RawCut and CapCut: two different jobs

This page is written by the people who make RawCut, so read it with that in mind. We have tried to be straight about where CapCut is the better answer, because telling you otherwise would waste your afternoon and you would find out anyway.

The short answer

CapCut gives you a better timeline. RawCut gives you no timeline at all. That is the whole difference, and which one you want depends on where your time actually goes.

Where the work happens

CapCut's AI auto-edit takes footage you have already picked and hands back a timeline that is most of the way finished: cut, paced, color corrected, ready for you to adjust. It is very good at that.

But it starts after the decision that costs the most: which clips, and which seconds inside them. You still choose the footage.

RawCut starts one step earlier. You describe the video in a line or two, and it decides which moments answer that description, searching your whole library, including parts of clips you had forgotten you filmed. You get a finished vertical cut without opening a timeline.

Choose CapCut if

• You want frame-level control over the finished video
• You care about effects, transitions, templates and trending audio
• You are editing on desktop as well as phone, or on Android
• You enjoy editing, or the edit is the creative work

Choose RawCut if

• You film far more than you publish, and editing is the bottleneck
• You can't remember what is in your own camera roll any more
• You want several posts out of one shoot, not one
• You want faceless b-roll content without filtering clips by hand
• You would rather write a sentence than drag a clip

The honest overlap

Plenty of people use both, and that is a sensible answer rather than a compromise: RawCut to get from a camera roll to a cut, CapCut to put the finish on it. RawCut isn't trying to become a general-purpose editor, and it doesn't do effects, templates or trending audio.

What neither of them does

Neither one invents footage. If you are looking for AI-generated video or a stock library, that is a different category of tool entirely, and RawCut in particular will never substitute footage you didn't film. If nothing in your library fits a line you wrote, it says so.

Where the time actually goes

Both tools claim to save you an evening, but they save different parts of it. It helps to split editing into three jobs:

1. Deciding what goes in. Which clips, and which seconds inside them. On a phone full of footage this is the slow part, and it is invisible in every feature list.
2. Assembling. Putting the chosen pieces in order and trimming the joins.
3. Finishing. Captions, effects, color, music, transitions.

CapCut is excellent at two and three, and leaves one entirely to you. RawCut does one and two, adds automatic captions, and leaves the rest of three to you. If your footage is already chosen and sitting in a folder, CapCut will get you there faster. If the reason you haven't posted in a month is that opening the camera roll is exhausting, that is job one, and no timeline editor helps with it.

A worked example

Say you have 40 clips from a weekend and want a 30-second recap.

In a timeline editor you scrub 40 clips to find the good seconds, which is the bulk of the work, then drag maybe eight onto a timeline, trim each one, and finish. The finishing is quick. The finding isn't, and it is the part you do again for the next video.

In RawCut you add the clips once and they're read for you. You write "our weekend at the coast" and get a cut with the matching moments in order. You swap one clip you disagree with and export. The next video from the same weekend costs another minute, because the reading is already done.

The honest catch: your control over the second video is lower. You are steering with words rather than dragging with your hands, and words are a blunter instrument. Whether that trade is good depends entirely on whether you enjoy the dragging.

Can you use both?

Yes, and for a lot of people that is the sensible answer rather than a diplomatic one. Use RawCut to go from a full camera roll to a first cut with the right moments in it, export, and finish in CapCut if you want effects, a trending template or more elaborate caption styling. The two tools are answering different questions, and only one of them has to be the one you open first.

Availability

CapCut runs almost everywhere. RawCut is iPhone only, on iOS 15 or later, with no Android version. If you're on Android, that settles it.

A workflow that uses both

If you want the speed of RawCut and the polish of CapCut, this is the order that works:

1. Get the cut in RawCut. Write what the video should show, swap anything you don't like, and export.
2. Mute it if you'll add music. One tap mutes the whole cut, so the original sound doesn't fight the track.
3. Open the export in CapCut. It's a regular video in your Photos, so it imports like anything else.
4. Finish it there. Effects, templates, trending audio, and any styling you want.

The slow part, finding the right seconds across hundreds of clips, happens in RawCut. The part you enjoy, if you enjoy editing, happens in CapCut.

Who each one is really for

CapCut is for people who edit. If you like building a video shot by shot, have a style you want to control, or lean on templates and effects, it's hard to beat, and it's free to start.

RawCut is for people who film. If your camera roll is full and your drafts folder is empty, the problem isn't the editor, it's the hour of finding the footage. That's the hour RawCut takes off your plate.

Related

• Make a video from your own clips
• Faceless videos from your own footage
• What RawCut costs
• How to choose a camera-roll video app

Questions

Free to try. iPhone, iOS 15 or later. CapCut is a trademark of its respective owner; this page isn't affiliated with or endorsed by them.