Short.now is an AI clip maker that turns long videos into captioned 9:16 shorts, and it prices by the video instead of by the minute. Paid plans cost $6.99, $14.99 and $29.99 a month for 5, 20 and 50 long videos, with each video capped at 45, 90 or 240 minutes. If your sources are long, that makes it one of the cheapest tools per source minute we have priced. If they are short, the per-video model works against you.
Disclosure: I run ScaleReach, which publishes this review and competes with Short.now. I did not pay for a Short.now plan, and I did not run my own videos through it, so this post makes no claim about clip quality. There is no affiliate relationship. Every Short.now fact below comes from its own home page, terms and comparison pages, read on 7 November 2026. Where Short.now beats us, I say so.
The 60-second verdict
Choose Short.now if you clip long podcasts, streams or webinars, you want a free plan that keeps going after the first upload, or you want faceless AI Shorts and YouTube thumbnails in the same app.
Look elsewhere if your sources are mostly under 15 minutes, you need team seats on a self-serve plan, or you want an API or MCP server today.
Check first: the plan is counted in videos, and each plan caps the length of every video. A 2-hour podcast does not fit Starter or Creator at all.
Bottom line: very cheap for long, talk-driven sources, with a 3-day refund window to test a paid plan. Count your videos and their lengths before you pick a tier.
What is Short.now?
Short.now is a web app at short.now that takes a YouTube link or an uploaded file and returns vertical clips. Per its home page, it:
- Finds moments in a long video and gives each clip a viral score, rated on hook, flow, value and trend, with a reason for the score.
- Reframes to 9:16 by tracking the active speaker, cutting between faces on a two-person shot and zooming out when text is on screen.
- Writes word-by-word captions in preset styles, burns an AI hook onto the opening frames, and writes a title, description and hashtags for each clip.
- Auto-posts to TikTok, YouTube and Instagram on a schedule, on the Creator and Pro plans.
- Makes faceless “AI Shorts” from an idea or your own text: a script split into scenes, an AI image per scene, one of 22 AI voices and animated captions.
- Generates YouTube thumbnails in 14 styles, exported at 1280 x 720, on every paid plan.
The site is published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Japanese. The home page says it is “Trusted by 24,500+ creators and teams”. The page does not say how that was counted.
How much does Short.now cost in 2026?
The pricing section on the home page shows annual prices by default, with a “Save up to 33%” switch to monthly. Read on 7 November 2026, in US dollars:
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly (per month) | Charged per year | Long videos a month | Max length per video | AI Shorts a month | AI thumbnails a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | $0 | 3 to start, then 1 a week | 30 min | 3, watermarked | None listed |
| Starter | $6.99 | $4.99 | $59.88 | 5 | 45 min | 10 | 60 |
| Creator | $14.99 | $9.99 | $119.88 | 20 | 90 min | 30 | 200 |
| Pro | $29.99 | $19.99 | $239.88 | 50 | 240 min | 80 | 500 |
Source: short.now/#pricing (verified 2026-11-07). Monthly prices come from the same page’s monthly toggle. Paid plans export at 1080p and keep projects permanently. Creator adds exportable captions and auto-posting. Pro adds “Export in XML”, which the page marks as roadmap.
Things the cards do not make obvious:
- “Save up to 33%” is true for Creator and Pro, not Starter. Twelve months of Starter at $6.99 is $83.88 against $59.88 a year, about 29% off. Creator and Pro save about 33%.
- Every upload gives unlimited clips. The page says “Every upload turns into unlimited clips”, so the cap is on source videos, not on output.
- AI Shorts are a separate allowance. The FAQ says they do not count toward your monthly videos or use your thumbnail allowance. Paid AI Shorts run up to 180 seconds with no watermark.
- There is a bigger plan, but it is not on the cards. The plan finder sends anyone over 4 hours per video or 50 videos a month to a custom Agency plan, listed in the page’s data as “From $79/mo” with team workspace, multiple seats and “API access (roadmap)”.
Is Short.now free?
Yes. The Free plan needs no card and gives you 3 videos to start, then 1 more every week, each up to 30 minutes, exported at 720p. Projects are deleted after 30 days, and the terms confirm free-plan uploads and generated media are stored for 30 days. The home page headline says “No watermark”, and the only watermark the Free card lists is on AI Shorts. One testimonial on the same page names a watermark as its only complaint, so check your first export before you rely on it.
