Comparison
Arcads hands back a performance. Cutroom hands back the ad
Arcads turns a written script into a delivered performance. Nobody has to be free that week. What comes back is a person talking. The cut, the cutaways and the captions are still yours to make. This page covers what carries over from your Arcads work, what the first week costs, and where Cutroom finishes the job. By the end you will know which of the two gaps is blocking your month.
- Scripts you rewrite to move
- 0
- Longest take Cutroom accepts
- 3 min
- Credits for one batch
- 100
Arcads solved the calendar. It did not solve the edit.
Arcads answers the hardest scheduling problem in creative production. Nobody has to be available. Nobody has to be well rested. Nobody has to be talked into a fourth take at half past six.
That advantage is real and it is structural. If your bottleneck was ever a person's calendar, a script-to-actor product solved it.
It trains writing, too. The only input is text, so you read your own words back cold on a screen. A limp hook is obvious there. It is never obvious behind a camera you are also operating.
Their plan tiers are published on their own site and they move. Read them there on the day you decide.
Then look at what arrives. A person talking, one unbroken shot, no cutaways, no captions, no export in the shape a feed wants. That file is raw material. Cutroom starts at that point and hands back the ad.
Arcads and Cutroom, row by row
Two rows go to Arcads and they are real ones. The other five are the distance between a delivered read and a file you can upload.
| Arcads | Cutroom | |
|---|---|---|
| A batch produced with nobody free to film | Type the script, done | One recorded take comes first |
| One script tested across many faces | Swap presenter, rerun | Your face, or a colleague's |
| A finished ad rather than a delivered read | Assembly stays on your evening | Cut, covered, captioned, exported |
| Footage placed on the words you highlight | You add it elsewhere | Over exactly those words |
| Captions rendered in, styled and timed | Usually a separate step | Six packs, one tap |
| Delete a line and the cut rebuilds | Back to an editor | One gesture on the transcript |
| The half-second pause before you say the price | Generated delivery is even | It was already in the take |
They generate a delivery. We start from one and finish the ad.
A script-to-actor tool returns a person talking. Everything between that file and something you can upload is still yours. The trim. The cutaways. The caption timing. The pace. The export.
Cutroom starts one step later and finishes the job. Upload one talking-head take of up to three minutes. Spend 100 credits on a batch. A cut comes back transcribed, covered, captioned and paced.
You change it by touching words rather than clips. Highlight a phrase and a clip lands over exactly those words. Delete a line you do not want and the cut rebuilds around the gap. Change the pace and the whole read re-cuts.
The second gain is what the ad sounds like. Your own take carries the pause before the price. It carries the small laugh at the line you think is silly. A generated read is even by construction. Viewers hear that evenness in about a second.
The cost of the pause is two minutes of talking into a phone, once. That is the whole input.
Where the work lands after the script is written
A script-to-actor tool stops at step two. The three steps after it are what a 100 credit batch and a 20 credit export replace.
Write the script
Portable. Yours either way.
Get a delivery
Roster there, phone here
Make the cut
Batch, 100 CR
Direct on the transcript
Highlight, delete, re-pace
Export 9:16
20 CR per output minute
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Scripts are portable. The expensive part of your work moves with you.
Everything you learned writing for Arcads survives. Scripts are portable. Hooks are portable. Your instinct for which opening stops a scroll is portable, and it is worth more than any file format anybody has ever migrated.
Paste them straight in. There is nothing to convert and nothing to rebuild.
Two habits change shape. There is no roster, so your face or a colleague's is the performance. Testing identical words across several presenters is not a move here.
- Carries over: every script, every hook, your naming convention, your account structure, your testing cadence, your offer.
- Carries over: your sense of length. An ad written for thirty seconds is still a thirty second ad.
- Arrives new: the cut. Footage on the phrases you highlight, captions rendered in, pace as one lever, a 9:16 MP4 you can upload today.
- Does not carry: the actor roster. Testing the same words across many faces is not a move here.
- Different rather than lost: the avatar module turns a photo plus a voice-over into a lip-synced presenter at 320 credits per rendered minute. One presenter you supply, not a catalogue.
Twenty minutes on camera, then four days of letting the ad set answer
Day one is recording. It is shorter than you are expecting. Take three scripts you already trust. Read each one into a phone in a single pass, nothing over three minutes, correcting nothing. Most people are done inside twenty minutes.
Day two is the first batch. 100 credits. What comes back is roughly right and specifically wrong, which is the correct state for a first draft. You will move two clips, delete one sentence and set the pace. Export is 20 credits per output minute, so a thirty second ad costs 10.
Days three and four are the only comparison that settles anything. Put the new creative in the same ad set as your best current script-to-actor creative. Same audience, same offer, same budget, one variable. Preview lies to everyone equally. It lies hardest to the person who made the thing.
Day five is the verdict. Recorded takes either earn a slot in next month's rotation or they do not. Most teams run both for a while and let the account sort it out.
The trial is 7 days and 300 credits with no card. That covers the entire week before any money is involved.
The first week, day by day
Two of the five days are yours. The other three are the account answering a question no comparison page can.
- Record three takesday 1, 20 min on camera
- First batch, read the draftday 2, 100 credits
- Live against your controldays 3 to 4
- Verdict on next month's rotationday 5
One input, three facts, and a month of ads out of twenty minutes
The route needs one thing from you. Somebody has to point a phone at their own face and say something specific. Twenty minutes, once a week, covers a month of ads.
Three facts a buyer needs going in. Three minutes of source per take. 9:16 MP4 out. Word level is the finest edit, so there is no timeline underneath and no frame-level nudge.
Those are the shape of the format rather than gaps in the tool. A three minute ceiling is roughly 450 spoken words, which is far more than a thirty second ad needs.
Credits are not the constraint here. Eight thirty second ads from four takes is 480 credits against the 2,500 Basic carries at $39.99 a month. Premium is $79.99 for 5,000. A top-up is $15 for 1,000.
One scheduling note. Move on the next batch rather than mid-flight on creative that is currently carrying spend.
What you get for the twenty minutes is the whole ad. Cut, cutaways on the right words, captions rendered in, music if you want it at 20 credits a track, and a file you upload rather than a clip you finish.
Questions people ask
- Can I import my Arcads videos and re-edit them here?
- No. The edit is built from a word-level transcript tied to your own recorded audio, so it needs the original take rather than a rendered file. Any finished video is flattened, with no word timing left to direct. Bring the scripts instead, which is where the value sits.
- How much recording does this add to my week?
- Fifteen to twenty-five minutes once a week for most people. One continuous take of up to three minutes per angle, on a phone, no setup. The ceiling is deliberate: ads built from a two minute take beat ads carved out of a forty minute ramble, consistently.
- Is the avatar module a like-for-like replacement for a roster?
- No. You supply a photograph and a voice-over and it returns a lip-synced presenter at 320 credits per rendered minute. What it will not give you is a catalogue of different people to test against each other. If browsing faces is core to how you work, treat this as a different product.
- What does a month of this actually cost in credits?
- A batch is 100 credits and export is 20 credits per output minute. Eight thirty second ads from four takes is 400 on batches and 80 on exports, so 480 credits. Basic is $39.99 a month for 2,500 credits, and a 1,000 credit top-up is $15 when a month runs long.
- Is it right for every team?
- It is built for teams where somebody will speak to a camera. If nobody will, stay on a roster product, or book creators per deliverable and compare them on turnaround, revision rounds and cost per edit.
Move the scripts, not the files. Arcads hands back a person talking. Cutroom hands back the cut, the cutaways, the captions and a 9:16 file you can upload today.