Wisecut free exports 3 minutes at 480p; Sume renders a Reel for $0.30

Wisecut's free plan exports at most 3 minutes at 480p, which is exactly the new Reels length at a low resolution, and its cheapest paid plan is $279 a year. A 3-minute Sume render is $0.30. Wisecut's pricing page (read 2026-10-03) is the source for the Wisecut side.

Instagram's Reels limit is now 3 minutes, reported by Metricool (read 2026-10-03), along with the First Draft feature that cuts pauses from clips. Wisecut's whole pitch is automatic cuts, so a 3-minute free export looks like a fit. The details decide it.

What Wisecut lists

Free is $0 with 30 credits, 480p and a 3-minute maximum export. Starter+ is $279 a year ($23.25 a month) with 300 credits and a 60-minute export. Professional+ is $999 a year with 1,200 credits and a 90-minute export. One credit is one editor minute and two credits are one Autopilot minute.

What a Sume Reel costs

A 10-minute raw recording cut to a 3-minute Reel on Sume is the same pipeline as in the other posts this week: a transcript from video inspect at $0.01 per audio minute, one audio detach at $0.01, and a Timeline 1.0 render at $0.10 per output minute. That is $0.10 plus $0.01 plus $0.30, or about $0.41 before inspect's small compute charge, and the cut list is code you wrote.

On Wisecut Starter+ the same 10 minutes is 10 credits in the editor ($0.78) or 20 in Autopilot ($1.55), by the page's own credit rule. The printout below shows both plans.

PLANS = {"Starter+": (279 / 12, 300), "Professional+": (999 / 12, 1200)}

def credits_for(raw_minutes, autopilot=False):
    return raw_minutes * (2 if autopilot else 1)

for name, (fee, credits) in PLANS.items():
    per_credit = fee / credits
    for auto in (False, True):
        c = credits_for(10, auto)
        print(f"{name} {'autopilot' if auto else 'editor'}: 10 raw min = {c} credits = ${c * per_credit:.2f}")
print("Sume, 10 raw min to a 3 min Reel: $", round(0.01 * 10 + 0.01 + 0.10 * 3, 2))

Worked examples

Free tier first. A creator tries Wisecut Free on a 10-minute video and gets a 3-minute cut at 480p, which is a low-resolution Reel. The paid tier is $279 a year even if you make four Reels. On Sume, four Reels from 10-minute recordings cost $1.64, at a size you choose.

A creator who makes 30 three-minute Reels a month from 10-minute recordings uses 300 editor credits on Wisecut Starter+, the whole month's allowance, for $23.25. On Sume, 30 Reels is $12.30. Autopilot doubles Wisecut's credits, so 30 Reels would need 600 credits, past the plan.

The honest read is that the two are close at volume and differ at the edges. Wisecut sells a finished editor with auto cuts, which Sume does not build. Sume sells a render and a set of small jobs you wire to your own cut logic.

What Sume does and does not do here

• Sume does not cut automatically. It will cut exactly the ranges you give it.
• Sume bills every job at its listed rate; the free /check and plan routes are the only unbilled steps in this comparison.
• Sume bills the render per output minute rounded up: 180 seconds is 3 minutes, 181 seconds is 4.

What to do

Try the free plan if you want to see automatic cuts on one video. If you plan to publish on a schedule, run the numbers above with your own volume, and decide whether you want an editor with built-in cut logic or an API and your own.

A practical way to decide is to run a single real recording through both. On Wisecut, note how many credits the run uses and what the exported picture looks like at 480p. On Sume, price the run with the calculator, then submit the free checks where they exist before you pay for any render. Compare the two on your own footage, not on the pricing pages alone. Keep in mind that credits are consumed by processed minutes of source, so a long raw recording costs more than a short one even if the finished Reel is the same length, whereas Sume's render charge follows the finished minutes and only the transcript step follows the raw length. If your raw footage is much longer than the finished cut, that difference grows with every video you make, and it is worth checking before you commit to a yearly plan.