That is a more useful ongoing free plan than ours. ScaleReach gives 100 free minutes once, watermarked, with 30 minutes max per upload.
How does Short.now’s per-video pricing work out per minute?
Short.now’s comparison page says “a 90-minute podcast costs the same as a 20-minute video”. That is the whole trade. The longer your sources, the cheaper each minute gets. The shorter they are, the more you pay per minute.
Best case, with every video at the plan’s maximum length:
| Plan | Source minutes a month at max length | Cost per source minute, monthly | Cost per source minute, yearly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short.now Starter | 225 (5 x 45) | $0.031 | $0.022 |
| Short.now Creator | 1,800 (20 x 90) | $0.0083 | $0.0056 |
| Short.now Pro | 12,000 (50 x 240) | $0.0025 | $0.0017 |
| ScaleReach Pro | 400 | $0.045 | $0.031 |
| ScaleReach Agency | 5,000 | $0.020 | $0.0098 |
With 30-minute videos instead, Starter covers 150 minutes ($0.047 a minute monthly), Creator 600 ($0.025) and Pro 1,500 ($0.020). With 10-minute videos, Starter covers 50 minutes, which is $0.14 a minute on monthly billing.
Calculated from Short.now’s pricing section (2026-11-07) and our pricing. For long podcasts and webinars, Short.now is cheaper per minute than ScaleReach on every comparable tier, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. If you post several short sources a week, such as 5 to 10 minute videos, a minute-based plan usually works out cheaper. We walk through that math for a real workload in what it costs to clip 10 hours of podcast a month.
What is the maximum video length on Short.now?
It depends on the plan: 30 minutes on Free, 45 on Starter, 90 on Creator and 240 on Pro, per the pricing cards and the FAQ. Over 4 hours, the plan finder points you to a custom plan.
The cap is per video, so it decides your tier more than the video count does. A weekly 2-hour podcast is 4 or 5 uploads a month, which fits Starter’s video count but not its 45-minute limit. You need Pro for that, at $29.99 a month or $19.99 on annual billing. ScaleReach accepts files up to 3 hours on Pro and Agency, so for sources between 3 and 4 hours, Short.now Pro takes files we do not.
Does Short.now auto-post to TikTok, YouTube and Instagram?
Yes, on Creator and Pro. The home page says you connect TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, set posting times, and clips go out on their own, scheduled up to a month ahead. Free and Starter users download clips and upload them by hand. The page also shows Facebook Reels, LinkedIn and X logos, but its features and FAQ name only those three networks for auto-posting.
TikTok restricts posts from apps it has not audited, which affects every scheduling tool. We cover what that does in practice in which clip tools auto-post to TikTok, Reels and Shorts. ScaleReach publishes to YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels today, with TikTok posts private until TikTok finishes auditing our app. I did not connect an account to Short.now to test its posting.
Does Short.now have an API or MCP server?
Not that we found. The custom Agency plan lists “API access (roadmap)”, and Pro lists XML export as roadmap. The terms mention “our documented API”, but we found no API documentation on short.now. We found no MCP server for Short.now as of November 2026.
ScaleReach has an MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Kiro, covered in clipping YouTube videos from Claude with our MCP server. If you want an AI agent to run your clipping, that is the gap.
Does Short.now offer refunds?
Yes, on your first payment. The terms say you can get “a full refund of your first payment for a plan by emailing us within 3 days of that payment”. Renewals and later payments are not refundable except where the law requires it. You can cancel from billing settings at any time and keep access until the end of the period.
Three days is short, so test on the Free plan first and buy only once you know your tier. On annual Pro, that window covers a $239.88 charge.
What do real users say about Short.now?
There is little independent evidence. We found no Trustpilot page for it (the URL returned a 404 on 7 November 2026). The home page carries a wall of short testimonials in several languages, which are the vendor’s selection. A Reddit thread in r/podcasting about AI clipping tools includes a post from someone who discloses they work on Short.now, which is useful context but not a review.
Contradictions on Short.now’s own pages
A few of its pages disagree with the pricing section, which I treated as the current source:
- The agencies page says “3 free videos every month”. The pricing section says 3 to start, then 1 every week.
- The same page says the Agency plan includes “up to 60 videos per month” and 4K exports. The pricing section lists Agency as a custom plan and every listed plan at 1080p or lower.
- The terms call the free tier “the free Starter plan”, while Starter is a paid plan on the pricing cards.
If you are buying for a team, confirm Agency limits by email before you rely on either version.
