and YouTube Studio. |
| Where a video starts | A topic: it writes the script and hook. Or write or paste your own script. | A long video you upload or a YouTube link. AI Shorts start from a product description or URL. Its open-source AI video generator page says it “is not a text-to-video tool”. |
| Visuals | 27 styles: licensed documentary stock footage, AI video, or AI images in a fixed art style (stick figures, anime, Greek statues…). AI actors for UGC-style videos. | The footage you bring, reframed to 9:16: face tracking for one person, two speakers stacked, or the whole screen for a screencast. AI Shorts generate a lip-synced AI actor with B-roll. |
| Voice and captions | A voiceover from 40+ voices. Burned-in, word-by-word captions in 60+ languages, auto-detected, in 9 styles and 18 fonts. | Word-level captions burned in, in 17 styles. With your own ElevenLabs key, it dubs clips into 30+ languages, keeping the speaker's voice, and re-captions them. AI Shorts voiceovers are in English or Spanish (README). |
| Hooks, titles and editing | Writes the hook and script, unless you paste your own; automations also write titles and descriptions. Afterwards, edit captions, B-roll, music, title and post text, then re-render; an edited script can't be re-voiced. The same video and caption go to every platform. | Scores each moment out of 100 and writes the title and description for every platform; each clip opens with a hook line you can rewrite. Its editor works from the transcript: click a word to set a cut. |
| Series and posting | Each automation writes the next episode for every posting slot and posts it to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts on your schedule, or emails it to you. 1, 3 or 6 social accounts by plan. | Posts or schedules clips to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts through Upload-Post (self-hosted, with your own key). On paid cloud plans, Autopilot clips each new YouTube upload, at most one a day, and can schedule the best 1 to 5 clips one a day; TikTok clips arrive as drafts. |
| Open source and self-hosting | Hosted only; ShortFast isn't open source. | MIT for the core (LICENSE file), self-hosted with Docker. The cloud/ directory, with billing and hosted-service code, is under the OpenShorts Commercial License (NOTICE file): per its README, you can self-host it for personal or internal use, but not offer it to third parties as a paid or hosted service. |
| AI agents and developers | A REST API, webhooks and an MCP server for Claude, Cursor and other agents, with a free API tier: 50 credits every 30 days, 3 renders, watermarked, download only. | An MCP server, a REST API with per-user keys, webhooks and a CLI. Cloud calls use your plan's minutes; self-hosted, the same /mcp endpoint answers only while your machine is on (README). |
| Pricing and free plans | Starter $29 (2,000 credits), Pro $39 (5,000) and Advanced $99 (15,000) a month; 20% to 48% off billed yearly; extra credits $10 per 1,000. No free plan: every monthly plan starts with a 3-day trial for $1. | Self-hosted: free; you pay for your machine and API use. OpenShorts Cloud, in minutes of video a month: Free (20, watermarked), Starter $12 (100), Creator $29 (300) and Pro $59 (750); yearly, $120, $290 or $590. |
| Refunds | At ShortFast's discretion, per its terms; the $1 three-day trial lets you test first. | Per its refund policy, your most recent charge is refunded in full if it was made in the last 14 days and you haven't used the service since (no minutes spent), except for accounts terminated for abuse. EU consumers also have a 14-day withdrawal right, paying for the part used. |
OpenShorts changes its product and pricing independently of us. Check their site for current details before deciding, and tell us if anything here is out of date.
ShortFast and OpenShorts plans
Prices from each vendor's pricing page, checked
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly | What the plan includes (each vendor's own units) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShortFast Starter | $29 | $15 a month | 2,000 credits: about 80 one-minute stock-footage or 50 AI art-style videos, 1 automation, 1 social account, videos up to 3 minutes |
| ShortFast Pro | $39 | $31 a month | 5,000 credits, 3 automations, 3 social accounts, videos up to 3 minutes |
| ShortFast Advanced | $99 | $79 a month | 15,000 credits, 6 automations, 6 social accounts (2 profiles), videos up to 3 minutes or 8 to 15 minutes |
| OpenShorts self-hosted | $0 | $0 | Free under MIT, with no watermark or usage cap. You supply the machine (8GB+ RAM recommended) and your own API keys, billed by each provider: Google Gemini, plus fal.ai, ElevenLabs and Upload-Post for AI Shorts, voice and posting |
| OpenShorts Cloud Free | $0 | $0 | Your first video up to 60 minutes, then 20 minutes of video a month; watermark; clips kept 7 days; no credit card |
| OpenShorts Cloud Starter | $12 | $120 a year | 100 minutes of video a month, no watermark, Gemini key and auto-posting included, MCP and API access |
| OpenShorts Cloud Creator | $29 | $290 a year | 300 minutes of video a month, with the same features as Starter |
| OpenShorts Cloud Pro | $59 | $590 a year | 750 minutes of video a month, plus a priority processing queue |
OpenShorts Cloud shows its yearly prices per year, under a Yearly toggle marked “2 months free”, without a per-month figure. Its minutes cover video processing; AI Shorts and voice dubbing use your own fal.ai and ElevenLabs keys, billed by those providers (typically about $0.65 to $2 per video, its figure). The two companies' units don't convert. ShortFast's video counts are estimates, not limits.
