← Back to Podcli

Podcli vs Riverside

Riverside is where you record the podcast. Podcli is where you clip it. The overlap is Riverside's Magic Clips feature, and that's the part Podcli does better, free, and locally.

Cloud podcast recording with Magic Clips for short-form repurposing. · Subscription pricing from ~$15/mo. Free tier has limits.

Choose Podcli when

  • You already record elsewhere and only need a clipping step.
  • You want clipping without paying for a recording subscription.
  • You want local processing, so your raw recordings never go to a clipping cloud.
  • You want an MCP server so an AI agent does the clipping.
  • You batch many episodes and don't want minute caps.

Choose Riverside when

  • You need a remote multi-track recording studio.
  • You want recording + clipping in one hosted dashboard.
  • You're already on Riverside and the Magic Clips quota is enough.

Side by side

The features that change the day-to-day for clip creators.

Feature
Podcli
Riverside
Primary job
Clip pipeline
Recording (clip is secondary)
Price
Free, MIT
~$15-$30/mo
Remote multi-track recording
No
Yes
AI clip suggestion
Claude/Codex + knowledge base
Magic Clips (limited control)
Caption customization
Edit React/Remotion components
Preset templates
Local processing
Yes
Cloud
MCP server
Yes (19 tools)
No

Recording and clipping are different problems

Riverside solves remote recording: multi-track, local capture per guest, lossless upload. That's a hard problem and Riverside is good at it. Podcli doesn't try to compete with that.

The overlap is Magic Clips, Riverside's clipping feature. It exists, it works, but the control surface is narrow: you take what Riverside's templates and ranker give you. Podcli's pitch is the same job done with editable captions, scored against your own knowledge base, runnable from the CLI or an AI agent, with no quota.

Use both: Riverside for capture, Podcli for clips

The most common shape: record on Riverside, download the final mix, hand it to Podcli for the shorts pass. You keep Riverside's recording quality and drop the clipping subscription tier you didn't need.

Questions about switching from Riverside

Direct answers to the searches people run before they decide.

Can I record a podcast with Podcli?+

No. Podcli is a clipping pipeline, not a recording tool. Use Riverside, Zoom, or any DAW for capture, then hand the file to Podcli.

Is Podcli a free Magic Clips alternative?+

Yes, in scope. Magic Clips picks moments from a Riverside recording and crops them. Podcli does the same job (picks moments, crops to 9:16, burns captions) for any video source, free and locally.

Does Podcli work with Riverside exports?+

Yes. Export the final video from Riverside in any common format (MP4, MOV) and Podcli will transcribe, score, crop, and caption it.

Try Podcli yourself

The setup script handles the toolchain. You'll have a clip out the other side in a few minutes.

$ git clone https://github.com/nmbrthirteen/podcli.git
$ cd podcli
$ ./setup.sh