AI-powered video editing tools have matured rapidly, and in 2026 they can genuinely save production teams over 100 hours on repetitive tasks like captioning, clip selection, color grading, and repurposing. Whether you run a video marketing operation or manage content in-house, these tools can dramatically speed up your workflow.
We tested six of the best AI video editing tools and evaluated them on time savings, output quality, and ease of use. If you still prefer working with a professional team, check out our list of top explainer video production companies.
1. Gling.ai – For people who make mistakes (so all of us)
Let’s not pretend. You recorded a 5-minute video and kept on saying “um”, restarted that one line six different ways, and even paused mid-sentence because your brain buffer stalled.
Welcome to the club! It happens to all of us.
That’s why there’s Gling.ai to get you out of it.
What it is
Gling is an AI-powered rough cut editor that automatically deletes all the dead space, filler words, failed takes, and general chaos you’d rather pretend never happened.
Instead of manually scrubbing through 40 minutes of footage just to find the one usable version of a sentence, Gling just… finds it for you.
What it’s actually good for
YouTubers, vloggers, educators, or literally anyone with a camera and a habit of messing up mid-sentence.
If your editing process includes rewatching yourself and forgetting basic grammar, Gling will change your life.
Why it slaps
- Automatically keeps your best takes and cuts the rest
- Deletes awkward pauses like they never happened
- Saves you from scrubbing back and forth for hours to fix a 0.7-second pause
- Exports straight into Premiere, Final Cut, or Resolve with all the edits baked in
What do users say
Someone on Product Hunt said “Used Gling while in Beta a few times for my Youtube channel – really saves the time in the annoying parts of editing! A true AI assistant that you’d want as a creator – it’s like magic :)”.
While someone else on G2 said “Gling is the idea. The capacity to consequently remove quiets and silence in recordings is a lifeline for any individual who alters a great deal of talking-head content, such as myself. It saves a lot of time contrasted with physically altering each clasp.
Gling’s programmed cuts can at times be excessively forceful, coming about in rough alters that upset the progression of the video. I frequently end up returning and physically change the slices to guarantee a smooth survey insight.”
How much it costs
- They have a free trial because they know you’ll get hooked
- Paid plans start at $15/month
Gling is for people who mess up, have no time, and would rather spend their editing energy on music and B-roll than deleting verbal garbage.
So… yeah. You need it.
2. Descript – Edit video by editing a transcripts
Have you ever spent 20 minutes scrubbing through footage just to cut out one sentence where you stumbled over a word like “Worcestershire sauce”?
Say goodbye to this old style of editing, and hello to Descript!
What it is
Descript is the result of someone finally asking what if editing a video worked like editing a Google Doc?
You get a transcript of your video, and if you want to cut something, you just delete the word.
Literally.
Highlight the text → press delete → it’s gone from the video.
You can move things around by dragging paragraphs. You can even fix your awkward phrasing by typing better words and letting Overdub clone your voice and patch it in.
It’s editing, minus the existential dread of the timeline.
What is it good for
It’s best used for podcasts, talking-head videos, online courses, and basically anything where you say too many words out loud and want to fix them after the fact.
Why it’s a must-use
- Automatically deletes “ums,” pauses, and filler
- No timeline scrolling or frame-guessing
- Built-in screen recording and multitrack editor
- Captions? Done.
- Has great collaboration features
What do users say
On G2 someone reviewed Descript and said “The Underlord AI that helps remove filler words like “uh” and “like” almost instantly is very helpful in editing, and it’s super easy to use. The caption tools are great, and they can even reasonably translate from other languages. We use it every week to help us create content from longer form recordings. It was easy to implement, and integrating it with YouTube was easy and helpful for uploading things directly to that platform.
Sometimes the AI editor can cut out some things that it shouldn’t, so you need to keep an eye on it and review the video. It also requires us to log into YouTube frequently, which is likely a security feature, but seems to be more frequent than is ideal.”
How much it costs
- Free plan (limited, but great for trying it out)
- $15/month for the Creator plan
- $30/month if you want Overdub, collaboration tools, and all the good stuff
It’s one of the best best AI tools for YouTubers if you ask us.
Especially if your current workflow involves manually trimming every awkward pause and syncing jump cuts by hand… stop.
Just stop and use Descript.
3. Adobe Podcast – Because nothing hurts a video like bad audio
You record what felt like a perfect take.
And then you listen back and realize it sounds like you filmed it inside a tunnel during a construction site next to a jet engine.
That’s why you need Adobe Podcast, an audio cleanup tool that makes it sound like you recorded with a $400 mic in a silent studio.
What it does
- Upload your audio
- Click Enhance
- Suddenly your sound is 5*****
No complicated EQ. No learning compression ratios.
Simple as ABC.
You can even tweak how much enhancement it adds in case you want to keep some natural room tone and not sound like you’ve entered the uncanny podcast valley.
Why it’s worth testing it out
- Completely free
- Works in your browser
- Saves garbage audio from becoming a reshoot
If you’ve got a voice, a mic, and bad luck, Adobe Podcast Enhance is going to help you
Fix your audio and stop apologizing for the echo.
What do users say
On Product Hunt a reviewer said “This is a handy tool for fast and high-quality noise removal. The disadvantage that I encountered is that if the sound source was not very close to the recording device, then Adobe Podcast does not cope well in this case.”
4. OpusClip – Make viral shorts without the guesswork
Let’s say you just edited a 45-minute podcast, or a vlog, or a casual rant about YouTube’s algorithm changes.
