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Alitu Showplanner vs Descript

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. Descript publishes a starting price ($16); Alitu Showplanner does not. Both have a free tier. Only Descript ships a public API.

Side by side

FactAlitu ShowplannerDescript
CategoryPodcast ToolsAI Video Editing
Pricing modelFreeFreemium
Starts at$16 month
Public APINoYes
PlatformsWebmacOS, Windows, Web, API
CompanyAlitu Podcasting LtdDescript
Launched20232017
Last verifiedSep 1, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Alitu Showplanner

Showplanner works well as a free first step for someone who has never planned a show — the questionnaire produces a concrete pitch and five episode ideas in minutes, and the surrounding 12-chapter guide covers the rest of pre-launch. The catch is that it's a funnel: every path eventually points at Alitu's paid recording and editing product.

Pros

  • Generates a specific pitch, five episode ideas and a trailer script from a short questionnaire
  • No account needed to try it
  • 12-chapter guide covers branding, equipment and distribution, not just the pitch

Cons

  • No pricing shown for the Alitu subscription it upsells
  • Plan quality depends heavily on how much detail you put into the questionnaire
  • Built by a UK company mainly to sell its own recording tool, so advice leans toward Alitu's workflow

Descript

Descript is the right tool when your footage is people talking and you would rather edit a document than a timeline. Anyone cutting to music, working frame-accurate, or grading footage will fight it the whole way.

Pros

  • Transcript-first editing genuinely collapses the time to a rough cut for spoken content
  • Studio Sound rescues bad room audio well enough to skip a re-record
  • The API is included with any paid plan rather than sold as a separate tier
  • One project holds recording, editing, captions, translation and publishing

Cons

  • Two independent meters, media hours and AI credits, so either can strand you mid-month
  • The API cannot export a media file directly, you still download through the app
  • Entry paid tier is single-seat and capped at 10 media hours
  • Free tier watermarks exports, so it is a demo rather than a usable tier

Which one fits

Choose Alitu Showplanner if you need

  • First-time podcasters who don't have a show concept yet
  • Hobbyists who want a structured pre-launch checklist
  • Anyone comparing name and format ideas before committing

Choose Descript if you need

  • Podcasters and interview shows where the edit is driven by what was said
  • Course, demo and webinar recordings that need a fast, clean pass
  • Teams with no trained editor who still have to ship weekly video
  • Automating repetitive transcribe-clean-caption pipelines through the API

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