OpusClip is hosted, polished, and zero-setup. Podcli is the open-source local version: no watermark, no minute caps, your files never leave your laptop.
The features that change the day-to-day for clip creators.
Yes. Podcli is MIT-licensed and exports clean MP4s with no watermark on every run, free or otherwise.
OpusClip's free tier adds a watermark to exports and caps processing minutes. The paid tiers remove the watermark but keep a monthly minute cap based on the plan.
With OpusClip, you upload the episode to their servers. They transcribe, score, and clip it in the cloud.
With Podcli, the file never leaves your machine. The only network call is when you choose to ask Claude or Codex for clip suggestions, and even then you only send the transcript text, not the audio or video.
For interview shows under NDA, regulated industries, or any guest content that has not been released yet, that is the difference between "we can use this" and "we cannot use this".
No. OpusClip is a hosted web app and offers an API on higher tiers, but not a CLI or an MCP server.
Podcli ships as a Model Context Protocol server with 19 tools. Plug it into Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or Codex and say "clip this episode". The agent runs transcription, clip scoring, captions, and export inline.
OpusClip ships a template library. You pick a style and the captions are burned in.
Podcli ships four styles (branded, hormozi, karaoke, subtle), each rendered by Remotion as a React component. If you want a fifth style or a brand-specific variant, you write a component and Remotion renders it the same way as the others.
If you need a clip in the next 10 minutes and you do not want to clone a repo or install anything, OpusClip is faster to start. Hosted UIs win on day one. Podcli wins when you keep using the tool every week and the cost of a subscription or a minute cap adds up.
The honest version. Steps in the order you'd actually do them.
Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/nmbrthirteen/podcli && cd podcli && ./setup.sh. Needs Node 18+, Python 3.10+, FFmpeg.
Drop a podcast file into the web UI at localhost:3847, or pass it to the CLI: ./podcli process episode.mp4 --top 5.
Pick a caption style. Branded maps to OpusClip's default dark-pill look. Hormozi is the yellow-highlight style.
Optional: add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or an OpenAI key to .env so AI clip scoring works. Same idea as OpusClip's virality picker, on the model you pick.
Optional: fill in .podcli/knowledge/ once with your show name, voice rules, and title formulas. Every future run reads it. This replaces OpusClip's brand kit.
Run a batch. Output lands in .podcli/output as 1080x1920 MP4s with captions burned in and audio normalized to -14 LUFS.
Direct answers to the searches people run before they decide.
Yes. Podcli is MIT licensed. There is no free tier vs paid tier - the full feature set is free. The only optional cost is your own Claude or OpenAI API key if you want AI clip suggestions, and you can also run without AI scoring.
Yes. There is no watermark on any export, free or otherwise. The output is a clean 1080x1920 MP4 with captions burned in at word-level timing.
OpusClip processes in the cloud, so the speed depends on their queue. Podcli processes locally, so the speed depends on your hardware. With hardware encoding (VideoToolbox on Mac, NVENC on NVIDIA, VAAPI on Linux), a 60-minute episode usually clips in under 2 minutes on a modern laptop.
Yes. The AI clip suggestion step is optional. You can either run transcription only and pick clips manually in the web UI, or pass a transcript with timestamps you already have. The MCP suggest_clips tool can also be skipped.
No. Podcli is local-first by design. Run the web UI on your laptop via `npm run ui`, then open localhost:3847. For team use, you can run it on a shared server inside your own network.
Yes. Podcli ships as an MCP server with 19 tools. Add it to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, or any MCP-compatible client. The companion PodStack repo also adds slash commands for the post-clip workflow (titles, descriptions, thumbnails).
Open source, MIT, no signup, no watermark, no upload. Clone and run.