What does Short.now do better than ScaleReach?
Five things, and they are real:
- Cost per minute on long sources. On Creator and Pro, a full month of long uploads costs a fraction of a cent per source minute.
- A free plan that renews. One new video a week, with no watermark claimed on clips, against our one-time 100 minutes.
- Longer files on Pro. Up to 4 hours per video, against our 3.
- Faceless AI Shorts. Script, AI images, voiceover and captions from a text idea, with a monthly allowance on every plan.
- A refund window. A 3-day money-back guarantee on the first payment.
Short.now vs ScaleReach: which should you pick?
| Short.now | ScaleReach | |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | $6.99/month, or $4.99/month yearly, 5 videos up to 45 min | $18/month, or $12.50/month yearly, 400 minutes (Pro) |
| Usage unit | 1 source video, up to the plan’s length cap | 1 minute of source video |
| Free plan | 3 videos, then 1 a week, up to 30 min each, 720p | 100 free minutes once, watermarked, 30 min max per upload, 720p |
| Max length per video | 45 min to 4 hours, by plan | 3 hours on Pro and Agency |
| Export | 720p free, 1080p paid | 720p free, 1080p paid |
| Auto-posting | TikTok, YouTube, Instagram on Creator and Pro | YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels (TikTok private until TikTok’s app audit) |
| Teams | Custom Agency plan only | 3 workspaces and 3 members on Pro, 10 and 10 on Agency |
| API or MCP | API on roadmap, no MCP server found | MCP server |
| Refunds | First payment, within 3 days | Not compared here |
Short.now figures from its own pages, ScaleReach figures from our pricing page, verified 2026-11-07. “Not compared here” means I did not verify that row for our side.
Pick Short.now if you clip long, talk-driven videos on a tight budget and want a free plan you can keep using. Pick ScaleReach if you clip many shorter sources, want team workspaces on a self-serve plan, want an AI agent to clip for you over MCP, or want to dub your clips into other languages. For more free options, see our roundup of free AI clip generators.
FAQ
Is Short.now free?
Yes. Short.now has a free plan with no card required: 3 videos to start, then 1 more every week, each up to 30 minutes, exported at 720p. Free projects are deleted after 30 days, and AI Shorts on the free plan carry a watermark. Figures are from Short.now’s pricing section, read on 7 November 2026.
How much does Short.now cost?
Starter is $6.99 a month, Creator $14.99 and Pro $29.99. Billed yearly they are $59.88, $119.88 and $239.88, which works out to $4.99, $9.99 and $19.99 a month. Each plan includes 5, 20 or 50 long videos a month. Prices are from short.now, read on 7 November 2026.
Does Short.now charge per minute or per video?
Per video. Each upload counts as one video, however many clips come out of it, and each plan caps the length of every video at 45, 90 or 240 minutes. Long sources are very cheap per minute. Short sources are expensive per minute, because a 10-minute video uses a full slot.
What is the longest video Short.now accepts?
Up to 4 hours on Pro. Free accepts 30 minutes, Starter 45 and Creator 90. Over 4 hours, Short.now asks you to contact it about a custom plan.
Does Short.now post to YouTube Shorts and TikTok?
Yes, on the Creator and Pro plans. You connect TikTok, YouTube and Instagram and schedule clips to go out automatically. Free and Starter users download clips and post them by hand. I did not connect an account to test posting.
Does Short.now offer refunds?
Yes, for your first payment only. Its terms give a full refund if you email within 3 days of the first payment for a plan. Renewals and later payments are not refundable except where the law requires it.
The bottom line
Short.now is the clearest example of per-video pricing in this category. If your sources are long podcasts, streams or webinars, it gives you more source minutes per dollar than ScaleReach on every comparable tier, a free plan that renews weekly, and a 3-day refund window on the first payment. Those are real advantages.
The per-video model cuts the other way for short sources, and the length cap per plan decides your tier more than the video count. Team seats, an API and the bigger Agency plan are still custom or on the roadmap, and its own pages disagree on what Agency includes. Write down how many videos you upload a month and how long the longest one is, then pick the tier from that.
If a number here looks wrong, tell us at hevin@scalereach.ai and we will check it against the source.
Changelog
November 2026. First published. All Short.now pricing, limit, feature and refund facts read off short.now’s home page, terms, agencies page and Opus Clip comparison page on 7 November 2026.
Last reviewed: November 2026 Next planned refresh: February 2027
