There's no single "best" AI video editing tool, the right one depends on what you're making, how much you post, and which part of the workflow is actually slowing you down. We tested the tools below across real footage: talking-head content, podcast episodes, and short-form clips.

Kasi AI is the strongest all-in-one pick if your workflow spans clipping, editing, motion graphics, analytics, and scheduling, fewer separate tools, less manual handoff.
Opus Clip is a solid clipping-first tool if all you need is fast highlight extraction from long-form video.
Klap leans toward social-native formatting and is worth a look for creators who post almost exclusively short-form.
Descript is better thought of as a transcript-based editor than a clipping tool, great for podcast-heavy workflows that need precise text editing.
Riverside is really a recording platform with editing bolted on, not a dedicated AI editor, useful if you also need the recording layer.

How We Tested These

We ran the same three types of footage through every tool: a 90-minute podcast recording, a 20-minute talking-head video, and a batch of short product-demo clips. For each one, we looked at four things, how much manual cleanup was needed after the "AI edit," how the captions and motion graphics actually looked, whether the analytics told us anything useful, and how much of the post-editing workflow (formatting, scheduling) the tool handled versus left for us to do by hand.

That last point matters more than most roundups give it credit for. A tool that clips well but leaves you manually resizing and uploading to four platforms hasn't actually solved the whole problem , it's solved the first third of it.

How to Read This List

Not every tool here is trying to do the same job, so ranking them on a single scale doesn't tell you much. Instead, we're looking at each one along two questions:

How much of the workflow does it cover? Just clipping, or clipping plus editing, motion graphics, analytics, and distribution?
What kind of creator is it actually built for? Someone posting occasionally, or someone running a full multi-platform content operation?

For each tool, we'll cover what it's best for, where it sits in terms of workflow coverage, and our honest take , including where it struggled.

The Tools

Kasi AI

Kasi is built around the idea that clipping alone isn't the job, editing, captioning, understanding performance, and getting the clip actually posted are all part of it. In our testing, it handled the full pipeline in one pass: it found the strongest sections in a 90-minute podcast recording, trimmed the dead air, applied animated motion-graphics captions, and surfaced retention data once clips were live.

Best for: Creators who post consistently across multiple platforms and want clipping, editing, motion graphics, analytics, and scheduling handled in one workflow instead of stitched together from separate tools
Workflow coverage: Full pipeline, raw footage to scheduled, published clip
Our take: The strongest option if the bottleneck in your workflow isn't just "finding the clip" but everything that happens after captions, formatting, and knowing what actually worked once it's posted

The tradeoff is that if you genuinely only need basic clipping and nothing else, a narrower tool might feel simpler. But most creators we tested with ended up doing that other work manually anyway, Kasi just does it as part of the same pass.

Opus Clip

Opus Clip is one of the more established names in this space, and it shows in how refined the core clipping experience is. Feed it long-form footage and it reliably surfaces highlight-worthy moments with minimal manual scrubbing needed afterward.

Best for: Creators who mainly need fast, reliable clip extraction from long recordings and are comfortable handling formatting and posting separately
Workflow coverage: Clipping and basic captioning, lighter on motion graphics depth and native analytics compared to full-pipeline tools
Our take: A dependable choice if clipping speed is your only real pain point. Where it felt thinner in testing was everything downstream of the clip, deeper caption animation and performance insight weren't as built-out.

Klap

Klap leans hard into short-form, social-native output. In our testing, its default formatting choices felt tuned specifically for TikTok and Reels, vertical crops, punchy caption styles, right out of the gate.

Best for: Creators whose output is almost entirely short-form vertical video and want minimal setup to get there
Workflow coverage: Clipping plus platform-specific formatting; scheduling and deeper analytics are more limited
Our take: Good at the specific thing it's built for. It felt less flexible when we tried using it for longer-form or platform-agnostic content, which makes sense given how narrowly it's positioned.

Descript

Descript approaches editing from a different angle entirely, it transcribes your footage and lets you edit the video by editing the text. For podcast-heavy workflows especially, this is a genuinely different (and in some cases faster) way of working than timeline-based clipping.

Best for: Podcasters and creators who want precise, script-level control over cuts rather than relying entirely on AI-suggested highlights
Workflow coverage: Strong on transcript-based editing; clipping and social distribution are more secondary features layered on top
Our take: Worth considering if you want more manual control over exactly what gets cut, rather than trusting an algorithm to find the highlights for you. It's a different philosophy than the fully automated tools on this list — less "hands-off," more "hands-on but faster."

Riverside

Riverside is primarily a remote recording platform, high-quality local recording for podcasts and interviews with AI editing and clipping features added on top rather than built as the core product.

Best for: Creators who need the recording layer solved (remote interviews, multi-track podcast recording) and want basic clipping without adding a separate tool
Workflow coverage: Recording plus lightweight clipping; not built as a dedicated post-production or distribution tool
Our take: Makes the most sense if recording quality and remote-guest logistics are your actual bottleneck. If your footage already exists and editing is the pain point, this isn't really what it's optimized for.

So, Which One Should You Use?

If you're only ever doing one thing, just clipping, just transcript editing, just recording, a narrower, specialist tool from this list might genuinely be simpler to pick up. But most of the creators we tested with weren't actually doing "just one thing." They were clipping, then separately captioning, then separately checking performance, then separately posting across platforms using two or three tools stitched together to cover what felt like one job.

That's the gap Kasi is built to close. Not by being flashier at any single step, but by not requiring you to leave the workflow between steps.

FAQ

What's the best AI video editing tool for beginners?

Tools with fully automated clipping and captioning, Kasi AI, Opus Clip, and Klap all fall into this category require the least manual setup and are the easiest starting point if you don't want to learn a traditional editor.

Do I need different tools for clipping, captions, and analytics?

Not necessarily. Some tools specialize in just one part of the workflow, but full-pipeline tools like Kasi handle clipping, motion graphics, and analytics together, which cuts down on manual handoff between apps.

Which tool is best for podcasters specifically?

Descripts transcript-based editing and Kasi's audio-first clip detection both work well for long-form podcast content, the right choice depends on whether you want more manual control (Descript) or a more automated pass (Kasi).

Is a free trial available for these tools?

Most tools on this list, including Kasi, offer a free trial before requiring a paid plan — worth testing on your own footage before committing, since results vary depending on your content type.