Alitu Showplanner vs Descript

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 mainly to sell Alitu's own recording and editing app, so advice leans toward Alitu's workflow
• −Alitu's terms now name a US LLC while the original UK company is in liquidation, so the owner behind the product has changed recently

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

Is Alitu Showplanner cheaper than Descript?

Alitu Showplanner is free to use; Descript starts at $16/mo.

Does Alitu Showplanner or Descript have a free tier?

Both: Alitu Showplanner is free to use, and Descript has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Alitu Showplanner or Descript?

Descript ships a public API, as of our last verification. A public API for Alitu Showplanner is not confirmed by us — check its developer docs before you plan an integration.