"Captions" is the name of an app, which makes it hard to search for. It's made by the company that renamed itself Mirage in September 20251, and today it's an AI video editor: besides captions, it edits the video for you, dubs it into other languages and generates media2. I make CapiCap, which does only the captions part, and does it on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.
So I'm not neutral. What I say about Captions comes from its help pages, its privacy policy and its App Store listing, linked at the bottom. I checked them on 17 October 2026.
What each one costs
Captions' free plan gives you a one-time batch of credits that doesn't refresh2. After that it's a subscription. In the US App Store, Basic is $9.99 a month, $64.99 a year or $5.99 a week, and Max is $24.99 a month3, with bigger plans above that2. A year of Basic comes to $64.99 if you pay yearly, or $119.88 if you pay monthly.
CapiCap doesn't have a subscription. Every feature works for free, with three exports each calendar month. If you need more than that, Lifetime access is a one-time $9.99 in the US (prices differ by country) and removes the limit. An export that fails or that you cancel doesn't count, and saving or sharing an export again is free.
Where your video goes
Captions works in the cloud. Its privacy policy lists "images and videos stored on a device which are uploaded to the Services" and "AI-generated transcriptions and captions" among the data it collects. It says it uses data "to train our artificial intelligence/machine learning models", and that it may share information with third parties "for the purpose of enhancing their services, training their algorithms, and marketing third-party products"4. Mirage says the service is hosted "in isolated, US-based Google Cloud data centers"5.
For a lot of videos none of that matters. It does when the footage is private: a client's project, an interview, your family.
CapiCap runs OpenAI's Whisper speech model on the device. It downloads the model once, on first launch, and after that it works in airplane mode. There's no account, and the App Store privacy label says "Data Not Collected"6. I wrote more about captioning a video without uploading it, including how to check that for yourself.
Side by side
| Captions | CapiCap | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An AI video editor: captions, AI edits, dubbing, generated media2 | A captioning app |
| Captions are made | On its servers, hosted on Google Cloud4, 5 | On your device |
| Price | Free credits to start; Basic $9.99 a month or $64.99 a year, Max $24.99 a month3 | 3 exports a month free; $9.99 once for unlimited |
| Watermark | None on the free plan; added if a Basic subscriber uses Max-only features7 | None |
| Video length | Up to 10 minutes for captions on iOS8 | No limit set by the app |
| Burned-in video and .srt | Both9 | Both |
| Caption languages | "91+" on the App Store, "100+" on its site10 | 99+ |
| Translation and dubbing | Yes8 | No |
| Runs on | iPhone, Android, web; the iPhone app also runs on iPad, not optimized for it11 | iPhone, iPad, Mac with Apple silicon |
| App Store privacy label | Used to track you: identifiers. Linked to you: email, name, photos or videos, device ID, user ID3 | Data Not Collected6 |
When I'd use Captions
When you want the app to do the editing for you. Captions' paid plans include AI editing, AI-generated media and dubbing2, 7, and CapiCap does none of that: it doesn't trim, cut or add anything but captions. I'd also use Captions for translated captions, because CapiCap writes captions only in the language that's spoken, and on Android or in a browser, because CapiCap runs only on Apple devices.
When I'd use CapiCap
When you'd rather pay once, or not at all if three videos a month is enough. When the footage is private. When the video is long: on iOS, Captions makes captions for up to 10 minutes of video8, and CapiCap doesn't set a limit (on an M1 Pro MacBook Pro, 62 minutes of audio took about 11 minutes to transcribe). And when you work on an iPad or a Mac: Captions says its iPhone app isn't optimized for iPad11, while CapiCap's editor on iPad and Mac puts the preview beside the whole transcript.
Sources
Checked 17 October 2026. Prices and terms change, so check the links before you decide.
- TechCrunch, 4 September 2025: Captions rebrands as Mirage.
- Captions Help, Subscriptions: free credits, Basic $9.99 a month with 200 credits, Max $24.99, and the plans above them.
- App Store, Captions: AI Edits Your Video (US store): in-app purchases and App Privacy section.
- Mirage, Privacy Policy (effective 10 November 2025).
- Mirage, Safety and security.
- App Store, CapiCap: Video Captions, App Privacy section; the CapiCap privacy policy.
- Captions Help, Watermark on exported video.
- Captions Help, Add captions: translation, and limits of 10 minutes on iOS for same-language captions and 5 minutes for translated captions or dubbing.
- Captions Help, Publish and export: "Download the generated captions in a separate SRT file".
- The App Store listing above, and Captions: add captions to videos.
- Captions Help, Download Captions for iPhone (on iPad: "it is not currently optimized") and Download.
