Free Tool
YouTube to Shorts Converter
Paste a link or add a channel. You get vertical, captioned Shorts posted to YouTube without a manual upload step.
No credit card required
Most YouTube-to-Shorts tools assume you own the video. Paste your own upload, wait, download the clip, open the YouTube app, upload it again. That is fine for one video a week. It falls apart the moment you are working across several channels and trying to post daily.
AutoClip works on any public YouTube video — yours or someone else's — and can publish the finished Short straight to your channel. Add a channel to monitoring once and new uploads get clipped without you opening the dashboard at all.
What the AI is actually doing: it reads the video the way a viewer would and scores each moment for how likely it is to hold attention past the first few seconds. A strong opening line, a laugh, a reveal, a sharp change in energy — those rank high. Flat setup and throat-clearing rank low. You see the score for every clip with a five-criterion breakdown, so when a clip lands near the top you can tell whether it got there on the hook, the pacing, or the payoff, and disagree with it if you want.
In practice, a typical video produces around nine clips, already cut to Shorts length, already reframed to 9:16, already captioned. Turnaround is about 10–15 minutes for a typical video; a three-hour stream VOD takes proportionally longer because there is simply more to read.
Where the honest comparison lands: if you edit one hero video a week and want frame-level control over every cut, a manual editor like CapCut or Descript will give you more say than any automatic tool, AutoClip included. Tools like Klap are genuinely good if what you want is a careful, hands-on edit of your own uploads.
AutoClip is built for the other job — volume, and channels you do not own. Channel monitoring for YouTube, Twitch, and Kick means you set it up once. Credits are simple to reason about: one credit per minute of source video, 200 a month on Starter, 500 on Pro, 1200 on Scale. Auto-posting sends the finished Short to YouTube and 12 other destinations on a spaced schedule. And exports are watermark-free from the cheapest paid plan up, which is not true of most free tiers you will try first.
Features
Clips any channel, not just yours
Paste any public YouTube URL — your own upload or a channel you follow. You are not limited to videos sitting in your own account.
Scored moments, with the reasoning shown
Every candidate clip gets a virality score with a five-criterion breakdown, so you can see why a moment ranked where it did instead of trusting a black box.
9:16 reframe with word-synced captions
Each Short is reframed to vertical with the speaker kept centered as the shot moves, and captions land word by word rather than in blocks.
Channel monitoring for YouTube, Twitch, and Kick
Add a channel once and new uploads and stream VODs get clipped automatically, usually within minutes of going live. Starter watches 1 channel, Pro 3, Scale 10.
Auto-post to YouTube Shorts
Connect your YouTube account and finished Shorts publish straight to your channel on a spaced schedule. Available from Starter ($19.99/mo) up.
Credits you can count in advance
One credit equals one minute of source video: 200/mo on Starter, 500 on Pro, 1200 on Scale. Twitch and Kick streams bill only the highlight segments, so a multi-hour VOD usually runs 35–90 credits.
How It Works
Paste a link, or add a channel once
Drop any public YouTube URL. Or add the channel to monitoring and stop submitting links entirely.
AutoClip ranks the moments worth cutting
Every segment is scored for how likely it is to keep someone watching, and you see the breakdown behind each score.
Clips get reframed, captioned, and posted
Each one comes out 9:16 with captions burned in, then publishes to your YouTube channel or waits in the queue for your approval.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the maximum length for YouTube Shorts?
YouTube counts a video as a Short up to 3 minutes now, though the 30–60 second range is still where most Shorts hold attention best. AutoClip aims for that window by default and you can override the target length per project.
Can I convert YouTube videos from channels I don't own?
Yes. Any public YouTube video works — paste the URL, or add the channel to monitoring. What you do with the output is on you: check the source creator's policies and your platform's rules before you publish.
Does the converter add captions to Shorts?
Yes, on every clip, burned into the video. Captions are timed to individual words rather than whole lines, and you can pick a style — karaoke highlight, pop, bounce — or save your own in a brand kit.
Can I auto-post converted Shorts to my YouTube channel?
Yes. Connect the account once and Shorts publish directly, spaced out rather than dumped all at once. Available from Starter ($19.99/mo) up, which also covers 12 other short-form destinations.
How many Shorts can I get from a 1-hour YouTube video?
Around nine clips from a typical video, though it depends entirely on how much usable material is in there — a tight interview gives more than an hour of screen-share. Per-video caps are 6 clips on Starter, 12 on Pro, 15 on Scale.
How is AutoClip different from OpusClip for YouTube Shorts?
The biggest practical difference is that AutoClip watches channels for you — YouTube, Twitch, and Kick — so new uploads get clipped without a submission step, and it publishes to 9 destinations directly. OpusClip has a longer track record, a large template library, and an editing experience many creators prefer for polishing a single clip by hand. If you are refining one video at a time, try both. If you are running volume across channels you do not own, monitoring is the thing that changes your day.
Is there a free YouTube to Shorts converter?
AutoClip's free tier gives you trial clips with a watermark and 2 connected social accounts, which is enough to judge the output quality. Paid starts at $19.99/mo for Starter — 200 credits, 10 videos, 50 clips, and watermark-free export, which many competitors reserve for a mid tier.
How does AutoClip decide which moments become Shorts?
It scores each moment for how likely it is to hold attention: how strong the opening line is, whether there is a payoff, how the energy moves, whether the segment stands on its own without the surrounding context. Each clip shows that score broken into five criteria, so you can see the reasoning and reorder the queue if you disagree.
Can I monitor a YouTube channel and auto-convert all new uploads to Shorts?
Yes, on any paid plan. Add the channel URL, set your clip preferences once, and new uploads get picked up automatically — usually within minutes — then clipped and queued or posted. Starter covers 1 channel, Pro 3, Scale 10.
Does it work for podcasts, gaming, and interview content?
Yes, and it handles each a little differently. Multi-speaker podcasts get cuts that land on speaker changes instead of mid-sentence. Gaming footage can use a facecam split layout so the player and the action are both visible. Interviews tend to produce the cleanest clips of all, because the strong lines are self-contained.
Related Tools
YouTube Clip Maker
Paste a YouTube link and get short-form clips back. Add the channel instead and new uploads get clipped without you doing anything.
YouTube to TikTok Converter
Long-form on YouTube, short-form on TikTok — without the download-crop-reupload loop.
Twitch to YouTube Shorts
Monitor a Twitch channel and let the Shorts side of your operation run itself.
Explore more from AutoClip
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Go from YouTube video to posted clip — no manual steps, no stitching tools together. AutoClip handles the entire pipeline.
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