Video · Head-to-head
Veo 3.1 vs Captions (by Mirage)
Veo 3.1 (freemium, AI Score 8.8/10) vs Captions (by Mirage) (freemium, AI Score 7.5/10). Side-by-side pricing, features, pros and cons, and which to pick.
The verdict
Pick Veo 3.1 if…
- →overall capability matters more than price (AI Score 8.8 vs 7.5)
- →you want our editor's pick for this category
- →your primary use case is short-form filmmakers and brand video teams who need dialogue-synced shots with consistent characters across a sequence, and who are already paying for google ai pro or building on vertex ai.
Pick Captions (by Mirage) if…
- →your primary use case is solo creators and small social teams publishing talking-head short-form daily who want captions, avatars, and cleanup handled in one mobile app rather than assembled from separate tools.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | Veo 3.1 | Captions (by Mirage) |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Video | Video |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Headline pricing | Free limited tier · Google AI Pro $19.99/mo · API ~$0.15–$0.40/sec | Free tier (200 lifetime credits) + Pro $9.99/mo, Max $24.99/mo, Scale $69.99/mo |
| Free tier | Limited Veo Fast generations per day in the Gemini app on a free Google account; availability, daily caps and eligible regions change frequently | Free plan with 200 lifetime (not monthly) credits — adequate for evaluation, exhausts quickly under regular use. Pricing last verified 2026-06-27; check the website for current rates. |
| AI Score | 8.8/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Best for | Short-form filmmakers and brand video teams who need dialogue-synced shots with consistent characters across a sequence, and who are already paying for Google AI Pro or building on Vertex AI. | Solo creators and small social teams publishing talking-head short-form daily who want captions, avatars, and cleanup handled in one mobile app rather than assembled from separate tools. |
| Editor's pick | ✓ Yes | — |
| Use cases | media content-creation marketing | content-creation media marketing |
| Date added | 2026-05-01 | 2026-06-27 |
Pros and cons
Veo 3.1
Video · freemium
Pros
- ✓Audio is generated with the video in every mode, including image-to-video and extended scenes
- ✓Up to three reference images keep a character, prop or style consistent across separate shots
- ✓Scene extension and first/last-frame interpolation push output past the 8-second single-clip limit
- ✓Flow is a genuine editing and shot-management surface, not just a prompt field
- ✓Same model reachable as a consumer app, a Gemini API call and a Vertex AI enterprise endpoint
Cons
- ×Native audio is no longer a differentiator — Sora 2, Kling and Grok Imagine all ship it
- ×Per-second API pricing is expensive for volume work next to rivals' fast tiers
- ×Base clips are around 8 seconds; anything longer is stitched extensions, and drift accumulates
- ×No open weights and no non-Google distribution; consumer use is bounded by AI Pro/Ultra quotas that change without notice
Captions (by Mirage)
Video · freemium
Pros
- ✓AI Twin avatars produce talking-head clips from a typed script with no filming
- ✓Captioning, trimming, B-roll, dubbing, and gaze correction live in one mobile app instead of four
- ✓Built on Mirage's own foundation models with a developer API, not a wrapper over third-party services
- ✓Entry paid tier at $9.99/mo is cheap relative to avatar-focused rivals
- ✓Documented enterprise adoption (HubSpot, Comcast, FOX, Harvard) signals the company is durable
Cons
- ×Its original moat has commoditized — auto-captions are now free in CapCut and Premiere, and gaze correction ships in NVIDIA Broadcast and Apple's FaceTime
- ×Avatar realism still trails HeyGen and Synthesia for corporate-grade presenters
- ×Only 200 lifetime free credits, so the free tier is an evaluation trial rather than a usable plan
- ×The Mirage/Captions split muddies search, docs, and support — you have to know which brand you are looking for
Related comparisons
Updated 2026-08-10. Spec data sourced from official product pages and tracked in our public directory at /tools.