Cutfac vs Descript: an open-source alternative that keeps your videos on your Mac
Descript turns your recording into a transcript you edit like a document, with Underlord, its AI co-editor, to run edits for you. Cutfac has you point at the moment that's wrong and say what to change, and your own coding agent makes the edit on your Mac.
Plans and prices checked on: . We make Cutfac, so read this with that in mind. Every claim about the other product links to its own pages below. If something there has changed, tell us and we'll fix it.
At a glance
| Area | Cutfac | Descript |
|---|---|---|
| How you edit | Select a range or box an area, then say the change. | Edit the transcript like a document, or ask Underlord to make the edit. |
| Who does the work | Claude Code or Codex, signed in with your own account. | You, with Underlord, its AI co-editor, in beta. |
| Where it runs | macOS only. | Mac (macOS 14 or later), Windows 11 and the web. |
| Where your footage goes | A plain folder on your Mac. Cutfac doesn't receive it; your agent sends what it reads to its provider. | Projects sync to Descript's cloud, which needs an internet connection. |
| Rights over your videos | Cutfac's terms claim none. | Its terms ask for a perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable license to provide, maintain and improve the service. |
| Model training | Cutfac never receives your videos, so it has nothing to train on. | Its terms let it train its models on your input and output unless you turn that off in its settings. |
| Price | Free for 3 videos per Mac, then $19 a month or $180 a year. | A free plan, then $16, $24 or $50 per person a month billed yearly, or $24, $35 or $65 monthly. |
| What free leaves out | Only more videos. Every feature works and nothing is watermarked. | 60 media minutes a month, 100 AI credits once, and 720p exports with a watermark. |
| AI costs | Your agent runs on your own Claude or ChatGPT plan, or API usage. | AI credits each month on paid plans: 400, 800 or 1,500. |
| Account | None for the free version. | Needed. You sign in to your Descript account to use it. |
| Source code | Open, under AGPL-3.0. | Closed. |
| Coding agents | Built around Claude Code and Codex. | An official MCP server that works with Claude Code and other MCP clients, using your AI credits. |
Editing the words, or pointing at the frame
Descript's big idea is that video with people talking is easiest to edit as text. It transcribes your recording, and deleting a sentence from the transcript cuts it from the video. On top of that come tools such as Studio Sound and filler word removal, and Underlord, an AI co-editor in beta that can run edits like captions and reformatting for vertical video for you. For podcasts, interviews and talking-head video, that's a strong fit.
Cutfac starts from the picture instead. Your agent writes a brief and a shot list for you to okay, renders the video and checks its own frames. Then you play it, select the range or box the part of the frame you mean, and type what's wrong. The agent gets a clip of that range, the frame with your box on it and the timecodes, edits the files with ffmpeg and renders a new version. That works the same whether or not anyone speaks, which suits videos built from an app's screens. You play the old and new versions side by side and keep one.
Where your projects live
Descript keeps projects in its cloud. Its help center says you need an internet connection for your changes to sync and your project to back up. Its terms of service ask for a perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable license to your content to provide, maintain and improve the service, and let Descript train its models on your input and output unless you opt out, and say its agreements bar its third-party AI providers from training on them. Opting out is a setting in the app, and its help center says the AI models it has in production use no user data.
Cutfac keeps each video as a folder of plain files and YAML on your Mac. Cutfac doesn't receive your videos, and its terms claim no rights to them. Your agent does send what it reads to its own provider, Anthropic or OpenAI, under that provider's terms.
Clips from a recording, or videos for your app
Descript can cut a long recording into clips: its help center describes asking for 1 to 20 clips of 10 seconds to 5 minutes each, in layouts such as 9:16 or 1:1. If you already record long videos, that's a quick way to get shorts out of them.
Cutfac makes short-form videos about your own app. It learns your app first from your site, your store page or videos you like, and writes what it finds into a file every run reads. Formats turn what works into rules the agent repeats, and every render is checked against upload rules and its format: length, resolution, aspect ratio, codec, frame rate and audio sync.
Which to pick
Pick Descript if
- You make podcasts, interviews or talking-head video and like editing the words.
- You need Windows or the web.
- You want clips cut from long recordings you already have.
- You want the AI inside the editor rather than in a coding agent.
Pick Cutfac if
- Your videos show your app's screens more than people talking.
- You already use Claude Code or Codex and pay for Claude or ChatGPT.
- You want your footage to stay in a folder on your Mac, as plain files.
- You'd rather not buy AI credits on top of the plan you already pay for.
- You want source code you can read and build yourself.
Sources
Questions
For short-form videos about your own app, yes. It doesn't edit by transcript, has no Windows or web version, and doesn't sync projects to a cloud.
Descript's MCP server lets an agent import media and run edits in your Descript projects, using your AI credits. Its page says it doesn't hand you an MP4 on request; you publish to a share link with a download URL instead. With Cutfac the project, every render and the final video are files in a folder on your Mac.
Its terms let it use your input and output to train its models unless you opt out, which is a setting in the app, and say its third-party AI providers may not. Its help center says the AI models it has in production use no user data. Cutfac doesn't receive your videos at all.
Yes. Cutfac's renders are ordinary video files in a folder on your Mac, so you can bring one into Descript, for captions or Studio Sound for example.