WHAT IS FREE, WHAT IS NOT
AI tools for TikTok: what can be automated, and what should not be
Most of this is free. The parts worth paying for are narrower than the ads suggest, and one kind of automation quietly costs you the thing people followed you for.
Write Shorts is ours and appears under scripts. Everything else belongs to someone else and we earn nothing from listing it.
The paid one, if you want to judge it yourself
Paste a TikTok that worked. The free tools, and exactly what they cover, are listed below.
See it work
A real video in, a real script out
Twenty-three seconds, start to finish. No edits, nothing sped up.
Has sound · 23 seconds
SIDE BY SIDE
What each one is actually for
Sorted by the job, because a caption tool and a script tool are not competing.
CapCut
Free tier
Editing, auto-captions, templates.
Automates the admin. Does not touch the judgement.
TikTok's built-in captions and voices
Free
Captions and voiceover, inside the app.
Instantly recognisable as TikTok's, which is either the point or the problem.
TikTok Creative Center
Free
Shows which sounds and formats are climbing.
Tells you what is working generally, not what works for your audience.
ChatGPT / Claude
Free tier + paid
Writes a script from a topic.
This is where automation crosses from the admin into the judgement.
Opus Clip
Free tier + paid
Cuts long footage into shorts.
Only useful if you already film long.
Write Shorts
$24.99/mo
Writes a script from a link to a video that already performed, in that video's structure, about your subject.
No free tier and no trial. Writes words, not video. Cannot promise anything performs.
Ours
Prices checked October 2026 and set by their owners, so confirm on their own pages before you buy anything.
Two questions sit underneath this search. What can I get without paying, and how much of this can run without me. They have different answers and the second one has a catch.
What is genuinely free
- CapCut — editing, auto-captions, templates. The free tier covers what most creators need and always has.
- TikTok's own caption and voice tools — built in, no account anywhere else, instantly recognisable as TikTok's.
- ChatGPT and Claude — both have free tiers and both write a script from a topic.
- TikTok's Creative Center — free, and it shows which sounds and formats are climbing before anyone writes a blog post about them.
If you are starting out, that list is the whole toolkit. Paying before you have found the step you reliably get stuck on is how three subscriptions appear on a card for a problem none of them touch.
What automation actually means here
The word covers two very different things, and the ads blur them on purpose.
Most people write
Automating the posting — scheduling, captioning, cutting, uploading. Saves hours and costs you nothing in quality.
What holds
Automating the deciding — what to say, what to make, what the video is about. Saves hours and costs you the thing people followed you for.
The first kind is worth buying as soon as the work is repetitive enough to feel like admin. The second kind is where accounts quietly flatten out, because the judgement being automated is the only part a competitor cannot copy.
Where paid tools earn their place
Cutting long footage into shorts
Opus Clip and Klap find the clippable segments for you. Genuinely useful if you already film long. Useless if you do not.
Captions with a particular look
Submagic does animated captions well. Whether that is worth a monthly fee depends entirely on whether your niche expects them.
Scripts with evidence behind them
Write Shorts — ours — takes a link to a video that already performed, keeps its structure and writes your version. $24.99 a month or $149 a year. There is no free tier, which is the honest answer to the most common modifier on this search. The argument for paying is on the AI script generator page, and if the topic-first free tools are good enough for you, use those instead.
What no tool does
None of them know your audience, and none of them make anything go viral. The lists that promise otherwise are counting on you not checking. If you only read one more thing, make it what is actually under your control.
THREE STEPS
Link in. Script out. About a minute.
- 01
Paste the video
Any TikTok, Reel or Short that's working in your niche, up to three minutes long. No topic to type — you pasted from your own feed, so the subject is already right.
- 02
It pulls the video apart
What held people, where the turn lands, what she left out. Then your version writes itself out in front of you — same shape, your subject, hook to close.
- 03
Copy it and film
One tap. It's in your notes. Go shoot.
PRICING
2,000 credits a month, when free stops being enough.
BEST VALUE
ANNUAL
Works out at $12.42 a month
Saves you$151 a year
Cancel whenever
BOTH PLANS INCLUDE
- A whole script every time — hook, middle, ending
- Any Reel, TikTok or Short, pulled apart and rebuilt
- Up to four versions of one video, not one
- 2,000 credits a month — about 200 scripts
Cancel any time from your account. Cheaper than ChatGPT Plus — and it doesn't sound like ChatGPT.
QUESTIONS
What people ask about automating TikTok
CapCut, TikTok's own captions and voices, TikTok Creative Center, and the free tiers of ChatGPT and Claude. That is a complete working setup at no cost.
You can automate the editing, captioning and posting. Automating what the videos say tends to flatten an account, because the judgement is the part people followed you for.
Whichever one unblocks the step you reliably stop at. If you do not know what that step is, buying anything is guesswork.
When the free tools stop being enough
Paste a video that already worked and see whether the paid version is worth it to you.
Paid plans only — there is no free tier. $24.99 a month, or $149 a year.