You feel great.
And then you remember you now have to edit the whole thing into short-form clips for TikTok, Reels, Shorts, LinkedIn, whatever’s trending next week.
Before you start crying, there’s OpusClip to help you repurpose long-form content with AI.
What it is
OpusClip is the AI tool that takes your long-form video, finds all the “actually good” parts, and turns them into polished, vertical clips with captions, zooms, cuts, and even AI-generated B-roll.
Yes, it does all that and you don’t need to do anything.
Drop in a YouTube link or video file, walk away, and come back to a lineup of Shorts that look like a human edited them except no human had to lose sleep or caffeine over it.
What it’s great at
- Finding viral moments you forgot you said
- Tracking the speaker, even when they move around like a caffeinated squirrel
- Adding smart captions that don’t look like a default Premiere plugin
- Auto-zoom, AI B-roll, suggested hashtags, and even a virality score
(because of course it has one)
Why it lowkey slaps:
- Turns one 30-minute video into 10+ ready-to-post clips
- You can click through the timeline to preview edits and tweak them
- It’s basically your short-form content intern, minus the onboarding
What do users say
The reviews on G2 are a mix between 5 and 4 stars with one customer saying “I like how much time Opus saves the user while still developing a professional product. I think it’s a game changer with all the tools it offers including AI, and it customizes videos like captions and formats very well. I like how easy it is to edit these clips. I’m able to remove any awkward moments by eliminating pauses, filler words, etc.
Opus has several things being beta tested including the AI features. I like how I can use AI to create B-roll but often times the B-roll doesn’t project the tone I’m looking for. The AI is also very slow.”
How much it costs
- Free plan available
- Pro plans start at $19/month
If you’re not using OpusClip and you’re still manually cutting TikToks from Zoom calls, you’re doing cardio for no reason.
5. Runway – For people who don’t want to learn After Effects
Look, if you’ve ever opened After Effects, stared at 42 layers of keyframes, and immediately questioned your career choices, better use Runway.
What it is
Runway is an AI-powered cheat code for pro-level visual edits.
Background removal, motion tracking, object erasing, color grading, inpainting.
It’s basically all the stuff you have to know how to do in Adobe, but with fewer tears.
You upload your footage, click a few buttons, and walk away with clean visuals that look like you had a post-production team. Except you didn’t. You had a browser tab and a mouse.
What it’s good for
- Getting rid of strangers ruining your perfect shot
- Creating clean background blur without a green screen
- Automatically fixing shaky lighting or bad color
- Tracking movement or zooms without having to manually mask anything
Why you need it
- One-click background removal (yes, even with a messy room)
- AI color grading for people who think “LUT” is a typo
- Inpainting that fixes broken frames like it never happened
What do users say
An VFX and Animation Artist on G2 commented that “RunwayML is one of the best AI tools out there, it is straightforward. I particularly like its image/text-to-video tool which works like a magic wand, It’s very easy to implement in my video editing workflow. I use it frequently to create cinematic video shots that later I can incorporate into my timeline to make full-length highly engaging videos that my viewers love.
I don’t think I have anything to dislike about this software, I believe Runway ML is leading the way forward.”
How much it costs
- Free plan available (limited exports)
- Paid plans start around $12/month and go up depending on export quality and AI tools
If you’re still spending 4 hours masking something frame by frame, I have bad news: that was cute five years ago.
Now it just means you should start using Runway.
6. Adobe Premiere AI tools – when your designer says “I fixed it” in less than a minute
Old Adobe has some of the most powerful AI tools in Premiere.
These are the tools your designers are using in the background while you’re still trying to clone-stamp your way out of a bad background.
The tools that turn a 45-minute cleanup task into a 30-second power move.
The ones that, frankly, should’ve been there five years ago but hey, better late than never.
What it is
Premiere’s built-in AI tools are what real designers and editors are using behind the scenes to make video edits look polished without taking a full afternoon to do it.
It’s why client revisions can be done faster than you expected.
What it’s good for:
- Auto-reframing for social platforms (it tracks faces for you)
- Scene edit detection (goodbye manual clip splitting)
- AI-powered audio cleanup that makes your phone mic sound… okay
- Auto captioning that doesn’t suck
What do users say
A Graphic Designer Lead on G2 said “The platform’s collaboration tools are a cornerstone for agency environments. Features like real-time co-editing in documents, easy file sharing for feedback, and version history tracking simplify the review and approval process. This is particularly beneficial when working with multiple stakeholders and remote team members, ensuring everyone is on the same page and projects move forward smoothly. The recent integration of AI-powered features through Adobe Sensei and Firefly further enhances productivity by automating repetitive tasks and offering innovative creative.
Considerable time it takes for the applications to open and for new apps to install. This sluggishness can be a major source of frustration and a disruption to an efficient workflow.”
How much it costs
It’s actually included with Adobe Premiere Pro.
Look, if you’ve already got Premiere you have to test out the AI tool.
Let the machine do the boring stuff so you can get back to the part you actually like.
How to Choose the Right AI Video Editing Tool
Consider which parts of your editing workflow consume the most time — is it rough cuts, captioning, repurposing for social, or color correction? Match the tool to your biggest bottleneck. Test free trials before committing, check integration with your existing editing software, and evaluate output quality on your actual footage. The best AI tools augment your team’s creativity rather than replacing it.
For more video production resources, explore our guides to B2B video production companies, YouTube production companies, and SaaS video agencies.
