Captions (by Mirage)
Mirage's short-form video app: turns a script, prompt, or raw selfie footage into a captioned, edited vertical clip with AI avatars and gaze correction.
Updated 2026-08-10
Not settled here. This entry does not record a confirmed free tier for Captions (by Mirage).
Listed pricing: Free tier (200 lifetime credits) + Pro $9.99/mo, Max $24.99/mo, Scale $69.99/mo.
Overview
Captions is the consumer creation app from Mirage, the AI video company that renamed itself from "Captions" to "Mirage" in September 2025 after raising more than $100M at a reported $500M valuation. The app takes a script, a text prompt, or a piece of raw selfie footage and returns a finished vertical clip — transcribed, captioned, trimmed, and sized for TikTok, Reels, or Shorts. Everything runs on Mirage's own foundation models rather than a stack of third-party APIs, which is why the company can also sell model access directly to developers.
It is built for people who ship talking-head content on a daily cadence and do not want to open a timeline. The workflow is deliberately narrow: record or generate, then let the app handle the parts that eat the most time — animated word-by-word captions, dead-air removal, B-roll insertion, and dubbing with lip-sync. The AI Twin feature is the piece that still earns its keep, letting you train a digital double once and then produce talking-head video from typed text with no camera involved.
The honest 2026 read is that the moat has thinned. When this app launched, polished auto-captions were a differentiator; today CapCut, Premiere, and the native phone editors all do captions free, gaze correction ships in NVIDIA Broadcast and Apple's FaceTime, and avatar fidelity has been claimed by HeyGen and Synthesia. What Mirage retains is integration — one mobile app where the captioning, the avatar, the trim, and the dub all live together — plus genuine enterprise traction that TechCrunch's rebrand coverage documents at HubSpot, Comcast, FOX, and Harvard. That is a real product with a real business behind it, but it is no longer the sharpest tool on any individual axis. Note the naming: Mirage is the parent brand and model company; Captions is the app at mirage.app/captions.
Is Captions (by Mirage) free?
Not settled here. This entry does not record a confirmed free tier for Captions (by Mirage).
What the entry records: 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.
Listed pricing: Free tier (200 lifetime credits) + Pro $9.99/mo, Max $24.99/mo, Scale $69.99/mo.
No figure is estimated here for what is not published. Check Captions (by Mirage)'s own site for the current terms.
Pricing verified . That is the date the plans were last re-checked against the vendor's own pages, not today's date. Confirm on the official site before you pay.
Captions (by Mirage) pricing
| Plan | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 200 lifetime credits (not monthly) with exports — enough to evaluate captions, avatars, and generation on a handful of clips |
| Pro | $9.99/mo | Monthly renewing credits, no watermark, full caption and editing toolset for individual creators |
| Max | $24.99/mo | Higher monthly credit allotment plus AI avatar/Twin access for regular publishers |
| Scale | $69.99/mo | Top credit tier for high-volume creators and small teams producing short-form at scale |
200 lifetime credits (not monthly) with exports — enough to evaluate captions, avatars, and generation on a handful of clips
Monthly renewing credits, no watermark, full caption and editing toolset for individual creators
Higher monthly credit allotment plus AI avatar/Twin access for regular publishers
Top credit tier for high-volume creators and small teams producing short-form at scale
Pricing verified . That is the date the plans were last re-checked against the vendor's own pages, not today's date. Confirm on the official site before you pay.
Is Captions (by Mirage) worth it?
Worth it for 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.
There is no free tier to test it on, so the plans above are the entry cost. The recorded trade-offs are listed below, and any one of them can settle the question on its own.
The 7.5/10 AI Score is an editorial read of published capability, price and shipping pace. Nobody here has hands-on hours with Captions (by Mirage). How we verify.
Worth it if
The strengths recorded against this entry.
- 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
Not worth it if
Any one of these blocks your use case.
- 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
What sets Captions (by Mirage) apart
- AI Twin avatars and short-form editing in a single mobile app, where rivals split avatar generation and clip editing across separate products
- Runs on Mirage's in-house video foundation models, also sold directly via a developer API
- Eye-contact correction built into the editing pipeline rather than requiring a separate capture-time utility
- Its individual capabilities are no longer unique — captions, gaze correction, and avatars are each done better or cheaper elsewhere; integration is what it actually sells
Key features
Auto Captions
Transcribes speech and renders animated word-by-word captions across a range of preset styles. Still one of the better-looking caption engines for vertical video, though free editors have largely caught up on the basic capability.
AI Avatars (Twins)
Train a digital clone of yourself once, then generate talking-head video from typed script with no camera. The strongest remaining reason to pick Captions over a general-purpose editor, even if raw avatar realism trails HeyGen and Synthesia.
Eye-Contact Correction
Redirects your gaze toward the lens to fix the off-camera look of reading a teleprompter. Useful, but no longer exclusive — comparable correction now ships in NVIDIA Broadcast and Apple's FaceTime.
Developer API
Mirage exposes its underlying video models through an API, so the avatar and generation capability can be embedded in other products rather than used only through the consumer app. This is what separates it from tools that only wrap someone else's model.
How it compares
| Tool | Best for | Pricing | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Captions (by Mirage) | 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. | Free tier (200 lifetime credits) + Pro $9.99/mo, Max $24.99/mo, Scale $69.99/mo | 7.5/10 |
| Veo 3.1 vs Veo 3.1 → | 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. | Free limited tier · Google AI Pro $19.99/mo · API ~$0.15–$0.40/sec | 8.8/10 |
| Runway vs Runway → | Editors and VFX artists who need to modify footage they already shot — restyling, object removal, relighting, new camera angles — rather than generate clips from a blank prompt. | Free credits + Standard $15/mo, Pro $35/mo, Unlimited $95/mo — check site for current rates | 8.5/10 |
| Kling AI | Filmmakers and ad creatives working from a storyboard who need directed camera moves and start-to-end frame control on a consumer subscription rather than per-second API billing. | Freemium — free daily credits + paid subscription tiers; check website for current pricing | 8.5/10 |
Compare head-to-head
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