Sources: ShortFast pricing · OpenShorts pricing · OpenShorts homepage · OpenShorts README · OpenShorts LICENSE · OpenShorts NOTICE · OpenShorts auto clip (Autopilot) · OpenShorts MCP server and API · OpenShorts open source video clipper · OpenShorts open source AI video generator · OpenShorts terms of service · OpenShorts refund policy
OpenShorts' strongest case is that it's open source. Its LICENSE file is the MIT License, which, its open-source clipper page notes, lets you use the core commercially, modify it and redistribute it. If you disagree with where it cuts or how it reframes, “having the source means you can change it rather than file a feature request”.
Privacy comes with it. Per that page, transcription, scene detection, reframing and encoding run locally, and moment scoring sends Google's Gemini API the transcript rather than the video; its README describes running that step on a local model instead, through Ollama, LM Studio or vLLM. Its terms add that when you self-host, your content flows directly between your instance and the AI providers, under your own agreements with them.
Its README lists Docker and Docker Compose, a Google Gemini API key for all AI features, and keys for fal.ai (AI Shorts), ElevenLabs (voiceover and dubbing) and Upload-Post (social posting). Its FAQ recommends 8GB+ RAM and a modern multi-core CPU, on Linux, macOS or Windows via WSL2. A GPU is optional: on a typical CPU, an 8-minute video takes 5 to 8 minutes to process, and with an NVIDIA card, its README says, about a minute.
You pay only for the AI APIs you use, its README says, and most have “generous free tiers”. Its homepage is plain about the rest: “You install it, you maintain it, you back it up.” OpenShorts Cloud is its own answer to that: the same software on its NVIDIA GPU, about 50 seconds for an 8-minute video, with the Gemini key included and auto-posting set up.
ShortFast answers a different question: what to post when there's no recording to cut. Give it a topic and it writes the script and hook, then renders a faceless video in one of 27 styles, from licensed documentary stock footage and AI video to art styles such as stick figures, whiteboard or classical painting, with a voiceover and burned-in, word-by-word captions. It also makes UGC-style videos with AI actors for ads. You can swap your own clips into any scene, but it doesn't clip long videos you upload.
For a series, each automation follows a brief of up to 500 characters and writes the next episode for every posting slot: a new topic, script, title, description and footage, in the same tone, format and length, with recent titles checked. It posts each one to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts on your schedule, or emails it to you, with no approval step.
Whatever posts for you, the platforms' rules apply. YouTube's monetization policies, under “Generic or Repetitive Content”, say channels where content “feels interchangeable from video to video” are not allowed to monetize, and its spam policy covers “using automated tools or AI to churn out high volumes of similar content with minimal changes”. TikTok requires a label on realistic AI-generated content. Vary your topics, and check the first videos of any automated series.
ShortFast's credits pay for finished videos. A one-minute stock-footage video uses about 24 credits and an AI art-style one about 37, so Starter's 2,000 credits, at $29 a month or $15 billed yearly, cover about 80 or 50 such videos a month. Extra credits are $10 per 1,000.
OpenShorts Cloud's minutes cover video processing: Starter's 100 minutes a month cost $12, or $120 billed yearly (October 24, 2026). Self-hosted, the software costs nothing and the bill is your hardware and API use. The units don't convert, so price the work you'd actually do: minutes of footage to clip, or finished videos from a topic.
FAQ
Keep going
When you have long recordings to cut, and when you need videos made from scratch.
Learn moreComparisonAnother clipper for podcasts and webinars, with virality scores and a free plan.
Learn moreDevelopersLet Claude, Cursor and other agents make and publish ShortFast videos.
Learn moreToolA topic in, a narrated and captioned faceless short out, in one of 27 styles.
Learn moreGuideScheduling videos you already made, versus automation that makes and posts them.
Learn moreGuideTen tools compared on what the free tier allows, from watermarks to posting.
Learn moreThree days of full access. If OpenShorts suits you better, that's a useful thing to find out cheaply.